The McGonigal miasma

Charles “Charlie” McGonigal helped originate the FBI’s Russia hoax investigation of President Trump and his 2016 presidential campaign. As the New York Post explains, FBI Deputy Assistant Director Jonathan Moffa told Senate Judiciary Committee staffers in 2020 that he got a July 2016 email from McGonigal which “contained essentially that reporting, which then served as the basis for the opening of the [Crossfire Hurricane] case.” After serving as chief of the cyber-counterintelligence coordination section, McGonigal was promoted to Special Agent In Charge Of the New York FBI counterintelligence division. McGonigal retired from the FBI in 2018 to pursue other interests.

In a plot twist that casts additional shade on the FBI’s Russia hoax, McGonigal has been charged by in the Southern District of New York with committing federal crimes in exchange for “concealed payments” for illegal services provided to sanctioned Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. The Department of Justice/SDNY press release is posted here, the indictment here.

The United States Attorney for the District of Columbia has separately charged McGonigal with taking $225,000 in cash from a naturalized citizen with business interests in Europe who had been an employee of Albanian intelligence — this while McGonigal was serving as Special Agent in Charge of FBI counterintelligence in the New York office. The Department of Justice/DC press release on the related charges in a complicated bribery scheme is posted here, the DC indictment here. The bribery scheme is set forth in Count I of the DC indictment.

The New York Post covers the charges here. Debra Heine discusses the charges and the relationship to the Russia hoax in this story at American Greatness.

Jerry Dunleavy cited the ties between Deripaska and Christopher Steele in this 2021 story. Dunleavy noted, for example:

Steele was working for Vladimir Putin-linked oligarch Oleg Deripaska before, during, and after his time targeting then-candidate Donald Trump, and the former MI6 agent was hired to put the dossier together by an opposition research firm, Fusion GPS, which was simultaneously working for Kremlin-linked lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya of the now-infamous June 2016 Trump Tower meeting. The Clinton campaign hired Fusion.

The charges disgrace the FBI several times over. Russia! Russia! Russia! Where have you gone, James Comey?

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