On Saturday, the FBI arrested one of its own. Charles McGonigal, who used to head counterintel for the Bureau in New York and investigated Trump over Russiagate, was busted at JFK Airport and has been charged with violating the sanctions placed on Oleg Deripaska.
Deripaska, a Russian oligarch allied with Putin, has his name scrawled on parts of Russiagate. Before Christopher Steele was brought on board to produce the infamous dossier aimed at Trump, the British ex-agent had been working on a project for Deripaska to go after Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign manager, who would also prove to be an FBI target.
In the tangled relationship that is an apt metaphor for Russiagate, the Russian billionaire appeared at times to be an FBI asset and at other times employed FBI personnel.
McGonigal is reportedly one of a number of ex-FBI agents who became freelance consultants, like American versions of Steele, under investigation. And connections between ex-FBI officials and the Russians have gone even higher than McGonigal. Louis Freeh, Bill Clinton’s former FBI director, represented a number of Russian oligarchs and his deceased predecessor, Director William Sessions worked for a top Russian mafia figure linked to Putin.
We may very well find that the retired FBI officials who haven’t gotten contracts as commentators for cable news have gone to work for the Russians. And McGonigal may be the first of a number of FBI figures who were tasked with fighting Russian influence who instead learned enough to go to work for the Russians.
If McGonigal is guilty, it’s because he was following in the footsteps of retired FBI directors and top elected officials. Deripaska had previously managed to purchase the services of former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole to “persuade U.S. officials his client isn’t a criminal” and of a firm linked to Hillary’s communications director and Bill Clinton’s deputy press secretary. When you can buy both sides of the 1996 presidential election, why quibble at a mere FBI official? Russia may be a mafia state, but unfortunately we’ve become one too.
A long list of American political elites had taken Deripaska’s money. And the FBI had been corrupted into serving the political interests of that elite rather than protecting the homeland.
When it came to Deripaska, the FBI’s priorities were helping Hillary Clinton win an election.
Even while Deripaska was suspected of, according to the New York Times, “extortion, bribery and even murder”, he was able to spend time in New York while the FBI tried to solicit information from him about Trump’s Russian connections. Instead of ‘flipping’ Deripaska, the Russian oligarch allegedly flipped the head of FBI counterintelligence operations in New York who would have likely led efforts to gain information from him on Trump.
Deripaska had apparently employed quite a few former government officials like Jonathan Winer, a former top Kerry aide, who lobbied for the Russian oligarch and who also promoted the Steele dossier. The Russian oligarch claims to be the victim in all this. As does Igor Danchenko: the alleged source for much of the Steele dossier and the subject of a failed prosecution effort by Special Counsel Durham. And yet even defenders of the Steele dossier have been forced to argue that it was ‘tainted’ by Russian intelligence. And that means the FBI was tainted too.
But the FBI was tainted as a secondary effect of being politicized by tainted figures.
The Clintons, who had initiated Russiagate, as usual had led the way. In 2009, Hillary Clinton arrived bearing a ‘Reset Button’. The button, pilfered from a hotel swimming pool, was meant to symbolize the desire of the Obama administration for a new relationship with Russia. All it really symbolized was that the Clintons, like the Russians, would steal anything that wasn’t nailed down. And the real relationship launched with that button was between Russia and the Clintons.
This was the same year that Deripaska hired a firm tied to the Clintons. The head of that firm, who would also work for the Russian foreign ministry, would later show up working with Steele and a Justice Department official involved in Russiagate to help the Russian oligarch.
In 2010, a Russian investment bank paid Bill Clinton $500,000 to deliver a speech and Putin called to offer his personal appreciation. Meanwhile the Russians were slowly swallowing Uranium One while investors wrote their checks to the Clinton Foundation. Hillary Clinton, who would later reinvent herself as a hawk, conveniently opposed sanctions on Russia.
In 2015, McGonigal was CC’d on a briefing given by the FBI to the Clinton campaign warning that the Bureau had information that a foreign government was “attempting to influence Hillary Clinton through lobbying and campaign contributions”. Rather than investigating potential criminal activity and national security violations by the Clintons, the FBI instead gave them a ‘heads up’ that there was suspicious behavior taking place.
McGonigal had been working on Russian counterintelligence matters since at least the 90s. He had close ties to former FBI Director James Comey. When Trump fired Comey, McGonigal, speaking in an official capacity, called him “one of the most loved leaders that we’ve had” and stated that “many of us who were nominated for leadership positions by him will forever hold him in esteem as we progress through our FBI careers.”
