Ex-FBI agent Charles McGonigal to plead guilty in DC over work for Russian oligarch
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Former high-ranking FBI official Charles McGonigal, who last month copped to New York charges of conspiring to violate US sanctions while working with a Russian oligarch, pleaded guilty Friday to accepting secret payments from a former foreign intelligence agent.
McGonigal, 55, pleaded guilty to a single count of concealment of material facts for taking $225,000 in cash from an ex-Albanian operative while working for the bureau.
He was initially charged with nine counts, including falsifying records, concealing material facts and making false statements, court filings show, potentially facing a 55-year prison sentence.
US District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly accepted the plea and set a sentencing hearing for Feb. 16, 2024. McGonigal faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison.
The former FBI special agent in charge served as counterintelligence chief in New York from 2016 to 2018 — and helped launch a probe into the Trump campaign’s alleged collusion with Russia to get “dirt” on Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton before the 2016 election.
McGonigal allegedly took the six-figure payment from a man identified in European media as Agron Neza, and did favors in exchange such as meeting with the nation’s prime minister, Edi Rama.
The G-man initiated the lucrative arrangement in August 2017 — and it continued beyond his retirement from the FBI in September 2018, according to his January indictment.
The disgraced agent also had the FBI open a criminal investigation into foreign political lobbying that would have benefited Rama — and used the ex-Albanian intelligence official as a confidential human source, prosecutors say.
McGonigal also allegedly requested the FBI’s liaison to the United Nations broker a meeting between then-US ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley and the founder of a Bosnian pharmaceutical company.
His Albanian associate was prepared to receive $500,000 from the pharmaceutical company if the meeting took place, the indictment charges.
Lawyers for McGonigal did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Reps for DC US Attorney Matthew Graves declined to comment.
The disgraced FBI agent, who served for 22 years at the bureau, pleaded guilty last month to just one count of conspiring to launder money and violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act in his off-the-books work for Oleg Deripaska, a Russian billionaire and aluminum magnate.
“I understand what my actions have resulted in, and I’m deeply remorseful,” McGonigal said with visible regret in Manhattan federal court. “My actions were never intended to hurt the United States, the FBI or my family and friends.”
He claimed he had pocketed $17,500 to help Deripaska get dirt on a rival Russian oligarch — and later tried to remove him from a US sanctions list.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) threatened to subpoena the FBI on Tuesday for files on McGonigal, calling his recent plea deal with the Justice Department a slap on the wrist.
“Both McGonigal’s serious misconduct as a senior, high-level FBI official, and the possibility of McGonigal receiving generous plea deals from the Justice Department in both cases, raise significant concerns that the FBI and the Department may be attempting to hide the true extent of McGonigal’s misconduct to avoid further reputational harm to the Bureau,” Jordan wrote in a Sept. 19 letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray.
“If you refuse to voluntarily produce the requested documents and information, the Committee may be forced to consider use of compulsory process,” Jordan added.
McGonigal faces up to five years in prison for the crime. US District Judge Jennifer Rearden has set a Dec. 14 sentencing hearing for the New York case.
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