And when, as a cop, I had to help an FBI Agent as he fucked up a warrant.
The FBI is as fucked up as the Secret Service.

The CIA should investigate US links connected to foreigners. FBI only contacted on outlines.
Inter US Investigation.

Ever since FBI (Federal Bureau of INVESTIGATIONS) were told by J. Edgar Hoover they could
carry gun, did these guys think they were something other than Lawyers and Accountants.
Leave the Intelligence work to the Intelligent CIA. (Central INTELLIGENCE Agency).

_______________________

THE NEW YORK TIMES

Former senior FBI official accused of working for Russian he investigated

Charles McGonigal, a former counterintelligence chief,
is charged with money laundering and other counts
connected to oligarch Oleg Deripaska

NEW YORK — The former head of FBI counterintelligence in New York has been charged in two separate indictments that accuse him of taking secret cash payments of more than $225,000 while overseeing highly sensitive cases, and allegedly breaking the law
by trying to get Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska removed from a U.S. sanctions list, officials said Monday.

Charles McGonigal, 54, who retired from the FBI in September 2018, was indicted in federal court in Manhattan on money laundering, violating U.S. sanctions and other charges in connection to his alleged ties to Deripaska, an ally of Russian President
Vladimir Putin. In his role at the FBI, McGonigal had been tasked with investigating Deripaska, whose own indictment on sanctions-violation charges was unsealed in September.

Separately, McGonigal was accused in a nine-count indictment in federal court in Washington of hiding his receipt of $225,000 from a former Albanian intelligence agent living in New Jersey. McGonigal was also accused of hiding foreign travel and contacts
with senior leaders in countries including Albania, Kosovo and Bosnia where the former Albanian agent had business interests.

McGonigal’s alleged involvement with Deripaska may impact a significant push by the Justice Department to hit wealthy Russians with economic sanctions for conducting business in the United States, an effort that accelerated last year with Putin’s
invasion of Ukraine.

The twin indictments are also a black eye for the FBI, alleging that one of its most senior and trusted intelligence officials was taking secret cash payments and undermining the bureau’s overall intelligence-gathering mission.

Through his lawyer, McGonigal pleaded not guilty at a brief court appearance Monday. The lawyer, Seth DuCharme, told journalists that his client "served the United States for decades in positions of public trust and leadership, so this is a distressing
day for him, but we’re going to litigate the case in the courtroom.”

Prosecutors alleged that from at least August 2017 and beyond his retirement from the FBI, McGonigal failed to disclose to the FBI his relationship with the former Albanian security official, described as “Person A” in charging papers. He also
allegedly failed to disclose that he had an “ongoing relationship with the Prime Minister of Albania,” the indictment said. Since 2013, Edi Rama has served as the prime minister of that country.

In late 2017, authorities charge, McGonigal received packages of cash totaling $225,000 from Person A — the first time, in a parked car outside a New York City restaurant, the next two times at the person’s New Jersey home. According to the
indictment, McGonigal “indicated to Person A that the money would be paid back.”

Months later, at McGonigal’s urging, the FBI opened an investigation into an American lobbyist for an Albanian political party that is a rival of Prime Minister Rama, an investigation that used Person A as a source of information, authorities said.

That was not the only instance in which the indictments suggest McGonigal used his job for the benefit of people with whom he had undisclosed financial or personal relationships.

On a 2017 trip to Austria, McGonigal and a Justice Department prosecutor interviewed an Albanian businessperson and politician who had previously told McGonigal that they wanted someone to investigate a death threat against them, according to the
indictment in Washington. McGonigal had been introduced to that individual by “Person A," the indictment charges.

The following year, McGonigal allegedly asked the FBI’s liaison to the United Nations to arrange a meeting with the then-U.S. ambassador, Nikki Haley, or another high ranking official, as well as a former Bosnian defense minister and founder of a
Bosnian pharmaceutical company.

The indictment says McGonigal’s associates sought that meeting for political reasons that would have benefited Person A financially. At the time, McGonigal allegedly suggested the pharmaceutical company pay, as a fee for arranging the meeting, half a
million dollars to a company registered to Person A, the indictment charges.

