[American Thinker] Charles McGonigal, a retired counterintelligence investigator from the FBI’s New York Field Office, was just arrested because he allegedly took substantial sums of money from Oleg Deripaska, a Russian billionaire, to get the latter off a U.S. sanctions list. Where this goes beyond the ordinary corruption that periodically crops up among people with too much power, too few morals, and too little accountability is that McGonigal was one of the people investigating Trump over the Russia Hoax, while Deripaska employed Christopher Steele, whose false dossier seeded the Russia Hoax.
Anyone who paid attention during the "hot" years of the Russia Hoax recognizes Deripaska’s name. He was a close ally of Vladimir Putin and, in 2018, the U.S. government sanctioned him for his involvement in Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea. Specifically with regard to the Russia Hoax, in 2021, Jerry Dunleavy summarized how closely allied Steele and Deripaska were: |