The Wall Street Journal’s erroneous accusations about Governor McAuliffe’s support of State Senate candidate Dr. Jill McCabe have been almost universally panned by journalists both in Virginia and across the country.
CNN (Via Media Matters)
Chris Cuomo
Key Quote: This sounds like a conspiracy theory. It sounds like a conspiracy theory.
...
You can criticize the investigation, but this McAuliffe stuff is far-fetched at least, and conspiratorial in the main. The timing is wrong, Rudy.
The Philosophy That Fuels the Clinton Scandal Machine
Bloomberg
Jonathan Bernstein
Key Quote: Take, for example, a Wall Street Journal article that alleged … well, it’s not entirely clear what it alleged. It tries to make something of a set of facts. One, Hillary and Bill Clinton have been close to Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe. Two, McAuliffe recruited Dr. Jill McCabe to run for a Virginia state senate seat in 2015 and was responsible for raising most of the money for her campaign. Three, McCabe’s husband was a senior FBI official, who, after the campaign, was promoted to deputy director and wound up involved in the investigation of Clinton’s e-mails.
What does that add up to? “Nothing” would be the pretty obvious answer.
MSNBC Live with Steve Kornacki
MSNBC (via Media Matters)
Steve Kornacki
Key Quote: So, are you -- are you suggesting here that essentially they went -- there was sort of foresight on the part of the Clinton campaign to enlist Terry McAuliffe, to ask a political action committee to give money to a candidate whose spouse would months later be placed into a position of partial responsibility over an investigation that at the start of that campaign hadn't even begun?
Editorial: Yes, appearances do matter in FBI case
The Roanoke Times
Editorial Board
Key Quote: The Virginia angle first: In the absence of actual evidence here, McAuliffe looks blameless. He was just doing what governors do — trying to make sure their party controls the legislature by recruiting and funding strong candidates. And Jill McCabe, on paper anyway, seemed a strong candidate. She’s a doctor, which gave her a unique (though ultimately unsuccessful) talking point in a state where Democrats have argued that Medicaid should be expanded.
The idea that McAuliffe was helping her to influence the FBI investigation into Clinton seems absurd at best and at worst, amateur armchair conspiracy theory.
McCabegate Is the Latest Scandal That Will Totally Destroy Hillary Clinton
Mother Jones
Kevin Drum
Key Quote: There's literally nothing here. Not "nothing substantial." Not "nothing that other politicians don't do." Literally nothing. There's not a single bit of this that's illegal, unethical, or even the tiniest bit wrong. It's totally above board and perfectly kosher. And even if there were anything wrong, McAuliffe would have needed a time machine to know it.
Why the latest Hillary Clinton conspiracy might not be what it seems
The Washington Post
Gregory S. Schneider
Key Quote: In addition, the timing is complicated if you’re trying to prove a Clinton email connection. McAuliffe and other state Democrats — led by Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam, who, like Jill McCabe, is a physician — recruited her to run for office in March 2015. At the time, her husband worked in the FBI’s Washington field office. Revelations about Clinton’s emails came to light that month, but there was no publicly known investigation.
Clinton’s Connection to FBI Official
Factcheck.org
D'Angelo Gore
Key Quote: Without any evidence, Donald Trump said that Hillary Clinton knew that “one of the closest people” to her donated over $675,000 to the campaign of the wife of an FBI official who investigated Clinton’s use of a private email system as secretary of state.
AP Fact Check: No ‘criminal act’ in case of FBI agent’s wife
AP (Via The Washington Post)
Alan Suderman
Key Quote: Donald Trump was out of bounds when he accused rival Hillary Clinton of committing a “criminal act” by giving large campaign contributions to the wife of an FBI official who later supervised the agency’s investigation into Clinton’s email practices when she was secretary of state.
The misplaced GOP buzz about Jill McCabe
The Washington Post
Norman Leahy
Key Quote: McAuliffe has many skills. The ability to see the future is not among them. Virginia Republicans looking to change the 2016 narrative should look somewhere else.
Donald Trump Campaign Aims To Replace The Media’s ‘Spin’ With Its Own
Huffington Post
Michael Calderone
Key Quote: While Trump seized on the Journal story Monday as evidence of murky Clinton connections, some media outlets looking into the claims found nothing scandalous.
Trump’s mixed-up version of the latest Hillary Clinton email controversy: Four Pinocchios
The Washington Post
Glenn Kessler
Key Quote: But it’s hard to see how the trail runs to Clinton — or how McAuliffe would know that the husband of someone he was supporting in a Virginia legislative race was going to be promoted months later.