Current and former U.S. officials who know and have worked with McGonigal said they were shocked by the indictments. As a senior FBI counterintelligence official, McGonigal had access to an extraordinary amount of sensitive information, potentially
including investigations of foreign spies or U.S. citizens suspected of working on behalf of foreign governments, these people said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the work McGonigal did. One former official said
that McGonigal had worked with the CIA on counterintelligence matters.

According to the New York indictment, a law firm retained McGonigal to work as a consultant and investigator on the effort to get Deripaska removed from the sanctions list. He was listed as a consultant and arranged for $25,000 monthly payments to be
sent to an account controlled by another person, a government interpreter who was a former Russian diplomat. The interpreter, Sergey Shestakov, was also charged.

McGonigal’s FBI role gave him access to classified information including a then-secret list of Russian prospects for sanctioning by the Office of Foreign Assets Control, the Justice Department said. That list included Deripaska before the sanctions
were actually imposed.

Manhattan U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said in a statement that McGonigal and Shestakov “should have known better” given their experience in government service. Both defendants were expected to appear in federal court in New York Monday afternoon.

U.S. Attorney Matthew M. Graves of D.C. called the alleged coverup of foreign contacts and financial relationships a “gateway to corruption” and credited the FBI with its handling of the “delicate and difficult” investigation of a former senior
assistant director.

“McGonigal is alleged to have committed the very violations he swore to investigate while he purported to lead a workforce of FBI employees who spend their careers protecting secrets and holding foreign adversaries accountable,” said FBI Los Angeles
Field Office Director Donald Alway, who announced the charges along with Graves and the leaders of the Washington FBI and Justice Department National Security Division.

McGonigal faces a statutory maximum sentence of 20 years in prison on the two D.C. counts of falsification of records and documents, and up to five years in prison for each of seven counts of concealing material facts or making false statements. The most
serious charge in the New York indictment also carries a maximum possible sentence of 20 years in prison.

McGonigal joined the FBI in 1996, working in New York, Washington, Baltimore and Cleveland. Along the way, he was involved in some of the most sensitive and high-profile intelligence cases in the U.S. government, including the conviction of former
National Security Adviser Samuel Berger for knowingly removing classified documents from the National Archives. In 2010, he was tapped to lead the task force probing the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks.

The charges against McGonigal alarmed his former colleagues in part because of his depth of knowledge of so many elements of U.S. espionage. McGonigal was an expert on Russian intelligence activities targeting the United States, as well as U.S. efforts
to recruit Russian spies, said several former intelligence officials who worked with him and spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive matters.

His position at the New York field office would have given him direct access to past and current recruitment efforts, work that was coordinated with the CIA, these people said. McGonigal was well known at the CIA among officers that dealt with Russia and
counterintelligence matters, and he knew the details of some intelligence operations targeting Russia, former officials said.

McGonigal has not been charged with espionage, but the former officials who worked with him said his knowledge and experience would have put him at high risk of being recruited by a foreign government.

One former official noted that McGonigal was in charge of an investigation into why numerous individuals in China who were spying for the United States were arrested and taken out of commission. As part of that investigation, McGonigal would have known
details about the covert systems that the CIA used to communicate with its agents, and that is believed to have played a central role in exposing the agents to government authorities, the former official said.

Deripaska has been a focus of FBI investigative work for many years. In 2021, FBI agents searched two homes linked to him, one in Washington and the other in New York. At the time, a spokeswoman for the aluminum tycoon said the properties were owned by
his relatives.

A politically connected billionaire whose name came up repeatedly in recent U.S. investigations involving Russia and the 2016 presidential campaign of Donald Trump, Deripaska did business for years with Paul Manafort, whose tenure as Trump’s campaign
chairman became an intense focus of FBI investigations.

Manafort and Deripaska have both confirmed they had a business relationship in which Manafort was paid as an investment consultant. In 2014, Deripaska accused Manafort in a Cayman Islands court of taking nearly $19 million intended for investments
without accounting for how it was used.
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