It was recently discovered that former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe recused himself from the FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails, mere weeks before the Presidential Election that swept President Trump into office.
In documents obtained by Judicial Watch, email records show that Deputy Director McCabe sent an email on Nov. 1, 2016 – just days before the election – to a fellow senior FBI official in which he had formally recused himself from Clinton’s email investigation, code-named “Mid-year.”
“As of today I am voluntarily recusing myself from the ongoing Mid Year investigation,” he had written in his email. “I will continue to respond to congressional requests for historical information as necessary.”
Judicial Watch obtained the email through the Freedom of Information Act.
During the campaign and in the months since, President Donald Trump, the conservative groups, and several of the Republicans lawmakers had criticized McCabe for failing to recuse himself from the FBI’s probe into the Clinton’s private email server after the media reported that the 2015 state Senate campaign of McCabe’s wife had received a staggering sum of $675,000 during her congressional campaign from two groups either run or closely associated with Hillary’s close personal confidante and loyal lackey, Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe. That donation made up nearly 40% of all the campaign funds that McCabe’s wife raised.
It should be noted that McAuliffe also served on the board of the Clinton Global Initiative.
The groups that had contributed to McCabe’s wife’s campaign were McAuliffe’s political action committee (PAC), Common Good VA, and the Virginia Democratic Party.
The Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General in January had announced it would be reviewing whether McCabe should have recused himself from the Clinton’s email investigation, which had begun in July 2015, and whether he may have violated any of the Hatch Act’s prohibition against the FBI agents campaigning in partisan races.
Judicial Watch also succeeded in obtaining an internal FBI document that had provided an overview of these issues related to the calls for McCabe’s recusal and suggested talking points “to inform discussions with employees or interested parties in the community.”
The document, that had dated Oct. 24, cites a front-page Wall Street Journal article that was published on the same day that had detailed the potential conflict-of-interests involving McCabe and his own wife’s campaign.
The document had argued that the Journal’s timeline of events were related to McCabe and the FBI’s investigations into Clinton’s email server makes “invalid associations between the events.”