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.
"Charlie has had a long, distinguished career with the FBI. He's served the United States for decades," McGonigal's lawyer, Seth DuCharme, told ABC News in a statement. "This is obviously a distressing day for Mr. McGonigal and his family, but we'll review the evidence, we'll closely scrutinize it, and we have a lot of confidence in Mr. McGonigal."
McGonigal and Shestakov, who worked for the FBI investigating oligarchs, allegedly agreed in 2021 to investigate a rival Russian oligarch in return for payments from Deripaska, according to the Justice Department. McGonigal and Shestakov are accused of receiving payments through shell companies and forging signatures in order to keep it a secret that Deripaska was paying them.
On October 4, 2016, Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey named McGonigal the head of counterintelligence for the FBI’s New York field office. As the special agent in charge, McGonigal supervised and participated in investigations of Russian oligarchs. Before that, he was the section chief of the Cyber-Counterintelligence Coordination Section at FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C.
Charges against McGonigal—who is one of the highest ranking FBI members ever charged with a crime—stem from his connection to Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch close to Vladimir Putin. The United States sanctioned Deripaska in 2018 for working for the Russian state to destabilize Ukraine. Deripaska was also a close associate of political operative Paul Manafort, who ran Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. Manafort was convicted in 2018 of a number of crimes associated with his ties to Russia. Trump pardoned him.
(snip)
While there is a lot we still don’t know, we do know that in 2018, Comey told Congress he worried that officials in the FBI’s New York field office had given Trump ally Rudy Giuliani sensitive information in the last days of the 2016 election, after Giuliani had said so in front of television cameras. Giuliani made that claim in October, after McGonigal took over that office.
We know that Comey told investigators that he released news of the reopened investigation of Clinton’s emails—against Department of Justice policy, right before the election with voting already underway—out of concern that “people in New York” would leak that information. Former acting attorney general Sally Yates was clearer. She told the inspector general that Comey and other FBI officials “felt confident that the New York Field Office would leak it and that it would come out regardless of whether he advised Congress or not.”
We also know that after McGonigal left the FBI, he went to work for Brookfield Properties, the multibillion-dollar real-estate company in New York that handled the bailout of Jared Kushner’s 666 Fifth Avenue by a $1.1 billion, 99-year lease—all paid up front—thanks to the Qatar Investment Authority.
The alleged FBI misconduct and mistrial in the case of Professor Hu has echoes of Wen Ho Lee, Sherry Chen & Professor Xi, all of whom were falsely accused by @TheJusticeDept of spying for China. Joined @RepMondaire and @RepJayapal in urging the IG to investigate. pic.twitter.com/Q9i9O6cnIg
— Rep. Ted Lieu (@RepTedLieu) June 18, 2021
James Comey felt compelled to announce the reopening of the Hillary email investigation because it had already been leaked by two agents at the NY FBI office, one of whom we now learn was a Russian agent.
— Duty To Warn (@duty2warn) January 24, 2023
Don’t tell me Putin didn’t steal the 2016 election.
“When the C.I.A. noticed in late 2010 that its spies were disappearing…as fears of a mole grew, the government set up a secret task force….A veteran F.B.I. counterintelligence agent, Charles McGonigal, was assigned to run it,” reported @nytimes in 2018.
— Michael Beschloss (@BeschlossDC) January 23, 2023
Quote by Raine:“When the C.I.A. noticed in late 2010 that its spies were disappearing…as fears of a mole grew, the government set up a secret task force….A veteran F.B.I. counterintelligence agent, Charles McGonigal, was assigned to run it,” reported @nytimes in 2018.
— Michael Beschloss (@BeschlossDC) January 23, 2023
Quote by Will_in_LA:Quote by Raine:“When the C.I.A. noticed in late 2010 that its spies were disappearing…as fears of a mole grew, the government set up a secret task force….A veteran F.B.I. counterintelligence agent, Charles McGonigal, was assigned to run it,” reported @nytimes in 2018.
— Michael Beschloss (@BeschlossDC) January 23, 2023
This story is now even more troubling. than before. The questions must be asked if McGonigal compromised that investigation.
Current and former FBI officials, none of whom were willing or cleared to speak on the record, have described a chaotic internal climate that resulted from outrage over director James Comey’s July decision not to recommend an indictment over Clinton’s maintenance of a private email server on which classified information transited.
“The FBI is Trumpland,” said one current agent.
This atmosphere raises major questions about how Comey and the bureau he is slated to run for the next seven years can work with Clinton should she win the White House.
The currently serving FBI agent said Clinton is “the antichrist personified to a large swath of FBI personnel,” and that “the reason why they’re leaking is they’re pro-Trump.”