Comey, along with other FBI figures, had signed off on Hillary Clinton’s actions. And there was every reason to believe that the Clintons were the ones who were actually tied to Russia.
Russiagate was a masterstroke that took one of Hillary’s greatest legal vulnerabilities and turned it around so that the country has spent the last six years debating Trump’s ties to Russia while at the same time justifying illegal surveillance and prosecution of her opponent’s associates.
But that victory was ultimately pyrrhic. Hillary still lost the election and her corruption, like that of the Biden family, provided an opening for foreign countries looking to buy influence in America. Beginning with the Clinton era, a generation of FBI officials have alternated between working for the Clintons and the Russians while compromising our national security and domestic politics.
A corrupted FBI leadership did the dirty work of the Clintons, who were looking to redirect the blame for their Russian ties, and then in some cases decided to cut out the middleman by working directly for the Russian oligarchs.
In Washington D.C., retired generals go to work for defense contractors, retired IRS officials teach corporations how to avoid paying taxes and retired FBI officials go to work for the Russians. And aspiring presidents, like Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden, open nonprofits that allow them to legally take cash from foreign countries while prepping their future administrations.
FBI officials are just copying what they’ve seen top elected officials get away with doing.
Russiagate and what happened to the FBI can’t be understood apart from the routine corruption of a city whose public servants work for the government in order to trade on that knowledge. The grand hypocrisy of Russiagate was that this corrupt political class used its Russian and international connections to smear Trump with their own crimes. Trump wasn’t working for Moscow, but sometimes it seems as if it’s hard to find anyone in Washington D.C. who isn’t.
The FBI doesn’t have to look the other way now at Charles Mc Gonigal’s
dastardly dealings with Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska because there’s
no potential election of Hillary Clinton. No one knows for sure yet who
Dems will run in 2024, not even the FBI.
As corrupt as they are, throwing one of their fellow corruptocrats
Mc Gonigal under the bus is no biggie. Besides, the FBI – by prosecuting
him – can assure the American public that they are doing their job and
are shocked – shocked – that gambling has been going on in back rooms
of the halls of justice.
Nice reference to Casablanca. Different times indeed.
(Back then, communism☭ was hated, and America was appreciated.)
Trump wasn’t working for Russia but it’s real hard to find someone in DC Trump won’t endorse.
TDS far more contagious than Covid and deadly for the nation.
There may be no cure for it either.
Hope Trump reads Peter Navarro’s latest book and takes it to heart.
I dare you find anybody hasn’t overtly said he’s a puke.
71 million voters agree with me.
At the very least hire trolls that know American slang!
Una Salus: You are mercifully free from the ravages of intelligence.
You won’t find anybody that matters because that’s what he shies away from.
Nothing n Covid, really. Nothing on anything that matters at all because at the end of the day he has nothing on anything that matters except his ego. Nothing.
Weird situation. Too bad John LeCarre isn’t around to write this up into a novel.
What be the point of making it a novel? Everyone would say it’s ridiculously implausible!
This realization of the extent of corruption that has inundated our government has been sinking in to most conservatives these last few years I think. It is without a doubt frightening mostly because the prospect of cleaning it up seems so very dim. We saw an absolute avalanche of propaganda hurled at Trump during these years, who at this point looks as helpless as Joan of Arc getting burned at the stake because such propaganda has an irreversible effect no matter the truth brought to light. The shear magnitude of it is enough to bend the minds of too many. Academia, the media, Hollywood, and most especially the Democratic party are to blame. They should all be thoroughly despised. We have been asleep at the wheel.
Bravo! Great comment.
I do hope that President Trump has a different fate than Joan of Arc.
We don’t need a saint. We just need a leader who is not part of the corruption.
I agree with you, but we need more than a leader.
We need a populace that is brave and resolute to purge our nation of its traitors at all levels of federal, state and local governments. We need revival.
America definitely needs a revival. A revival not of religion but a revival of self-reliance, self-confidence, and self-esteem.
The American populace isn’t brave enough for self-reliance. Not even religious conservatives are brave enough for self-reliance. Call me when even 10% of conservatives are willing to do away with Social Security or Medicare.
Freedom and liberty? Freedom and liberty mean capitalism. And capitalism means self-reliance. Capitalism means no more government safety net. Who in America is willing to embrace that and vote for that?
Sorry you little !@#&8ObjOneKanobe, you aren’t going to get what you want.
When you finally accept that you will be less willing to sit around insulting us from your Lotus Flower. No one cares about your version of self-reliance, self-confidence, and self-esteem according to the twin gods of Objectivism, Rand and Peekaboo.
