The ex-FBI agent who helped spearhead the Trump-Russia collusion probe is expected to plead guilty to illegally working for a Russian oligarch.
According to federal prosecutors, Charles McGonigal received “concealed payments” from a Russian intelligence officer in exchange for his help in having sanctions targeting Oleg Deripaska, the founder of a Russian aluminum company, lifted. In January, he was indicted on charges including conspiring to violate and evade U.S. sanctions, money laundering, and violating federal law against doing business with sanctioned individuals by helping Deripaska. After pleading not guilty in January, McGonigal was released on $500,000 bond.
As chief of counterintelligence in the bureau’s New York City field office, McGonigal was among the first FBI officials to be filled in on Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos’s conversation with an Australian diplomat in which he revealed Russia had scandalous information regarding Hillary Clinton’s emails.
McGonigal relayed his knowledge of this interaction to the FBI in July 2016. An internal email from McGonigal on the matter served as the impetus for opening a case into alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia interfering in the 2016 election. That investigation, conducted by special counsel Robert Mueller, ultimately failed to produce enough evidence to prove guilt. The probe lasted 22 months and cost $32 million, the New York Post reported.
While employed by the FBI, McGonigal received then-classified information that Deripaska would be designated a Russian oligarch closely affiliated with the Kremlin and sanctioned by the U.S., the indictment alleged. McGonigal was legally obligated to inform the FBI of his contact with foreign officials, which he allegedly violated by continuing communication and pursuing business with Deripaska.
Deripaska, also a close friend of President Vladimir Putin, was reportedly a client of Paul Manafort, an attorney and former Trump presidential campaign consultant. The Russian tycoon had been accused of laundering illicit funds through the European Union member country of Cyprus. According to the investigation, Deripaska arranged for a child of his to be born in the United States in an attempt to bypass the sanctions imposed upon him.
In 2019, after he left the bureau, McGonigal started working in a consultant capacity at a law firm that an agent of Deripaska wanted to hire to get the sanctions against his boss dropped. At Deripaska’s properties in Europe, McGonigal allegedly collaborated with the agent and a court interpreter working for Deripaska to broker an agreement to try to remove the sanctions in exchange for monetary compensation. In correspondence, the men referred to Deripaska cryptically and in code names such as “you know whom,” “the big guy,” and “the client.”
The three were eventually paid, via multiple wire transfers ranging from nearly $42,000 to about $51,000 between August and November 2021 to a New Jersey bank owned by a crony of McGonigal, according to the indictment. In thanks for the payment, the indictment alleged, McGonigal launched an investigation of a rival oligarch to Deripaska, who was not named in court documents, the Post noted.