Alternate headline: “Hillary Clinton still corrupt.” (Indeed, the eyes-glazed-over effect of accurate headlines such as the one above in the area of political corruption will be the topic of a rant later in the post. In short: if you bothered to click into this post, you’re part of a disgustingly small elite that cares about political skulduggery.)

Remember Terry McAuliffe? Sure you do! And I’m sure you’re just shocked to learn that he acted as a bag man to pay off people sniffing around Hillary’s emails:

The political organization of Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, an influential Democrat with longstanding ties to Bill and Hillary Clinton, gave nearly $500,000 to the election campaign of the wife of an official at the Federal Bureau of Investigation who later helped oversee the investigation into Mrs. Clinton’s email use.

Campaign finance records show Mr. McAuliffe’s political-action committee donated $467,500 to the 2015 state Senate campaign of Dr. Jill McCabe, who is married to Andrew McCabe, now the deputy director of the FBI.

The Virginia Democratic Party, over which Mr. McAuliffe exerts considerable control, donated an additional $207,788 worth of support to Dr. McCabe’s campaign in the form of mailers, according to the records. That adds up to slightly more than $675,000 to her candidacy from entities either directly under Mr. McAuliffe’s control or strongly influenced by him. The figure represents more than a third of all the campaign funds Dr. McCabe raised in the effort.

That damning indictment comes from the Wall Street Journal, from yesterday evening.

Back in May, Dan McLaughlin told us about the federal investigation into McAuliffe for possible campaign finance violations. As Dan said in that post:

McAuliffe, the former DNC Chairman, is of course best known as a longtime confidant of the Clintons and all-purpose bag man for their shadier ventures.

How utterly convenient it is that ol’ Terry McAuliffe would be the guy greasing the palms of the (wives of the) folks who later gave Hillary a pass on the emails?

Hillary defenders will no doubt argue that McCabe only assumed an oversight position after the political donations, and took steps to stay out of his wife’s campaign after his wife received the donation. Why, his wife’s campaign was even over once he assumed the oversight position! they will say.

That’s not good enough. The American people would naturally assume that, once Hillary Clinton’s longtime and well-known ally scratched the McCabes’ back, Hillary expected a back-scratch in return. That’s how it works, folks. And it’s that kind of crap, frankly, that fuels the anger that drives Donald Trump’s campaign.

McCabe should have formally recused himself from anything having to do with Hillary’s emails, after his wife benefited from the largesse of the Clinton crowd. The fact that he apparently doesn’t see the problem — well, that’s a big part of the problem.

AND NOW, A RANT: Stories about Hillary Clinton are stories about utter political corruption. Such stories are seemingly harder to follow than trashy tabloid stories about Donald Trump. Everybody can understand when a tacky 59-year-old talks about grabbing women by the p***y, or about how awesome it is to walk in on women naked as long as they are beauty-pageant gorgeous. But when a candidate’s long-time bag man starts paying off the spouse of a law enforcement official who later investigates the candidate for potential violations of federal crimes . . . well, people’s eyes go out of focus, from boredom. Something something campaign contributions whaaa? says the average voter. Tell me more about that p***y-grabbing!

I don’t mean to minimize boasting about sexual assault. But I also think we should not minimize political corruption — even if it’s not as sexy.

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