On report of FBI agent's arrest for working for oligarch Deripaska, Fox News does better than ABC.

[pnwmom]

Last edited Mon Jan 23, 2023, 03:55 PM - Edit history (1)

Retired top FBI counterintelligence agent who led Trump-Russia probe arrested for own ties to Russian oligarch


In fact, ABC left this key point out of its whole report: that Deripaska had been linked to Trump. And ABC also left out that McGonical was leading the probe on the Russian "dirt" on Hillary Clinton.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/retired-top-fbi-counterintelligence-agent-led-trump-russia-probe-arrested-own-ties-russian-oligarch

A former senior FBI counterintelligence official who spearheaded the Trump-Russia probe was arrested and charged over his own alleged ties to a sanctioned Russian oligarch amid the war in Ukraine.

Charles McGonigal, the former Special Agent in Charge of FBI’s Counterintelligence Division in New York, who retired in 2018, is accused of violating U.S. sanctions by agreeing to provide services to Oleg Deripaska, a sanctioned Russian oligarch. He is charged alongside Sergey Shestakov, a former Soviet and Russian diplomat who later became a U.S. citizen and a Russian interpreter for courts and government offices, through a five-count indictment unsealed in Manhattan federal court Monday.

Though not referenced in or related to the indictment, McGonigal, while serving as chief of the cybercrimes section at FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C., was one of the first bureau officials to learn of allegations George Papadopoulos, a campaign adviser for Donald Trump, boasted that he knew Russians had dirt on Hillary Clinton, launching the investigation into alleged Russian election interference known as Operation Crossfire Hurricane.

Link to tweet

BREAKING: Charles McGonigal, the Former counterintelligence head in the FBI’s NY office was arrested for violating RUSSIAN Sanctions, by agreeing to provide services to Oleg Deripaska.

Note: Deripaska was invovled in the Trump Campaign's transfer of polling data to Russia.


https://nypost.com/2023/01/23/ex-fbi-official-busted-by-feds-for-helping-russian-oligarch-evade-sanctions/

McGonigal, who also served as the cyber-counterintelligence section chief in Washington, was one of the first FBI agents to learn that a Trump campaign official claimed that the Russians had “dirt” on ​then-Democratic presidential candidate ​Hillary Clinton​, which triggered the investigation that continued into Donald Trump’s presidency.​

Deripaska, who has close ties to Russia President Vladimir Putin, played a crucial role in the probe and was hit with more sanctions for meddling in the 2016 election.

[leftieNanner]

1. I don't think Deripaska was arrested (unfortunately)

It was an FBI agent connected to Deripaska.

Interesting article. But your title is confusing.

[pnwmom]

2. You're right, thank you. But it wasn't just any agent--it was the top FBI counter intelligence agent

in the NY office, who was leading the Deripaska investigation.

[leftieNanner]

3. Astounding!

There has been discussion about the deep rot in the New York FBI office.

It goes all the way to the top, I guess.

[Hortensis]

4. Here's NYT's: Former Top F.B.I. Official in New York Charged With Aiding Oligarch

Prosecutors say Charles McGonigal, who was chief of counterintelligence in the city, worked secretly for Oleg Deripaska to investigate a Russian rival.

Federal prosecutors said Mr. McGonigal, 54, broke U.S. law by agreeing to help Mr. Deripaska, who himself was indicted last year on sanctions charges, attempt to get off the sanctions list and by investigating a rival oligarch. The charges are an extremely serious and rare accusation against an F.B.I. official, and they demonstrate that the reach of Russia’s oligarchs can extend into the heart of American law enforcement.

“This is an unprecedented case, which rightly or wrongly will fuel political criticism and concern about the F.B.I.,” said Jonathan C. Poling, a former prosecutor in the Justice Department’s national security division. “The charges demonstrate D.O.J. clearly intends to send a strong message, including to former officials that worked in national security fields.”

No mention up front of McGonigal's involvement in the tRump-Russia investigation. I'm happy to have this guy and the other arrested. Here's the Washington Free Beacon's headline:

Plot Twist: Ex-FBI Agent Involved in Trump-Russia Probe Indicted For Violating Russia Sanctions

[pnwmom]

6. The rightwing think that somehow this is a win for them, when it is the exact opposite.

The fact that the FBI intel head investigating Deripaska was corrupted by Deripaska doesn't let Trump off the hook -- as some of them seem to think. (I've been reading Twitter.)

[Hortensis]

8. Right. McGonigal was head of NY counterintelligence before

and during the 2016 campaign, election, post-election period through 2017 to his resignation in 2018 during the tRump period. The NYT's only mention so far of tRump is Derepaska's connection to Manafort.

On this topic I'm assuming the NYT's interests and entanglements are RW, as was their coverage bias.

Mr. Deripaska, an aluminum magnate with ties to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, was a client of Paul Manafort, who for several months in 2016 served as Donald J. Trump’s campaign chairman and in 2018 was convicted of financial fraud and other crimes.

Given McGonigal’s ties to the Washington and New York area offices of the FBI, the Los Angeles field office led the two-year-long investigation, three senior law enforcement officials said. The decision to move the probe to Los Angeles was to ensure there were no conflicts of interest or competing interests among agents who may have known McGonigal. ...

McGonigal’s career included a stop as a section chief coordinating the FBI’s cyber and counterintelligence programs at the FBI’s secretive Intelligence Technology and Data Division (ITADD) in Chantilly, Virginia, as well as his position in New York, public records show.

McGonigal was named special agent in charge of the Counterintelligence Division for the New York Field Office in 2016, after serving as the section chief of the Cyber-Counterintelligence Coordination Section at FBI headquarters.

