A former high-ranking FBI official who was instrumental in miring former President Donald Trump in an investigation over now-debunked ties to Moscow in 2016 is going to prison for actual Russian collusion.
U.S. District Judge Jennifer H. Rearden sentenced disgraced former FBI agent Charles McGonigal to 50 months in prison for “conspiring to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and to commit money laundering in connection with his 2021 agreement to provide services to Oleg Deripaska, a sanctioned Russian oligarch.”
McGonigal, 55, is among the highest-ranking FBI agents ever to be convicted of a crime.
Fake collusion
Blaze News previously reported that McGonigal, who ran counterintelligence for the bureau’s New York field office, played a central role in triggering special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into fraudulent claims that Trump’s campaign team colluded with Russia in order to win the 2016 election.
While serving as chief of the cybercrimes section of the FBI in Washington, D.C., McGonigal picked up on allegations that a Trump adviser, George Papadopoulos, was boasting to an Australian diplomat about possible dirt on former first lady Hillary Clinton.
This information, which McGonigal sent to then-FBI Deputy Assistant Director Jonathan Moffa in July 2016, paved the way for the bureau’s launch of “Crossfire Hurricane.” The operation in turn led to the appointment of Mueller and a two-year, $32 million probe into spurious claims of Russian collusion that continue to shape various leftists‘ perspectives today.
Real collusion
While the bureau was investigating the Trump camp in search of a crime, ideally one involving Russians, McGonigal was working for Oleg Deripaska — a Russian oligarch and aluminum magnate who reportedly has links to Russian President Vladimir Putin and was ultimately sanctioned on April 6, 2018, by the U.S. Treasury Department for allegedly interfering in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
McGonigal routinely did Deripaska’s bidding and tried to have the oligarch taken off the U.S. sanctions list.
According to his indictment, the disgraced FBI agent also agreed to help the daughter of Deripaska’s Russian agent find employment with the New York Police Department “in the fields of counterterrorism, intelligence gathering and ‘international liasoning.'”
Serving as the Russian oligarch’s man in the bureau, McGonigal also probed Deripaska’s oligarchic rivals in exchange for “concealed payments.” The former agent and his Russian peer, former Soviet diplomat Sergey Shestakov, used shell companies to send and receive payments from Deripaska, whose name was carefully omitted in their electronic communications.
The Department of Justice underscored that prior to his retirement, McGonigal was preparing himself for a new master.
“As an FBI official, MCGONIGAL helped investigate Deripaska and other Russian oligarchs. As an SAC, he supervised investigations into sanctions violations,” indicated the DOJ. “Yet at the same time, he began building a relationship with an agent of Deripaska, in the hopes of doing business with Deripaska after he retired from the FBI.”
Had McGonigal not been arrested in January, he stood to possibly make millions with his Russian boss.
Another fed in federal prison
McGonigal’s lawyers suggested that he should be permitted to walk free because he accepted responsibility and was out of a job.
The convict similarly begged District Judge Rearden to spare him from accountability, stating, “I’m humbly asking for a second chance,” reported CNN.
District Judge Rearden, evidently fresh out of second chances, sentenced the former FBI agent Thursday to just over four years in prison. McGonigal must surrender to prison on Feb. 26.
Damian Williams, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said, “Charles McGonigal violated the trust his country placed in him by using his high-level position at the FBI to prepare for his future in business. Once he left public service, he jeopardized our national security by providing services to Oleg Deripaska, a Russian tycoon who acts as Vladimir Putin’s agent.”
Although McGonigal could alternatively have received five years in prison, Williams suggested the former agent’s four-year sentence “is a reminder that anyone who violates United States sanctions … will pay a heavy penalty.”
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District indicated that extra to time behind bars, the court ordered McGonigal to pay a fine of $40,000, to forfeit $17,500, and to serve three years of supervised release.
McGonigal separately pleaded guilty to concealing $225,000 in cash payments from a former Albanian spy. His sentencing concerning those charges will take place on Feb. 16, 2024. McGonigal faces up to five years in prison on the concealment of material facts charge.
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