Charles McGonigal hasn’t become a household name the way other villains like Marjorie Traitor Greene, Matt Gaetz and George Santos, or whatever his name is, have. In fact, with the exception of a defensive and misguided post on his fake-Twitter platform Tuesday— “The FBI guy after me for the Russia, Russia, Russia HOAX, long before my Election as President, was just arrested for taking money from Russia, Russia, Russia. May he Rot In Hell!”— McGonigal seems to have disappeared from the news. He got a little coverage from Hannity and Rachel… but there’s no SNL special planned for McGonigal.
It turns out the Kremlin wasn’t using its oligarchs only to buy congressional candidates on Long Island and managers of presidential campaigns but also highly placed FBI officials! McGonigal was a top counterintelligence officer in the FBI and on the payroll of Putin stooge Oleg Deripaska, one of Russia’s wealthiest oligarchs who was also under U.S. sanctions for interfering with the 2016 election, trying together Trump into the White House, a successful Kremlin strategy. Deripaska was paying McGonigal to, among other things, get the sanctions removed.
On Monday, Benjamin Weiner and William Rashbaum reported that “Before he retired in 2018, McGonigal had been the special agent in charge of the FBI’s counterintelligence division in New York. In that post, he supervised investigations of Russian oligarchs, including Deripaska, whom the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan charged him with aiding.” McGonigal took hundreds of thousands of dollars from a shady Albanian spy and from Deripaska.
The indictment unsealed on Monday in Federal District Court in Manhattan charges McGonigal with one count of violating U.S. sanctions, one count of money laundering and two conspiracy counts for what it said were attempts to aid Deripaska.
Deripaska was a client of Paul Manafort, who for several months in 2016 served as Trump’s campaign chairman and in 2018 was convicted of financial fraud and other crimes.
…McGonigal served in the FBI for more than two decades, working in Russian counterintelligence, organized crime and counterespionage, according to the Southern District indictment. He had a role in the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election led by Robert Mueller, asking judges to renew wiretaps on Carter Page, a former Trump campaign adviser. The agency later conceded the surveillance was not legally justified.
In his final years with the FBI, McGonigal ran the counterintelligence division of the bureau’s New York office before retiring in September 2018. That same year, the Treasury Department’s office of foreign assets control imposed sanctions on Mr. Deripaska.
Yesterday, McGonigal pleaded not guilty “during a brief videoconference arraignment before D.C. District Court Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui. He was allowed to remain free with orders to surrender his passports, not seek replacements, and restrict any U.S. travel to court appearances without written pre-approval. The hearing followed McGonigal's separate not-guilty plea on Monday to charges in a New York federal indictment of violating U.S. economic sanctions on Russia… [He] agreed to similar release conditions in the New York case, plus posting a $500,000 personal recognizance bond guaranteed by two financially responsible persons. His next court hearings are scheduled for Feb. 24 in the D.C. court and Feb. 1 in New York.”
The big unanswered question is about what role McGonigal played in getting Trump and his family and coterie off the hook in the Russia investigation. So farther isn’t coming up in the media reports. A team of Washington Post reporters wrote that “The charges against McGonigal alarmed his former colleagues in part because of his depth of knowledge of so many elements of U.S. espionage. McGonigal was an expert on Russian intelligence activities targeting the United States, as well as U.S. efforts to recruit Russian spies, said several former intelligence officials who worked with him and spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive matters. His position at the New York field office would have given him direct access to past and current recruitment efforts, work that was coordinated with the CIA, these people said. McGonigal was well-known at the CIA among officers who dealt with Russia and counterintelligence matters, and he knew the details of some intelligence operations targeting Russia, former officials said. McGonigal has not been charged with espionage, but the former officials who worked with him said his knowledge and experience would have put him at high risk of being recruited by a foreign government… Deripaska has been a focus of FBI investigative work for many years. In 2021, agents searched two homes linked to him, one in D.C. and the other in New York. At the time, a spokeswoman for the aluminum tycoon said the properties were owned by his relatives. The name of Deripaska, a politically connected billionaire, came up repeatedly in recent U.S. investigations involving Russia and the 2016 presidential campaign of Donald Trump. Deripaska did business for years with Paul Manafort, whose tenure as Trump’s campaign chairman became an intense focus of FBI investigations. Manafort and Deripaska have both confirmed that they had a business relationship in which Manafort was paid as an investment consultant. In 2014, Deripaska accused Manafort in a Cayman Islands court of taking nearly $19 million intended for investments without accounting for how they were used.”
