Priebus: Clinton ally made ‘down payment’ to sway FBI probe

The head of the Republican National Committee says a Hillary Clinton ally’s political donation to an FBI official’s wife may have affected the agency’s probe of the Democratic nominee’s private email server.

“Given all we know about how the corrupt Clinton machine operates, it’s hard not to see this as anything other than a down payment to influence the FBI’s criminal investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server,” RNC chief Reince Priebus said in a statement Monday.

{mosads}“These troubling revelations are the epitome of the rigged system millions of Americans are fed up with.”

Priebus’s statement comes after reports Sunday that the political action committee of Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D), a longtime Clinton ally, gave nearly $500,000 to the 2015 state Senate campaign of Jill McCabe.

McCabe is married to Andrew McCabe, the FBI’s current deputy director. The Virginia Democratic Party also raised $207,788 through mailers for her campaign.

A spokesman for McAuliffe on Sunday defended the governor’s donation.

“[McAuliffe] supported Jill McCabe because he believed she would be a good state senator,” the spokesman said. “This is a customary practice for Virginia governors.

“Any insinuation that his support was tie to anything other than his desire to elect candidates who would help pass his agenda is ridiculous,” they added.

Jill McCabe lost the state Senate race to Republican Dick Black.

But Republicans have seized on McAuliffe’s donation.

“We simply cannot allow the kind of rank corruption Hillary Clinton and her cronies traffic in to take root in our nation’s highest office,” Priebus said in his statement.

Republican nominee Donald Trump’s presidential campaign on Monday also said McAuliffe’s donation raises serious ethical questions.

“Last night’s revelation that close Clinton ally Terry McAuliffe authorized $675,000 to the wife of a top official at the FBI, who conveniently was promoted to deputy director, and helped oversee the investigation into Clinton’s email server is deeply disturbing and calls into question the entire investigation,” senior communications adviser Jason Miller said in a statement.

Trump tweeted a link to The Wall Street Journal’s original report on McAuliffe’s donation late Sunday.

FBI Director James Comey in July concluded Clinton was “extremely careless” for using a personal email server as secretary of State but recommended she face no criminal charges, a decision which angered Republicans.