A former FBI official is facing charges of money laundering and collusion involving a Russian oligarch.
Charles McGonigal, who was the special agent in charge of counterintelligence in the FBI’s New York Field Office, is under arrest over his ties to Oleg Deripaska, a Russian billionaire who has been sanctioned by the United States and criminally charged last year with violating those sanctions.
McGonigal retired from the FBI in 2018. He was arrested Saturday afternoon after he arrived at JFK Airport following travel in Sri Lanka, the sources said.
He was charged along with a court interpreter, Sergey Shestakov, who also worked with Deripaska.
McGonigal, 54, is charged with violating U.S. sanctions by trying to get Deripaska off the sanctions list. McGonigal is one of the highest ranking former FBI officials ever charged with a crime.
Oh but wait. There is much more to this than a former FBI official just trying to help out one of his Russian pals. McGonigal was a key investigator on some pretty major FBI investigations over the years. As Business Insider reported last fall, Charles McGonigal was central to the following investigations.
Before his retirement in 2018, McGonigal led the WikiLeaks investigation into Chelsea Manning, busted Bill Clinton’s national security advisor Sandy Berger for removing classified material from a National Archives reading room, and led the search for a Chinese mole inside the CIA. In 2016, when reports surfaced that Russia had hacked the email system of the Democratic National Committee, McGonigal was serving as chief of the cybercrimes section at FBI headquarters in Washington. In that capacity, he was one of the first officials to learn that a Trump campaign official had bragged that the Russians had dirt on Hillary Clinton, sparking the investigation known as Operation Crossfire Hurricane. Later that year, FBI Director James Comey promoted McGonigal to oversee counterintelligence operations in New York.
Wait just a minute, he was a chief investigator on Crossfire Hurricane? The very same Crossfire Hurricane that was attempting (with the media and Democrats help) to find the evidence that Trump colluded with Russia and Russian oligarchs? THAT Crossfire Hurricane?? You. Don’t. Say.
This is a guy who was regarded as an “expert” on tracking Russian influence on our elections.
Note the date as to when this seminar took place. It’ll be important later.
McGonigal has been under investigation for months now. It seems he’s been trying to get his pal Oleg Deripaska lifted off the sanctions list. Deripaska has been sanctioned since 2018 for alleged election meddling, right at the time McGonigal retired.
Oleg Derpaska has been in the news multiple times prior to his being sanctioned by the Treasury in 2018. Furthermore, not only was he a close friend of Putin’s, he was a key person of interest in the Paul Manafort investigation regarding his part in the Trump/Russia collusion. So, Deripaska and his shady dealings weren’t unknown to McGonigal. But, the money must have been just too good to pass up.
McGonigal is charged with violating US sanctions by trying to get Deripaska – who is worth $1.7billion – off the sanctions list in 2019.
He is one of the highest-ranking former FBI officials ever charged with a crime.
Both McGonigal and Shestakov are accused of receiving payments through shell companies and forging signatures to keep it secret that Deripaska was paying them.
$176,000 for a few months work makes for an exceptionally nice payday doesn’t it? Oh, but that isn’t the only piece regarding the indictments against Charles McGonigal. Nope, there’s more.
The Justice Department says McGonigal also hid from the FBI key details of a 2017 trip he took to Albania with a former member of that country’s intelligence service who had given him the $225,000.
For instance, prosecutors say, he failed to identify the person as his traveling companion or reveal that housing for him would be free.
Once there, according to the Justice Department, he met with Albania’s prime minister and discouraged him from awarding oil field drilling licenses in the country to Russian front companies. McGonigal’s Albanian contacts had a financial interest in those decisions, prosecutors say.
Note the date. McGonigal went to Albania in 2017, and received $225,000 for his efforts. A YEAR before he retired. The very same year he sat on that Foreign Policy panel linked above. Money laundering is lucrative when you’re an FBI agent!
You can read the entire 21-page indictment here.
To recap: Here we have a former FBI official arrested for colluding with Russian oligarchs and having been engaged in money laundering WHILE he was an FBI agent.
This very same FBI official was in charge of the Crossfire Hurricane investigations concerning anything to do with the so-called Steele Dossier, allegations of Trump/Russia collusion, and more. It honestly wouldn’t surprise me if he wasn’t involved in the investigation that led to James Comey arbitrarily clearing Hillary Clinton in 2016!
