In an op ed for the Washington Post titled Jill McCabe: The president attacked my reputation. It’s time to set the record straight.
I strongly suggest people will want to read it.
She is an emergency room pediatrician who met her husband, former FBI Asst Director Andrew McCabe, when they were both undergraduates at Duke.
She explains that she came to run for office because she had spoken with a reporter when a group of politicians came through her emergency room, when she was advocating for expanding Medicaid. As she writes
I was providing care in the most expensive setting — the emergency room — and only once a patient’s condition became more serious, because he or she had no other options. In addition, our state’s decision was increasing the cost of health care for everyone, ultimately raising prices, premiums and taxes, while thousands of patients suffered. The whole thing just made no sense.
She was stunned when she received a phone call asking her to run for the State Senate.
I was stunned — I went home and told Andrew, and we laughed about how crazy that idea was. A few days later, I got another call: Clark Mercer, chief of staff to then-Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam, asking me to at least speak to Ralph, who is a pediatric neurologist. I was moved by Ralph’s story about how he had used his medical background to advocate for the needs of the children he serves.
She goes on to explain the entire context of her running, of the fact that Andrew played no part in her political campaign, and that the issue of Clinton’s emails never arose until AFTER her campaign, that the money she received from Terry McAuliffe’s PAC was similar to that received by other candidates in competitive races in the state in 2015.
A year after she lost that race is when her life — and ultimately that of her husband — changed:
A reporter called my cellphone on a Sunday in October 2016, asking questions about contributions to my campaign and whether there had been any influence on Andrew’s decisions at the FBI.
This could not be further from the truth. 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.
As far as the President’s attacks?
To have my personal reputation and integrity and those of my family attacked this way is beyond horrible. It feels awful every day. It keeps me up nights. I made the decision to run for office because I was trying to help people. Instead, it turned into something that was used to attack our family, my husband’s career and the entire FBI.
Let me push fair use, and offer the next two paragraphs, before again urging you to go read the entire piece:
Nothing can prepare you for what happens when your life is turned upside down by current events. Nothing prepares you for conversations you have to have with your teenage children. Nothing prepares you for the news crews staking out your house, your back yard, your place of business. Nothing prepares you for the fear you feel every time you receive a package from a stranger.
I have spent countless hours trying to understand how the president and so many others can share such destructive lies about me. Ultimately I believe it somehow never occurred to them that I could be a serious, independent-minded physician who wanted to run for office for legitimate reasons. They rapidly jumped to the conclusion that I must be corrupt, as part of what I believe to be an effort to vilify us to suit their needs.