Former FBI official who played key role in Trump-Russia probe is expected to plead guilty to Russian collusion



A former high-ranking FBI official who investigated former President Donald Trump for now-debunked ties to Moscow in 2016 is expected to plead guilty for some Russian collusion of his own.

Disgraced FBI agent Charles McGonigal, who ran counterintelligence for the bureau's New York field office, played a central role in triggering special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into fraudulent claims that Trump's campaign team colluded with Russia in order to win the 2016 election, reported Newsweek.

McGonigal had been serving as chief of the cybercrimes section of the FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C., when first made aware of allegations that a Trump adviser was boasting about possible Russian dirt on failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

This information reportedly led to the FBI's launch of "Crossfire Hurricane."

While the FBI was looking into the Trump campaign for questionable Slavic connections, one of its own was allegedly working for Oleg Deripaska — a Russian oligarch and aluminum magnate who reportedly has links to Russian President Vladimir Putin and was ultimately sanctioned in 2018 by the U.S. Treasury Department for allegedly interfering in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

McGonigal, arrested in January but subsequently freed on a $500,000 bond, has been accused of doing Deripaska's bidding on multiple occasions and trying to get him taken off the U.S. sanctions list.

According to his indictment, McGonigal agreed to help the daughter of Deripaska's Russian agent get an internship with the New York Police Department "in the fields of counterterrorism, intelligence gathering and 'international liasoning.'"

McGonigal is also accused of probing one of Deripaska's oligarchic rivals in exchange for concealed payments.

The disgraced FBI agent faces four counts: conspiracy to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act; violation of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act; conspiracy to commit money laundering; and money laundering.

The former FBI agent has also been charged in a separate case for allegedly concealing $225,000 received from a former Albanian intelligence employee while still working for the bureau.

While legally required to report his engagements with foreign officials, McGonigal allegedly hid the ties.

The New York Times reported that the revelations about McGonigal's alleged conduct raised concerns about what agency secrets he might have divulged to foreign actors, although the FBI contends there is presently no evidence to suggest he did.

Manhattan federal Judge Jennifer Rearden indicated in a brief order filed Monday, "The court has been informed that defendant Charles McGonigal may wish to enter a change of plea."

The district judge set McGonigal's plea hearing for Aug. 15, where McGonigal may cop to money laundering and evading U.S. sanctions.

Neither the defendant's lawyers nor a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Manhattan responded to Reuters' requests for comment.

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Cable from U.S. counterintelligence officials reportedly notes number of informants killed



Counterintelligence officials in a cable last week warned CIA stations and bases across the globe about the concerning numbers of informants recruited from foreign nations to spy for America who have been captured or killed, individuals familiar with the matter said, according to the New York Times.

The dispatch "said that the C.I.A.'s counterintelligence mission center had looked at dozens of cases in the last several years involving foreign informants who had been killed, arrested or most likely compromised," according to the Times, which also reported that the message noted the exact number of agents slain by rival intelligence agencies.

The cable brought up matters that have bedeviled the CIA in recent years such as poor tradecraft, trusting sources too much, underestimating foreign intelligence agencies, and advancing too fast to recruit informants while failing to devote adequate attention to possible counterintelligence risks, according to the Times.

Among the purposes for the message was to push CIA case officers to consider actions they can make on their own to better manage informants, according to individuals familiar with the document, the Times reported.

"While the memo identified specific numbers of informants that were arrested or killed, it said the number turned against the United States was not fully known," according to the Times.

The message sent to officers across the globe cautioned them to exercise more care in handling human sources, who face the threat of getting captured or slain by other intelligence services, according to individuals familiar with the matter, The Washington Post reported.

"The cable reflected a general concern among the agency's leadership that its operations officers should pay more attention to protecting their agents, while also recognizing that they have to aggressively recruit spies and informants to perform their intelligence-collection mission, according to the people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a sensitive matter," the outlet reported.

The message included the quantity of agents slain by foreign intelligence services, detail which typically may be excluded from a broadly disseminated message like this, but which was included to capture the attention of CIA officers who may have otherwise viewed the dispatch as a routine advisory, individuals familiar with the message said, according to the Post.

"Historic Pakistani success in identifying people working for the CIA was a driving force behind the cable, the people familiar with the matter said," the Post reported.

Individuals familiar with the dispatch noted that it was not spurred by a new penetration of a spy network, according to the Post.