Mike Pence: ‘Appearance of Impropriety’ in FBI’s Clinton Email Investigation

During a wide-ranging interview Tuesday with nationally syndicated radio host Hugh Hewitt, Republican vice presidential nominee Indiana Gov. Mike Pence said the FBI’s investigation into Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while secretary of state “doesn’t pass the smell test.”

Here is the entire exchange between Hewitt and Pence:

Hewitt: Now Governor Pence, I want you to go back to your oversight days in Congress.

Pence: Yeah.

Hewitt: I am an alum of the Department of Justice, and then at OPM when I was a general counsel and deputy director. I worked closely with the Bureau.

Pence: Right.

Hewitt: We have the Attorney General on a plane with Bill Clinton. We have Director Comey giving basically incomprehensible press conference followed by indecipherable testimony. And now we have a very honorable man, I’m sure, Deputy Director McCabe. His wife runs for state senate in Virginia, gets $675,000 in Terry McAuliffe donations directed or controlled. He goes on to become the deputy director and does not recuse himself from the server investigation. I think, and he’s a great FBI agent, 20 years, Russian mob, counterterrorism, all that stuff. But what has happened to the Bureau that they are so indifferent to that admonition to avoid even the appearance of impropriety?

Pence: Well, I think, actually you beat me to the punch on that last one. This is, you know, the questions that emanate out of the idea that the deputy director’s wife received, what was it, about half a million dollars from Terry McAuliffe’s PAC and from the Democratic Party? And people know Terry McAuliffe’s close relationship with the Clintons has been going on for generations, or for at least a generation. It just doesn’t rise to the level of being over the appearance of impropriety. I mean, the idea that the deputy director of the FBI was not intimately involved in the most high profile case of the FBI, investigating Hillary Clinton’s server, just doesn’t, it just doesn’t pass the smell test. But it, you know, cumulative weight of all of this, particularly when you look at the fate of General Cartwright, who’s being held to account, who may well go to jail, a vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who is being properly held to account for having compromised classified information, what it says to the American people is that there is a double standard. What it says to the American people is that we all live under a certain set of laws and rules, and well we should, but that Hillary Clinton and those around her seem to be held to a different standard. And you know, I thought we decided back in the 1970s that no one was above the law, even the president of the United States? And I truly do believe it’s one of the reasons why you see these incredible crowds coming out for Donald Trump, and even, you know, over a thousand people out for me yesterday at venues in North Carolina. I’ll be in Ohio today. The enthusiasm on the ground, I think, is that the American people know something is wrong in our system. There’s, it seems to work for the favored few and not for the American people. And I think that’s the reason why Donald Trump’s going to be elected. In part, it’s going to be a reason why Donald Trump’s elected as the next president of the United States, because the American people want change, and they want to end this day of double standards at the highest level.