FBI Agent Who Helped with Trump-Russia Probe Begs Judge for Patience After Conspiring with Russian Oligarch
What a joke.
Former FBI official Charles McGonigal found himself begging for more time from a federal judge in Washington over the weekend, The Washington Times reported Monday. He needs that extra time to help orchestrate the best of all positions for himself in a plea deal that should infuriate every Trump supporter, if not every American.
Once a part of the investigation that helped bury former President Donald Trump in false claims of Russia collusion, the now-disgraced McGonigal has his own real Russiagate to contend with.
He, in fact, did what he and his FBI cronies vehemently accused Trump of doing: conspiring with Russian officials.
The pot called the kettle black, and now the pot is asking the federal court for extra time in order to coordinate an optimal plea bargain. I don’t remember Trump receiving such consideration, do you?
Where Trump didn’t violate U.S. sanctions in conspiring with a Russian oligarch, McGonigal did.
The former head of the FBI’s counterintelligence division in New York pleaded guilty to conspiring to launder money and violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act in connection with a 2021 deal to provide services to Oleg Deripaska, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York said in an Aug. 15 news release.
“After his tenure as a high-level FBI official who supervised and participated in investigations of Russian oligarchs, Charles McGonigal has now admitted that he agreed to evade U.S. sanctions by providing services to one of those oligarchs,” U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said in a statement.
Sentencing in that case is scheduled for Dec. 14.
McGonigal, who retired from the bureau in 2018, also faces a nine-count indictment in Washington accusing him of falsifying records and documents.
Originally having pleaded not guilty to the charges, it seems he changed his mind, compelling his legal team and federal prosecutors to go back to the drawing board to begin hashing things out between them.
So deep in the doo-doo has the former FBI official found himself that he filed a motion waiving his right to a speedy trial.
McGonigal did so “to provide parties additional time to negotiate a potential resolution of this case” ahead of a Sept. 21 status conference, the Times reported.
Prosecutors did not object to the request. I wonder what Trump thinks?
The indictment says McGonigal “made false statements to conceal a $225,000 payment from a former member of Albania’s intelligence service and took a secret meeting with Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama while he still worked for the FBI,” the Times reported.
It’s appalling that an FBI official would compromise the United States’ national security by working for the other side and getting richer for it.
Deripaska is a close friend of Russian leader Vladimir Putin, McGonigal didn’t let that get in the way of his decision to betray the American people, it seems.
Part of a scheme to investigate one of the oligarch’s competitors in 2021, he and his partner in crime, Sergey Shestakov, a court interpreter based in New York, accepted monetary dispensation through shell companies they both set up, according to prosecutors.
“McGonigal made at least $25,000 as an investigator for the law firm before directly working for Mr. Deripaska,” the Times reported. “He received an initial payment of $51,000 and then payments of $41,790 each month for three months from August 2021 to November 2021, the indictment said.”
Matthew Olsen, assistant attorney general of the Justice Department’s National Security Division, blasted the former FBI official in a statement last month, saying he “betrayed his oath and actively concealed his illicit work at the bidding of a sanctioned Russian oligarch.”
Such actions by an FBI official would have been called a conspiracy theory in 2017 by Democrats and the media.
In 2023, however, many Americans are not shocked to learn of this kind of behavior from a bureau official. How America’s mighty institutions have fallen.
It is a nightmare for Americans to know our personal and national safety have been placed in the hands of corrupt scoundrels.
And yet despite abusing the public’s trust, McGonigal feels he is owed the right to ask a federal judge for patience.
Words can’t express my disgust.
We need to be harder on our criminals, especially those who compromise our health and welfare at the uppermost levels.
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