Jill McCabe pens op-ed to tell her side of the story, plays victim card

It was bound to happen. Dr. Jill McCabe, the wife of disgraced and unemployed FBI official Andrew McCabe, penned an op-ed published by the Washington Post to air her resentment at being dragged into her husband’s political scandal. In 2015, Dr. McCabe ran as a Democrat for a seat in Virginia’s state Senate against Republican Richard Black, the incumbent. Now that Mr. McCabe is no longer employed at the FBI, she feels free to speak.  She blames President Trump for talking about her thwarted political ambitions during his campaign to become president.

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Who is Jill McCabe, you ask? She is an educated, successful professional working woman, wife and mom from all indications.  Her campaign website says so, anyway.

Growing up, Jill knew she wanted to be a doctor at age 5. Now, her days are spent saving lives and helping her patients. After serving as a primary care pediatrician and owning a piece of her own practice, she’s been a pediatric emergency physician for the last nine years.

Jill also serves as the Medical Director of three departments at Inova Loudoun Hospital: the Pediatric Emergency Department, the Pediatric Hospitalist Services and the outpatient Concussion Program. She also recently worked with Inova on the opening of the Pediatric Urgent Care at Dulles South; previously served as Vice Chair and Chair of Pediatrics; and serves as the Vice President of the Medical Staff.

In her role as an administrator, Jill has collaborated with her colleagues to provide care and achieve patient satisfaction at the top of the Inova Health Care System. She works each day to improve the quality of patients’ care, while meeting the needs of our community on their toughest days.

Jill has also pushed for laws to protect the health and well-being of our kids, including mandating the use of bike helmets for kids under 15 and working to protect student-athletes.

Whew. That’s a lot. Her medical career alone would bring publicity in its own right. Add a political campaign to it, especially one that earned all the usual Democrat endorsements and her campaign is like any other well-connected, high profile candidate. A quick glance at her Twitter timeline, which ended on election night in November 2015, shows endorsement photos and quotes from all the usual suspects – both of Virginia’s U.S. Senators, the Commonwealth’s Attorney General, the LGBT community, medical professionals.  Elle Magazine ran a story about her campaign and the Washington Post endorsed her.

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Oh, then there is former Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe,  a former DNC chairman, co-chairman of President Bill Clinton’s re-election campaign, chairman of Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign.  He was still governor in 2015 so he was able to direct some big money to McCabe’s campaign. McAuliffe is known for his fundraising skills.

Naturally, Trump jumped on the connection since the FBI’s corruption and scandalous practices by some officials have been brought to the forefront during the Mueller investigation.

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.

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Dr. McCabe comes to her husband’s defense, as would be expected, as she tries to set the record straight. She tells the story of the conception of her campaign and moves through to the actual campaign in her op-ed. She says it was then Lt.Gov. Northam that encouraged her to run and set up a time for her to speak with then Gov. McAuliffe. All McAuliffe wanted from her, she says, is an assurance that she would support Medicaid expansion.

 While I was considering the possibility, Andrew and I went to Richmond to meet with various politicians, including then-Gov. Terry McAuliffe. The subject of Hillary Clinton never came up — the story about her emails had not even broken when I was first approached by Northam. All the governor asked of me was that I support Medicaid expansion.

Still, in thinking about running, one of my first concerns was Andrew and his job at the FBI, where he was the assistant director in charge of the Washington field office. I said to Andrew, “If you think this is going to be a problem for you professionally, even if it’s allowed, I won’t do it.”

He consulted with the ethics experts at the FBI and committed to follow their advice. We tried to go even beyond what the rules required — Andrew kept himself separate from my campaign. 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. One day he put on a campaign T-shirt so we could take a family picture and share it with my proud parents. You may have seen it — it seems to have taken on a weird life of its own — but that was it, just a family picture at a swim meet.

Meanwhile, my campaign received funding from the state Democratic Party and the governor’s PAC — on par with what other candidates in competitive races on both sides of the aisle received. All those contributions were publicly reported. And of course, again, Clinton’s emails never came up — if they had, I would have found that alarming, immediately reported it and likely pulled out of the campaign. I know enough from being married to Andrew for 20 years to know what is right and what is wrong.

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She was astounded about a year later when reporters began asking about her campaign contributions, given her husband’s position in the FBI. After Trump fired James Comey, McCabe rose to be Trump’s target and this was to be expected by everyone, except, apparently, Dr. McCabe.  She cries victim as she claims Trump tried to spread destructive lies about her and her integrity. The only problem with that is she is part of the story because her husband was fired for lying and allegedly a central figure in the corruption bubbling up at the FBI as it related to the 2016 presidential campaign. Like it or not, she is tied to her husband and her very large contributions from a Clinton loyalist and his network of friends did rightfully create suspicion as just another piece of the puzzle.

None of these people expected Hillary Clinton to lose the presidential race in 2016. All of them assumed that none of this sorted tale would be exposed. Dr. McCabe may indeed be completely innocent of any sketchy behavior but to claim she’s just an innocent in this whole scandal is ridiculous. She even goes so far as to remind the reader that McCabe is a Republican and she has voted for candidates in both parties in the past. I suppose this makes them above reproach. Too bad for them, though, an independent inspector general’s report said otherwise.

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I’ll leave you with the happy family in their official campaign attire.  Note they are in public, at a swim meet. No doubt McCabe was influencing voters in his wife’s district.

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David Strom 6:40 PM | April 18, 2024
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