by Frank Holmes, reporter
One of Washington’s biggest scandals has turned around on the Democrats in the most humiliating way possible.
Members of the Democratic Party began trying to entrap President Donald Trump in a Russian collusion narrative during the 2016 presidential campaign, and they’ve returned to it periodically ever since.
But Trump just received another form of vindication: The FBI agent in charge of investigating his alleged ties to Moscow has been arrested… for allegedly having ties to Moscow.
His family is also listed in Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop.
Federal agents say Charles McGonigal, who oversaw the FBI’s anti-espionage efforts including Trump’s case, was on the take from a Russian oligarch allied with Vladimir Putin.
The 54-year-old allegedly took $225,000 in bribes from Oleg Deripaska in a multilayered outrage that every side of the issue says proves their version of events.
Let’s unpack the Russian nesting dolls of this scandal.
McGonigal’s role gave him everything a Russian agent could want: intelligence, access to important people, and classified documents.
Deripaska used the money to ask McGonigal to get his name removed from the U.S. sanctions list, according to the indictment.
McGonigal reportedly struck a deal with the Kremlin-tied oligarch that netted the former FBI agent $25,000 a month. He sent the money to a bank account controlled by a former Russian interpreter and diplomat named Sergey Shestakov.
“As alleged, Mr. McGonigal and Mr. Shestakov, both U.S. citizens, acted on behalf of Deripaska,” said FBI Assistant Director in Charge Michael J. Driscoll.
Both men have entered a plea of not guilty to violating the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.
“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 Donald Alway, assistant director in charge of the FBI’s field office in Los Angeles field office.
It didn’t work: Donald Trump enacted even more comprehensive sanctions against Oleg Deripaska and six other Russian oligarchs in April 2018, five months before McGonigal ended his 22-year career with the FBI.
McGonigal is also said to have received hundreds of thousands of dollars from an Albanian figure, which resulted in a separate charge.
The outrage of having the leader of the Trump-Russia investigation under indictment for Russian collusion was too much for Republican critics…especially the 45th president.
Upon hearing the news, Donald J. Trump shared a few choice words in his usual style: “The FBI SleazeBag who was in charge of ‘investigating’ me on RUSSIAGATE was JUST ARRESTED FOR RECIEVING MONEY FROM, get this, RUSSIA!!!” he wrote on Truth Social.
“These are the people I inherited from the corrupt FBI, including Comey and his crooked band of Misfits and Thugs. Now, the ‘Gestapo’ may be even worse, with the RAID on Mar-a-Lago, the Horrible and Unconstitutional treatment of January 6 PATRIOTS, and the lack of action on ANTIFA, BLM, & the rest.”
“Shameful!!!” he concluded. “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN.”
Gee, I wonder if the FBI agent purposely said there was no collusion between you and Russia because he was working for Russia himself.
We’re not stupid. pic.twitter.com/CgHSuZB99Y
— Quadcarl (@quadcarl_carl) January 24, 2023
He wasn’t the only one taken aback by the revelation.
“A former high-level FBI agent involved in the RUSSIA HOAX against Trump has just been charged with conspiring to commit money laundering with a RUSSIAN OLIGARCH! The people investigating Trump have been charged with doing the same thing they accused him of,” said Rep. Ronny Jackson, R-Texas, a former White House physician. “Totally OUTRAGEOUS!”
Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., also couldn’t believe what she read. “The FBI agent who led the phony investigation into President Trump and Russia has been arrested for his own ties to the Kremlin,” she wrote, concluding, “You can’t make this up.”
Liberals have tried to spin the outcome, claiming somehow that this proves Trump was guilty of collusion—a charge Robert Mueller’s lengthy and thorough investigation never substantiated.
Still, MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough said the arrest should disprove “conspiracy theorists” who call the four-year nothingburger investigation the “‘Russian hoax.’ … We know now that there was Russian influence that infiltrated the upper reaches of the FBI in the New York office.”
“If anything, it undermines the FBI’s conclusion that Donald Trump has a clean bill of health,” Scarborough told his audience.
But digging deeper into the situation raises more questions about McGonigal and the Deep State than it does about the billionaire former president.
Oleg Deripaska was a pivotal figure in producing Christopher Steele’s dossier—the phony document with sleazy details of Trump carousing with prostitutes in Moscow.
Both Steele and the man he had write much of the dossier, Igor Danchenko, were paid FBI informants, at the same time McGonigal was top spy hunter.
So, Oleg Deripaska was connected to McGonigal and Steele; and McGonigal hired Steele as an FBI informant at the same time he was working for Deripaska.
There’s a further detail: McGonigal’s family is also listed in Hunter Biden’s “laptop from Hell.”
His wife, Pamela McGonigal, and Hunter Biden both “received at least 29 emails related to the Next Level Lacrosse program” and the sport between October 2014 and May 2015.
Is that coincidence, or another tie between the corrupt spy and the corrupt Biden family?
When reporters asked Attorney General Merrick Garland about the case Monday, he refused to comment.
Stories that tangled take some time to whitewash.
Frank Holmes is a veteran journalist and an outspoken conservative that talks about the news that was in his weekly article, “On The Holmes Front.”