McGonigal joined the FBI in 1996, and was first assigned to the New York Field Office, where he worked on Russian foreign counterintelligence and organized crime.

[dem4decades]

5. I'm curious what Frank Figilazzi has to say about this.

[Boomerproud]

7. When he go to trial-2150?

My sense of hopelessness should have started a long time ago. No justice. No truth.

[Warpy]

9. Oleg Deripaska is one of Yeltsin's oligarchs

who managed to flee to the west when Putin pushed Yeltsin out and derailed the gravy train to most of Yeltsin's pals. Deripaska grabbed the USSR's minerals and mining, among other things. He was stripped of much of it but had managed to stash a few billions outside Mother Russia. In 2017, he bribed his way into citizenship in Cyprus.

He's got a lot of tentacles reaching into US government, this FBI guy is small potatoes. He's a major sugar daddy to McConnell, or was.

In more skulduggery, he was fairly consistently denied a visa to the US, officials knowing he's no good and would likely start to launder money here through real estate, the easiest way to do it. Russia kissed and made up in 2021, giving him diplomatic status, meaning he can enter here any time he wants with total immunity, able to play financial games.

He's a bad guy. I hope somebody is watching him very, very closely. I also hope this FBI agent sings like a little birdie, but I imagine fear will keep him silent.

[SleeplessinSoCal]

10. "Trump campaign transferred polling data to Russia"

Let that sink and and fathom how they didn't "collude" .

[SheltieLover]

11. I hope he takes Blackburn down!

[Kid Berwyn]

12. ABC and William Casey

Disinformation is a big part of how we got to the Great Divide o’ Today:

ABC and the rise of Rush Limbaugh

The following brief history of ABC offers a perfect snapshot of everything that has gone wrong with the media. This remarkable story includes ABC's takeover by a conservative parent corporation, the demise of the Fairness Doctrine, the rightward shift of the evening news, the rise of conservative talk radio, and the cozy relationship between a state and a press that are supposed to be separate.

In 1985, ABC was taken over by Capital Cities, a conservative, Roman Catholic media organization with extensive ties to the CIA.

(If you think we're making this up, you should know that the Capital Cities takeover of ABC is one of the most analyzed in history, and the subject of many books by Wall Street experts and scholars. Especially recommended is Networks of Power, by Emmy Award-winner Dennis Mazzocco.) (1)

Capital Cities was born in 1954, and rapidly prospered. Many of its founders had previously worked in the U.S. intelligence community and had a great amount of wealth, social contacts and influence in government. Yet they opted to keep the company's actions out of the public eye -- they did not flaunt their wealth with private planes and lavish offices the way so many successful companies do. Just exactly how well-connected Capital Cities was to the CIA is unknown, but it is clear that the CIA concerned itself with the company at various times. The fact that the CIA has often used private businessmen, journalists and even entire companies as fronts for covert operations is not only well-known by historians, but legendary. (Recall Howard Hughes and Trans-World Airlines...)

One of Capital City's early founders was William Casey, who would later become Ronald Reagan's Director of the CIA. At the time of Casey's nomination, the press expressed surprise that Reagan would hire a businessman whose last-known intelligence experience was limited to OSS operations in World War II. The fact is, however, that Casey had never left intelligence. Throughout the Cold War he kept a foot in both worlds, in private business as well as the CIA. A history of Casey's business dealings reveals that he was an aggressive player who saw nothing wrong with bending the law to further his own conservative agenda. When he became implicated as a central figure in the Iran-Contra scandal, many Washington insiders considered it a predictable continuation of a very shady career.

Another Capital Cities founder, Lowell Thomas, was a close friend and business contact with Allen Dulles, Eisenhower's CIA Director, and John Dulles, the Secretary of State. Thomas always denied being a spy, but he was frequently seen at events involving intelligence operations. Another founder was Thomas Dewey, whom the CIA had given millions to create other front companies for covert operations.

Capital Cities prospered from the start; its specialty was to buy media organizations that were in trouble. Upon acquisition, it would improve management and eliminate waste until the company started turning a profit. This no-nonsense, no-frills approach, as well as its refusal to become side-tracked with other ventures, made it one of the most successful media conglomerates of the 60s and 70s. Of course, the journalistic slant of its companies was decidedly conservative and anticommunist. To anyone who believes that the government should not control the press, the possibility that the CIA created a media company to dispense conservative and Cold War propaganda should be alarming. Rush Limbaugh himself calls freedom of the press "the sweetest -- and most American -- words you will ever find." (2) Apparently, he is unaware of the history of his own employers.

By the 1980s, Capital Cities had grown powerful enough that it was now poised to hunt truly big game: a major television network. A vulnerable target appeared in the form of ABC, whose poor management in the early 80s was driving both its profits and stocks into oblivion. Back then, ABC's journalistic slant was indeed liberal; its criticism of the Reagan Administration had drawn the wrath of conservatives everywhere, from Wall Street to Washington. This was in marked contrast to the rest of the White House press corps, which was, in Bagdikian's words, "stunningly uncritical" of Reagan. Behind the scenes, Reagan was deregulating the FCC and eliminating anti-monopoly laws for the media, a fact the media appreciated and rewarded. The only exception was ABC. Sam Donaldson's penetrating questions during press conferences were so embarrassing to Reagan that his handlers scheduled the fewest Presidential press conferences in modern history.

CONTINUED...

http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-libmedia.htm

Thus today Flush’s followers don’t read much or know much, but they sure do three things they’re told: Fear Change and the Other, Hate Democrats and Liberals; and Vote for the GZP.

[NBachers]

13. OK- we at at DU knew all about the New York FBI Traitor Nest, but the FBI home office was completely

clueless, right? That’s been the line all along, hasn’t it?