If you had any actual self-esteem you wouldn’t need to lecture us 24/7
I don’t think I’ll be calling you either. Freedom and liberty mean Freedom and liberty…..period. Capitalism is how we earn a living.
You don’t appear to be earning anything…except everyone’s contempt.
Christians don’t seek a revival of religion. We seek a revival of reconciliation with the Creator of the universe. Or better still, we seek to prepare ourselves as individuals for the day of Jesus’ promised return. Contrary to popular belief, we will not be “raptured,” or lifted up into heaven; rather, heaven will come down to us, and there will be a new earth and a new heaven – a new creation. Many of us believe it is coming very soon because there are clear signs now.
The American voter has never been asleep at the wheel he has voted for altruism and the altruist redistribution of wealth for a century now. The American voter has been deceived because he wanted to be deceived. The American voter thought the altruist is stealing from Paul to help Peter, it’s all for a noble cause, so it’s not really theft. Altruist theft begins with only a penny from your neighbor and ends with destroying America. Big Government, Omnipotent Government, Mafia Government, Vampire Government, is founded and funded on altruism — it can not exist without it.
OMG, the sky is falling….the sky is falling. The end is nigh.
Trump’s “heresy” is also hearing voices, the voices of the people.
This is yet more proof that the FBI needs to be totally rebuilt from top to bottom
D.C. needs to be rebuilt. The FBI will follow.
I don’t know why anyone is surprised by corruption at the FBI. It’s a wholly Republican institution.
THE CPUSA AND THE KGB teamed up to take over SE Asia/Vietnam. They recruited millions of Americans using the KGB’s World PEACE Council. “Peace as a Weapon of War.”
They teamed up again in the ’80s to take over CENTRAL AMERICA…. using PEACE and the official U.S. Peace Council run by the CPUSA and a direct connection to the SOVIET KGB, DURING THE COLD WAR. MILLIONS MORE RECRUITED.
Those CPUSA/KGB RECRUITS are today’s teachers, professors, Hollywood, MSM, high tech, city/state/national leaders, and filled Congress with the Communist hiding in the Democratic Party, now completely taken over!
One CPUSA/KGB RECRUIT became President Barack Obama (Google: “Obama Sundial 1983” which proves his Communist connection to Columbia’s Communist professors and the most radical PRO-SOVIET student groups!) Obama then surrounded himself with the same CPUSA/KGB recruits who he then appointed to head departments that were then used to target ALL OPPONENTS and who conspired in a COUP ATTEMPT AGAINST A SITTING PRESIDENT….. USING THE RUSSIAN COLLUSION HOAX.
LOL THAT THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY HAVE BEEN COLLUDING WITH THE SOVIETS/RUSSIANS FOR DECADES!
Bill Clinton was at antiwar rallies in London, Prague, and Moscow. It might be argued that London had free speech then. Demonstrations could not happen in the other sites without KGB organization. At the time Clinton was at Oxford instead of law school in Arkansas which he told his draft board was where he was going to get his deferment. It was a crime to not inform his draft board he was violating the terms of the deferment. Others were jailed for such. When the draft became a lottery by birth date and he got a very high number, he told the board.
It’s more than what he did in the “Russiagate” conspiracy, though. As the head of CI in the NYC field office, he must have been read in on all the counter-intelligence investigations being conducted by that office. So one important question is how much of that information he gave to the Russians who now know about which of their people we’re on to and which ones we aren’t. Good going FBI.
We don’t know. But after the Robert Hanssen case, I suspect FBI counterintel is badly compromised anyway and I doubt it ever amounted to much anyway. Any halfway competent foreign intel agency runs rings around us on our best day. All we’ve got is tech assets and the Russians dismantled those pretty thoroughly, wrecking the NSA and putting it tools out into the wild.
He was a communist in the FBI.
You sure about that, sparky?
And now you’re saying we can trust anything the FBI says or does? Hmmm…… I’m not buying it. Any of it.
Don’t trust anybody.
Nobody in their right mind would trust you, Greenfield. You’re just another blogger up till 2 AM screaming at comments.
I never watched “Dallas”, is this what that show was all about, what a horrible show.
Thanks for keeping the passengers informed
We might as well know we’re headed for a water landing.
Question
Why was he arrested and this wasn’t swept under a rug
He pissed off Barry Soetoro?
Was he the “Insurance policy”?
Did he know Peter Strzok and Lisa Page?.
Is he in the jail where Jeffrey Epstein was imprisoned?
J. Edgar Hoover is spinning in his Grave