As the piece says, Charles McGonigal, former counterintelligence head in the New York City office of the FBI, is now being investigated for his own ties to Oleg Deripaska, one of Putin’s favorite industrialists. This story has many, many ramifications.
First a bit of background: back in 2019 Deripaska made a deal with Addison (his real name) McConnell to lift sanctions in exchange for building an aluminum mill in Kentucky. At the time skeptics figured this boost to McConnell’s fortunes would last until a few months after the 2020 election, and indeed in early 2021 financing for the mill “unexpectedly” fell through. Imagine that.
Second, the NYC office of the FBI was notably lax in investigating trump’s many cons and ties to Russia. Later Michael Sussman, who brought news of questionable ties between a Russian bank and the trump campaign, was himself persecuted by William Barr’s hatchet man, John Durham — whose work went nowhere. Now we might understand why the New York office took it easy: the chief investigator could himself have been in the tank for trump’s handlers.
Third, we also know the New York FBI office hated Hillary Clinton. We know they leaked an ongoing investigation into Anthony Weiner’s laptop to Rudy Giuliani, we know they leaked to Devin Nunes, and we know they were aware the leaks could affect the election. One might speculate the hatred could have been ginned up by a rogue agent in the office, perhaps someone beholden to a foreign power which saw an advantage in having their creature in the White House.
In other words, with today’s news it is entirely possible that senior FBI agent Charles McGonigal, in a breathtaking act of treachery which makes Robert Hanssen’s twenty years of spying for the KGB look like small potatoes, knowingly helped Russia elect donald trump.