Ex-F.B.I. Official in Talks to Resolve Charges of Working for Oligarch - posted at 13:03:51 UTC via nytimes.com
Ex-F.B.I. Official in Talks to Resolve Charges of Working for Oligarch
Once the F.B.I.’s top counterintelligence official in New York City, Charles F. McGonigal was charged with concealing contacts with foreign nationals.
A former senior F.B.I. official is in talks to resolve criminal charges in two separate indictments, including entering a possible guilty plea as early as next week in a case involving accusations that he worked for a Russian oligarch, according to a public filing and statements by his lawyer in court.
Charles F. McGonigal, who retired in 2018 as the counterintelligence chief in the F.B.I.’s New York field office, one of the agency’s most sensitive posts, has been accused by federal prosecutors in New York of violating U.S. sanctions, money laundering and conspiracy in connection with Oleg Deripaska, an oligarch once seen as close to Russian President Vladimir V. Putin.
Mr. McGonigal was also charged by federal prosecutors in Washington with concealing his relationship with a businessman who paid him $225,000, as well misleading the F.B.I. about his contacts with foreign nationals and foreign travel, creating a conflict of interest with his official duties.
Mr. McGonigal pleaded not guilty to both indictments. But on Monday, the district judge overseeing his New York case, Jennifer H. Rearden, set a plea hearing for Aug. 15, saying that she had been informed that Mr. McGonigal “may wish to enter a change of plea.”
At a hearing in the Washington case on Friday, Mr. McGonigal’s lawyer, Seth D. DuCharme, told the federal judge there, Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, that discussions about resolving the charges were ongoing and that he hoped to update her by the next scheduled hearing in September.
Although some of the current charges carry up to 20 years in prison, a judge could also impose a far lighter sentence.
Mr. DuCharme declined to comment on either case. Spokespeople for the U.S. attorney’s offices in New York and Washington also declined to comment.
Judge Rearden’s order in New York and the discussions in Washington were reported earlier by CNN. Mr. McGonigal’s co-defendant in the New York case, Sergey Shestakov, has also pleaded not guilty to sanctions violations and money laundering in connection with Mr. Deripaska, as well as making false statements to the F.B.I. (Mr. McGonigal does not face that last charge.) There has been no public indication that Mr. Shestakov is about to change his plea; his lawyer did not respond to a request for comment.
The arrest in January of Mr. McGonigal, 55, reverberated through the F.B.I., shocking colleagues who had worked with him over his 22-year career on some of the bureau’s most sensitive cases, including an investigation into the information breach that led to the disappearance, imprisonment or execution of C.I.A. informants in China.
The accusations also raised questions about what agency secrets Mr. McGonigal might have compromised. But a more than three-year F.B.I. investigation produced no evidence that he had done so, according to U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter. That a plea agreement may be reached relatively quickly also suggests that Mr. McGonigal’s former colleagues at the F.B.I., and Justice Department prosecutors, have concluded his behavior stopped at corruption and did not extend to espionage.
The New York indictment accused Mr. McGonigal and Mr. Shestakov of working for Mr. Deripaska, a wealthy Russian metals magnate. Mr. Shestakov, 69, is a former Soviet and Russian diplomat who lived in the U.S. and worked after his retirement as an interpreter in U.S. courts in New York.
Federal prosecutors suggested that while still at the F.B.I., Mr. McGonigal attempted to build a relationship with an aide to Mr. Deripaska by arranging for the aide’s daughter to do an internship with the New York City Police Department. (A senior police official told The New York Times that the woman was given a “V.I.P.-type” tour over several days that included spending time with specialized Police Department units, including the harbor patrol and mounted units, but it was not an internship.)
In April 2018, Mr. Deripaska was placed on a sanctions list by the U.S. State Department, which cited his connections to the Kremlin and Russia’s interference in the presidential election of 2016. Mr. McGonigal reviewed the proposed list of people to be sanctioned, including Mr. Deripaska, before it was finalized, prosecutors said.
In 2019, after Mr. McGonigal’s retirement, he and Mr. Shestakov connected Mr. Deripaska to a law firm for aid in getting the sanctions lifted, federal prosecutors in New York said. Mr. McGonigal met with Mr. Deripaska and others in London and Vienna and was paid $25,000 a month through the law firm as a consultant and an investigator until about March 2020, the indictment says.
Then, in the spring of 2021, Mr. McGonigal and Mr. Shestakov negotiated an agreement with Mr. Deripaska’s aide to investigate a rival oligarch, for which they were paid more than $200,000, according to the indictment. The criminal charges in the indictment appear to relate primarily to this arrangement, which ended, prosecutors said, when the men’s devices were seized by the F.B.I. in November 2021.
Adam Goldman and William K. Rashbaum contributed reporting. Susan C. Beachy contributed research.
Michael Rothfeld is an investigative reporter on the Metro desk and co-author of the book “The Fixers.” He was part of a team at The Wall Street Journal that won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for national reporting for stories about hush money deals made on behalf of Donald Trump and a federal investigation of the president's personal lawyer. More about Michael Rothfeld
A former FBI official with ties to the investigation into Russia's alleged links to Donald Trump's 2016 election campaign has been charged with providing services to a sanctioned Russian oligarch.
Charles McGonigal, 54, the former head of counterintelligence for the FBI's New York office, is accused of secretly working with Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska, including attempting to have him removed from the U.S. sanctions list in 2019.
