According to reports, 55-year-old Charles McGonigal, a former top counterintelligence official at the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), was ordered to serve four years and two months in prison after it was determined that he had worked for a Russian oligarch seeking dirt on a wealthy rival after his government career had ended.
Judge Jennifer H. Rearden in Manhattan federal court ruled that McGonigal harmed national security by repeatedly flouting sanctions that were imposed on Russia in an effort to obtain results without having to use military force. McGonigal was also ordered to pay a $40,000 fine, as well as forfeit $17,500.
Judge Rearden's decision came after a prosecutor framed McGonigal's crime as a greedy money-grab effort that leveraged the knowledge he gained while working at the FBI to gain entry into the circle of a notorious Russian oligarch and billionaire industrialist by the name of Oleg Deripaska.
Ironically, McGonigal had once investigated Deripaska as part of the Trump probe, siding with those who claimed that Trump had colluded with Deripaska and other Russian oligarchs himself in his bid for the presidency in 2016.
(Related: Check out the proof that the January 6 "insurrection" was an inside job staged by the very same people trying to take down Trump and his followers.)
When the one pursuing Russian collusion charges against Trump gets caught colluding with Russia himself
For reasons related to Russia's occupation of Crimea, Deripaska has been under U.S. sanctions since 2018. McGonigal was given the chance to speak during the hearing, and he did so nervously and sometimes with a shaky voice, expressing a "deep sense of remorse" while stating that he is "sorry for my actions."
"I recognize more than ever that I've betrayed the confidence and trust of those close to me," McGonigal said about his involvement with Deripaska. "For the rest of my life, I will be fighting to regain that trust."
While leaving the courthouse with his hand in that of his wife Pamela, McGonigal told reporters: "Happy holidays, everybody."
Back in August, Deripaska pleaded guilty to a single count of conspiring to launder money and violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. He admitted to the judge that McGonigal had accepted over $17,000 to help Deripaska collect derogatory information about another Russian oligarch who was one of Deripaska's business competitors.
Prosecutors also accused McGonigal of trying to help Deripaska get himself removed from the U.S. sanctions list. He was also allegedly involved in negotiations with several other co-conspirators to take a fee of anywhere from $650,000 to $3 million to look for electronic files exposing hidden assets worth around $500 million that belong to Deripaska's business rival.
Citing McGonigal's career achievements, including his work after the September 11 terrorist attack and his investigation of two deadly terrorist bombings at U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998, defense attorney Seth DuCharme called for a sentence without incarceration.
That request was denied after Assistant U.S. Attorney Hagan Scotten argued for a maximum five-year prison sentence for McGonigal, stating that McGonigal was raking in $200,000 annually before he retired from the FBI, and that he now makes over $850,000 a year in the private sector working as head of global security for a prominent international corporation at the time when he carried out his crime.
"This is less time than a lot of January 6ers got," noted one commenter about McGonigal's relatively short prison sentence. "On top of that, he'll probably get a Biden pardon along with Hunter."
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