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.
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