Jill McCabe breaks silence

Jill McCabe, wife of ousted FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, spoke publicly for the first time Monday night about President Donald Trump's attack on her, vowing to set the record straight on the matter.

"I made the decision to run for office because I was trying to help people," Jill McCabe wrote in an op-ed for The Washington Post. "Instead, it turned into something that was used to attack our family, my husband’s career and the entire FBI."


Trump used Jill McCabe's candidacy for the Virginia state Senate and her acceptance of nearly $675,000 from the Virginia Democratic Party and groups connected to then-Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe as a cudgel to bash Andrew McCabe and the FBI's handling of the investigation into Hillary Clinton's private email server.

The president appeared to suggest that because McAuliffe is a longtime friend of the Clintons and because McCabe later worked on the bureau's investigation of Clinton that there was a quid pro quo in play that might explain why Clinton did not receive criminal charges for her actions.

The decision to run for office in the first place, Jill McCabe writes, was less backroom tale and more the fact that her job as an emergency room pediatrician led her to believe that expanding Medicaid was a crucial issue. The suggestion that something more sinister was afoot could not be "further from the truth."

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"Andrew’s involvement in the Clinton investigation came not only after the contributions were made to my campaign but also after the race was over," she wrote.

Shortly before he was set to retire in March, Andrew McCabe was fired by Attorney General Jeff Sessions for a "lack of candor" and for not being forthcoming enough with investigators who are now probing the FBI's handling of the Clinton investigation. Andrew McCabe is also reportedly a key subject in the DOJ inspector general's report about the entire matter, but that report has yet to be made public.

Trump's version of events has always differed from the FBI and McCabe's version. Bureau officials previously said that Jill McCabe's campaign was over before her husband assumed any role on the Clinton probe. Both Andrew McCabe and now Jill McCabe also claim that the bureau's internal ethics team cleared Andrew McCabe's involvement in the campaign, although Jill McCabe stresses that even that activity was severely limited.

"We tried to go even beyond what the rules required — Andrew kept himself separate from my campaign," Jill McCabe writes. "When the kids and I went door-knocking, he did not participate; he wouldn’t even drive us. He could have attended one of my fundraisers but never did."

Like her husband, Jill McCabe said Trump's repeated barbs took a toll on her and their family.

"Nothing can prepare you for what happens when your life is turned upside down by current events," she writes. "Nothing prepares you for conversations you have to have with your teenage children."

One thing is for certain, Jill McCabe says: She has no intention of ever running for office again.

CORRECTION: This article previously misspelled former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe's name.