Setting the record straight

Jill McCabe calls attacks against her family 'false and utterly absurd'

Jill McCabe, wife of former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, has been waiting a long time to set the record straight about her husband and her 2015 Virginia state Senate race, she wrote in an op-ed for The Washington Post.

An emergency room pediatrician, McCabe said her campaign received donations from the state Democratic Party and then-Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D). Andrew McCabe asked an FBI ethics expert for guidelines he should follow as the spouse of a candidate, Jill McCabe said, and followed them to a T. She did not win the race, and a year later, she received a call from a reporter asking if the contributions she received influenced McCabe and the FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server while secretary of state.

There was no connection, McCabe said. "In fact, it makes no sense. 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. Since that news report, there have been thousands more, repeating the false allegation that there was some connection between my campaign and my husband's role at the FBI." Trump tweeted about this link that never existed, she said, and called her husband corrupt. "To have my personal reputation and integrity and those of my family attacked this way is beyond horrible," she said. "It feels awful every day. It keeps me up nights."

Andrew McCabe was fired last month by Attorney General Jeff Sessions, just days before his retirement was set to start, on the grounds that he made "an unauthorized disclosure to the news media." The ordeal has been "a nightmare," Jill McCabe said, and "now that I can speak on my own behalf, I want people to know that the whole story that everything is based on is just false and utterly absurd." Read McCabe's entire op-ed at The Washington Post. Catherine Garcia