Part of our core mission? Exposing the Left's blatant hypocrisy. Help us continue the fight and support the 2024 Year-End Campaign now.

January 24, 2023

FBI Russia Hoaxer Arrested for Russian Graft

Charles McGonigal was the one colluding with Russia, not Donald Trump, whom he was investigating.

Call out if you had “FBI agent colludes with Russia” on your BINGO card.

Charles McGonigal isn’t a household name, but maybe he should be. The former FBI section chief was instrumental in launching Crossfire Hurricane, the FBI probe into whether candidate Donald Trump colluded with Russia to win the 2016 election. Naturally, the one who actually colluded with Russia was McGonigal.

On Monday, the Justice Department announced that McGonigal has been charged with “violating and conspiring to violate” U.S. sanctions on Russia, as well as “conspiring to commit money laundering and money laundering.” Essentially, McGonigal and Sergey Shestakov, “a former Soviet and Russian diplomat” who’s now a U.S. citizen and interpreter for federal courts, provided rather lucrative “services to Oleg Deripaska, a sanctioned Russian oligarch” and used a shell company to hide it. The services: Trying to get Deripaska removed from the sanctions list.

That’s an odd thing to do for an FBI agent tasked with investigating corrupt Russian oligarchs. Especially an FBI agent who was investigating a presidential candidate for colluding with Russia based on Hillary Clinton’s concocted “intelligence.”

Indeed, McGonigal wasn’t one of the many lower-level FBI agents who perform their jobs with integrity every day. He was the special agent in charge of the Counterintelligence Division of the FBI’s New York Field Office, and he made important decisions regarding investigations and targets. Worse, he was specifically working for the very guy — Deripaska — who was also employing the services of Christopher Steele, the author of the phony dossier on Trump upon which Crossfire Hurricane was largely based.

Also in that orb? Retired Justice Department official Bruce Ohr, the Russia hoax player whose wife worked for Fusion GPS, the outfit that helped launder the money from Clinton’s campaign to Steele. Ohr tried to get the FBI to work with Deripaska based on Steele’s “intel.”

Oh what a tangled web.

FBI Director Christopher Wray tried mightily to untangle that web. “The way we maintain the trust and confidence of the American people is through our work — showing, when all the facts come out, that we stuck to the process and we treated everyone equally, even when it is one of our own,” Wray said. “We hold ourselves to the highest standard, and our focus will remain on our mission and on doing the right thing, in the right way, every time.”

We and many other advocates of Rule of Law would be glad to believe him, except we know all too well how that statement flies in the face of reality given the FBI’s involvement in the Russian collusion delusion conjured up against Trump. That abject hypocrisy should be the focus of the coverage of McGonigal’s arrest and prosecution.

Trust the FBI? That ship has sailed.

Also note again that this drama comes on the heels of the disparity in how the cases of mishandling classified material have been handled. Hillary Clinton was both “investigated” and somehow absolved by the FBI. That same FBI waged a multiyear war against Donald Trump, leading to his Secret Service-protected home being raided last fall. Joe Biden, by contrast, benefited from FBI interference in the 2020 election to hide his corruption, and since then he’s managed to dodge the FBI over his own classified docs scandal.

The two-tiered justice and deep corruption within the FBI is mind-boggling, and it’s also the clear intent of many players in what we’ve come to know as the deep state. McGonigal seems to have been one of those bad actors, and we hope justice is served.

Who We Are

The Patriot Post is a highly acclaimed weekday digest of news analysis, policy and opinion written from the heartland — as opposed to the MSM’s ubiquitous Beltway echo chambers — for grassroots leaders nationwide. More

What We Offer

On the Web

We provide solid conservative perspective on the most important issues, including analysis, opinion columns, headline summaries, memes, cartoons and much more.

Via Email

Choose our full-length Digest or our quick-reading Snapshot for a summary of important news. We also offer Cartoons & Memes on Monday and Alexander’s column on Wednesday.

Our Mission

The Patriot Post is steadfast in our mission to extend the endowment of Liberty to the next generation by advocating for individual rights and responsibilities, supporting the restoration of constitutional limits on government and the judiciary, and promoting free enterprise, national defense and traditional American values. We are a rock-solid conservative touchstone for the expanding ranks of grassroots Americans Patriots from all walks of life. Our mission and operation budgets are not financed by any political or special interest groups, and to protect our editorial integrity, we accept no advertising. We are sustained solely by you. Please support The Patriot Fund today!


The Patriot Post and Patriot Foundation Trust, in keeping with our Military Mission of Service to our uniformed service members and veterans, are proud to support and promote the National Medal of Honor Heritage Center, the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, both the Honoring the Sacrifice and Warrior Freedom Service Dogs aiding wounded veterans, the National Veterans Entrepreneurship Program, the Folds of Honor outreach, and Officer Christian Fellowship, the Air University Foundation, and Naval War College Foundation, and the Naval Aviation Museum Foundation. "Greater love has no one than this, to lay down one's life for his friends." (John 15:13)

★ PUBLIUS ★

“Our cause is noble; it is the cause of mankind!” —George Washington

Please join us in prayer for our nation — that righteous leaders would rise and prevail and we would be united as Americans. Pray also for the protection of our Military Patriots, Veterans, First Responders, and their families. Please lift up your Patriot team and our mission to support and defend our Republic's Founding Principle of Liberty, that the fires of freedom would be ignited in the hearts and minds of our countrymen.

The Patriot Post is protected speech, as enumerated in the First Amendment and enforced by the Second Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America, in accordance with the endowed and unalienable Rights of All Mankind.

Copyright © 2024 The Patriot Post. All Rights Reserved.

The Patriot Post does not support Internet Explorer. We recommend installing the latest version of Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, or Google Chrome.