McGonigal, along with Sergey Shestakov, a former Soviet and Russian diplomat who later became a U.S. citizen and a Russian interpreter for courts and government offices, has also been charged with allegedly being paid by Deripaska to investigate a rival oligarch, and then attempting to conceal the payments.
During his time in the FBI, McGonigal participated in investigations of Russian oligarchs, including Deripaska.
He was also one of the key figures who helped trigger special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into allegations that Trump's campaign team colluded with Russia to help the former president win the 2016 election.
McGonigal, while serving as chief of the cybercrimes section at the FBI headquarters in Washington, DC, was among the first FBI officials to be made aware of allegations that George Papadopoulos, a 2016 campaign adviser for Trump, boasted that he knew Russians had political dirt on Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton.
This information led to the FBI launching "Crossfire Hurricane," which would examine whether Trump officials had been coordinating "wittingly or unwittingly" with Russia's attempts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.
In September 2020, FBI Deputy Assistant Director Jonathan Moffa said, during Senate Judiciary Committee questioning, he received an email in July 2016 from McGonigal about Papadopoulos that "contained essentially that reporting, which then served as the basis for the opening of the case."
In 2017, the FBI's work was taken over by special counsel Robert Mueller as part of his expansive probe into the Trump campaign's ties with Russia amid the 2016 election.
In 2019, the Mueller Report determined there is no evidence that the Trump campaign criminally worked with Russia to help interfere in the election, but detailed several examples of the former president allegedly attempting to obstruct the investigation.
A number of Trump's inner circle were also convicted as a result of the Mueller Report.
Papadopoulos was jailed for 12 days in 2018 after admitting lying to the FBI about his contact with a professor who allegedly claimed to have dirt on Clinton in 2016.
Deripaska was also a client of Paul Manafort, Trump's former campaign manager who was jailed in 2019 for tax and bank fraud charges in a case that stemmed from Mueller's probe.
In a post on Truth Social after the Department of Justice announced the charges against McGonigal, Trump said: "The FBI guy after me for the Russia, Russia, Russia HOAX, long before my Election as President, was just arrested for taking money from Russia, Russia, Russia. May he Rot In Hell!"
McGonigal and Shestakov have both been charged with one count of conspiring to violate and evade U.S. sanctions, in violation of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, one count of violating the IEEPA, one count of conspiring to commit money laundering, and one count of money laundering. Shestakov is also charged with an additional one count of making false statements.
"As alleged, Charles McGonigal, a former high-level FBI official, and Sergey Shestakov, a Court interpreter, violated U.S. sanctions by agreeing to provide services to Oleg Deripaska, a sanctioned Russian oligarch," U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said in a statement.
"They both previously worked with Deripaska to attempt to have his sanctions removed, and, as public servants, they should have known better."
Both men pleaded not guilty to the charges during court appearances in New York on Monday.
The former president’s political orbit, including the super PAC that backs him, is already spending more than it is taking in — an unusual trajectory this far out from an election.
By Shane Goldmacher and Maggie Haberman
Donald J. Trump’s legal problems aren’t just piling up — his legal bills are, too.
New financial reports show that the former president’s various political committees and the super PAC backing him have used roughly 30 cents of every dollar spent so far this year on legal-related costs. The total amounts to more than $27 million in legal fees and other investigation-related bills in the first six months of 2023, according to a New York Times analysis of federal records.
That $27 million in legal costs includes Mr. Trump paying at least eight law firms more than $1 million each in the first half of 2023, part of a sizable set of legal billings expected to spiral upward in the coming months as his overlapping criminal cases wind their way toward courtrooms in New York, Florida and Washington, D.C.
The new disclosures revealed the remarkable degree to which Mr. Trump’s political and legal cash are intermingled, much like his own political and legal fate.
Mr. Trump’s complex political orbit is already spending more than it is taking in, and tapping into money it raised years ago — an unusual trajectory this far out from an election. And the burn rate raises questions about whether such an approach is untenable, or whether Mr. Trump will eventually need to dip into his own fortune to pay for his lawyers, his 2024 campaign or both.
It is a step that the famously tightfisted Mr. Trump has resisted taking, even as his advisers have begun planning behind the scenes for a potential political cash crunch months before the primaries begin.
Mr. Trump is not known for long-term planning, so it remains unclear how much he has focused on the intricate challenges of financing his campaign in the coming months. Some close to him say they are reassured by the fact that if he becomes the presidential nominee again, he can rely on the Republican Party to provide financial support.
“President Trump continues to be the campaign fund-raising leader due to the support from voters who recognize this as an illegal witch-hunt,” said Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Mr. Trump, in a statement. “As President Trump has said, he will spend whatever it takes to defeat the Deep State and Crooked Joe Biden.”
All told, the political committees that Mr. Trump directly controls, along with the independently operated super PAC devoted exclusively to helping him, are spending more than they raised so far in 2023 — largely because of his legal expenditures, the filings show.
Those entities brought in $67.2 million in new donations in the first half of the year and spent about $90 million in the same period. Most of the money that went to legal fees did not come from new donations, the records show. Save America, the PAC doing the bulk of the legal spending, raised much of its funds in the aftermath of the 2020 election and plunged $16 million into legal expenses in 2022. It’s nearly been bled dry.
“This is going to be an incredibly expensive proposition,” said Ben Brafman, a prominent criminal defense lawyer who is not involved in Mr. Trump’s cases. Of Mr. Trump’s three indictments, he added, “Not only is he now dealing with three separate jurisdictions, and nobody really knows which case is going to come first, but they all need to be investigated, researched and prepared at the same time by his attorneys.”
Data is for Jan. 1 through June 30.
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