One of the FBI’s Trump-Russia hoaxers will plead guilty to colluding with Russia
Hudson Crozier
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The story of the FBI’s dangerously corrupt Trump-Russia “collusion” investigation keeps getting worse. Former FBI agent Charles McGonigal, who was involved in the operation, is looking to plead guilty to one or more charges for illegally working with a Russian oligarch.
Prosecutors determined that McGonigal “acted on behalf of” Oleg Deripaska for profit in 2021 in various ways, including trying to help him get past American sanctions.
CRIMINALS NEED TO BE LOCKED UP
McGonigal was not just any FBI employee. He was chief of the cybercrimes section in Washington, D.C., and later head of counterintelligence in New York. He was also involved in the “Crossfire Hurricane” investigation of Trump at its earliest stage.
McGonigal helped start it with an email floating the allegation that Trump’s 2016 campaign was tied to Russia. This was based on a drunken rant from a campaign adviser containing claims that were later contradicted and debunked. Still, McGonigal was complicit in all the investigative abuses that followed, most notably the illegal wiretapping of another campaign adviser.
As shown by the anti-Trump statements of the people involved and assistance from the Clinton campaign, the operation was politically motivated from the beginning. It had the added effect of influencing public opinion due to the legacy media’s parroting of the collusion narrative. Half of voters believed it by 2017, and that belief persisted throughout Trump’s presidency, polling showed. Deripaska was ironically one of the figures the media used to try to establish Trump-Russia connections.
We have now come full circle. The shock is not just that the FBI wasted time and resources to try to frame a president. It’s that one of the leaders had no problem becoming what Trump was falsely accused of being: a dangerous Russian asset.
People who worked with McGonigal say he learned sensitive national security secrets and worry that he may have endangered national security after leaving the FBI. This has also concerned lawmakers, including a Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee. “The potential here is that he could be one of the most devastating spies in U.S. history,” a former CIA official told Rolling Stone.
There has barely been any accountability for Crossfire Hurricane, certainly not in the case of McGonigal. The most the public has gotten is more confirmation of the sheer absurdity of what happened, adding to the numerous reasons the FBI and Justice Department face a legitimacy crisis.
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Hudson Crozier is a summer 2023 Washington Examiner fellow.