Let’s put this away for now with a Twitter thread by Yale History Professor, Russia expect and author Timothy Snyder:
In April 2016, I broke the story of Trump and Putin, using Russian open sources. Afterwards, I heard vague intimations that something was awry in the FBI in New York, specifically counter-intelligence and cyber. We now have a suggestion as to why.
The person who led the relevant section, Charles McGonigal, has just been charged with taking money from the Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. Follow this thread to see just how this connects to the victory of Trump, the Russian war in Ukraine, and U.S. national security.
The reason I was thinking about Trump & Putin in 2016 was a pattern. Russia had sought to control Ukraine, using social media, money, & a pliable head of state. Russia backed Trump the way that it had backed Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych, in the hopes of soft control.
Trump & Yanukovych were similar figures: interested in money, & in power to make or shield money. And therefore vulnerable partners for Putin. They also shared a political advisor: Paul Manafort. He worked for Yanukovych from 2005-2015, taking over Trump's campaign in 2016.
You might remember Manafort's ties to Russia from 2016. He (and Jared Kushner, and Donald Trump, Jr.) met with Russians in June 2016 in Trump Tower as part of, as the broker of the meeting called it, "the Russian government's support for Trump.”
Manafort had to resign as Trump's campaign manager in August 2016 when news broke that he had received $12.7 million in cash from Yanukovych. But these details are just minor elements of Manafort's dependence on Russia.
Manafort worked for Deripaska, the same Russian oligarch to whom McGonigal is linked, between 2006 and 2009. Manafort's assignment was to soften up the U.S for Russian influence. He promised "a model that can greatly benefit the Putin government."
While Manafort worked for Trump in 2016, though, Manafort's dependence on Russia was deeper. He owed Deripaska money, not a position one would want to be in. Manafort offered Deripaska "private briefings" on the campaign. He was hoping "to get whole."
Reconsider how the FBI treated the Trump-Putin connection in 2016. Trump and other Republicans screamed that the FBI had overreached. In retrospect, it seems the exact opposite took place. The issue of Russian influence was framed in a way convenient for Russia and Trump.
Once the issue of Russian soft control was framed narrowly as personal contact, Obama missed the big picture, and Trump had an easy defense. Trump knew that Russia was working for him, but the standard of guilt was placed so high that he could defend himself.
It is entirely inconceivable that McGonigal was unaware of Russia's 2016 cyber influence campaign on behalf of Trump. Even I was aware of it, and I had no expertise. It became one of the subjects of my book #RoadtoUnfreedom.
The FBI did investigate cyber later, and came to some correct conclusions. But this was after the election, and missed the Russian influence operations entirely. That was an obvious counterintelligence issue. Why did the FBI take so long, and miss the point?
I had no personal connection to this, but will just repeat what informed people said at the time: this sort of thing was supposed to go through the FBI counter-intelligence section in New York, where tips went to die. That is where McGonigal was in charge.
The cyber element is what McGonigal should have been making everyone aware of in 2016. In 2016, McGonigal was chief of the FBI's Cyber-Counterintelligence Coordination Section. That October, he was put in charge of the Counterintelligence Division of the FBI's NY office.
We need to understand why the FBI failed in 2016 to address the essence of an ongoing Russian influence operation. The character of that operation suggests that it would have been the responsibility of an FBI section whose head is now accused of taking Russian money.
Right after the McGonigal story broke, Kevin McCarthy ejected Adam Schiff from the House intelligence committee. Schiff is expert on Russian influence operations. It exhibits carelessness about national security to exclude him. It is downright suspicious to exclude him now.
Back in June 2016, Kevin McCarthy expressed his suspicion that Donald Trump was under Putin's influence. He and other Republican members concluded that the risk of an embarrassment to their party was more important than American security.
The Russian influence operation to get Trump elected was real. It serves no one to pretend otherwise. We are still learning about it. Denying that it happened makes the United States vulnerable to ongoing Russian operations.
I remember a certain frivolity from 2016. Trump was a curiosity. Russia was irrelevant. Nothing to take seriously. Then Trump was elected, blocked weapon sales to Ukraine, and tried to stage a coup. Now Ukrainians are dying every day in the defining conflict of our time.
The McGonigal question goes even beyond these issues. He had authority in the most sensitive possible investigations within U.S. intelligence. Sorting this out will require a concern for the United States that goes beyond party loyalty.
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