FBI agent investigating Trump for Russian Collusion is arrested for his own illegal Russian collusion! This is just more proof of the coordinated partisan political attack on the Trump Presidency by FBI, DOJ, Media, & Big Tech. This should be the biggest News story in the U.S. https://t.co/B5TiWFKXs0
— Eric Pistey (@shawnpisteySC) January 23, 2023
You want to know where the Russia colluders were? In the FBI. The rot is deep and it evidently starts at the top.
Feature Photo Credit: Federal Bureau of Investigation/flickr/cropped/public domain.
Kevin says: Oh mother Mary of God! “This very same FBI official was in charge of the Crossfire Hurricane investigations concerning anything to do with the so-called Steele Dossier, allegations of Trump/Russia collusion, and more. It honestly wouldn’t surprise me if he wasn’t involved in the investigation that led to James Comey arbitrarily clearing Hillary Clinton in 2016!”
Not in a million years could most people pull from their anus the web of connections and “conspiracy’s” Victory Girls can make each and every day. Are you having one too many afternoon martini’s while your husband is off earning a paycheck to support your way of life? Hillary’s running a sex ring out of a pizza joint, TFG (the F*&king Genius) is going to be installed by the military after they remove Biden from the White House; it pains me to have to regurgitate these things.
I’m not even going to ask any questions about how any of your drug induced ideas could come to fruition because I know the answer. Zero. They’re beyond idiotic. There must be a DSM V diagnosis for this behavior. One FBI spy had his fingers in an untold number of high level crimes?
Here’s the one thing that is true which most people fail to realize … when you’re in a high level government position, you are being monitored. Your phone calls are being listened in on, your trips overseas are watched, who you associate with is tracked.
The FBI are not the enemy of the people … it’s frickin’ whack jobs like you that are the enemy of nation.
Kim Hirsch says: Oh, where to start with this diatribe! But let’s do, shall we?
Are you having one too many afternoon martini’s while your husband is off earning a paycheck to support your way of life?
What a misogynistic trope! When did you start to hate women?
Hillary’s running a sex ring out of a pizza joint, TFG (the F*&king Genius) is going to be installed by the military after they remove Biden from the White House
I dare you — no, I double dog dare you to go through our blog archives to find any of our writers who has said that. Go ahead, we’ll wait.
it pains me to have to regurgitate these things.
Bullshit. You enjoy trashing our writers. If it really pained you, you wouldn’t be here.
I’m not even going to ask any questions about how any of your drug induced ideas could come to fruition because I know the answer. Zero. They’re beyond idiotic.
Do you treat your clients with drug problems with the same contempt? Or just people with whom you disagree?
There must be a DSM V diagnosis for this behavior.
You wish.
Here’s the one thing that is true which most people fail to realize
“Most people.” Got data for that, or are you just projecting again?
Many years ago my husband worked for a major defense contractor. He had to wait to get his security clearance be allowed into the “black hole” as they called it. Once in the area, he and his colleagues had to follow all sorts of security protocol while they worked on secret and top secret projects. He took it so seriously, he had dreams that he had gone home with classified documents accidentally left in his briefcase. For that he would’ve been not only fired, but possibly imprisoned. Then again, he’s not a Biden, either.
it’s frickin’ whack jobs like you that are the enemy of nation.
If we’re such whack jobs, then why are you here? Do you think that by making insulting ad hominem attacks you will change our minds to become good little progressives like yourself? Or maybe our readers? “By golly, that Kevin is so rude and condescending, he must right!” Ain’t gonna happen, Bucko.
Or is it that you get your ego boosted by posting your “superior” opinion on these pages? And if you can insult, so much the better. Or perhaps you have a narcissistic personality that always must be correct, and you’re gonna “save the nation” — kind of like Donald Trump, right?
There must be a DSM V diagnosis for this behavior. Just sayin.’
Patti Jo says: Brava, Kim! Brava!
Kevin is a misogynist assh*le!
Scott says: “hat a misogynistic trope! When did you start to hate women?”… well, he has self identified as a militant gay, sooo….
Maybe the earlier post about trans “women” threatening real women has some applicability here??
Cameron says: “The FBI are not the enemy of the people”
Laughs in Vicki Weaver.
Oh, and let’s look at the number of mass shooting events that you liberals masturbated over and it turned out that the “suspect was known to the FBI.”
Poor little Epsilon. So full of failure and heterophobia. No wonder you come here.
5 Comments