Charles McGonigal, indicted ex-FBI head, helped trigger Russia probe
The former FBI official busted Monday for allegedly taking illegal foreign payments played a key role in the bureau’s controversial “Russiagate” probe of former President Donald Trump — and a “defensive briefing” of ex-rival Hillary Clinton’s lawyers.
Charles “Charlie” McGonigal, 54, was among the first FBI officials to learn that Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos told an Australian diplomat that Russia had “political dirt” on Clinton.
FBI Deputy Assistant Director Jonathan Moffa told Senate Judiciary Committee staffers in 2020 that he got a July 2016 email from McGonigal which “contained essentially that reporting, which then served as the basis for the opening of the case.”
The FBI investigation, dubbed “Crossfire Hurricane,” led to the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller and a 22-month, $32 million probe of Russian meddling in the 2016 election and potential ties to associates of Trump, now 76.
Shortly before Mueller was appointed, McGonigal also sent a message to an FBI colleague that discussed how agents were interviewing another Trump campaign adviser, Carter Page.
“Our Team is currently talking to CP re Russia,” McGonigal wrote on March 16, 2017, according to Justice Department records released by Senate Republicans.
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At the time, McGonigal had recently been promoted to special agent in charge of the FBI’s New York Counterintelligence Division after serving as chief of the Cyber-Counterintelligence Coordination Section in Washington, DC.
Page was wiretapped by the FBI in 2016 based on an application under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that asserted he “has been the subject of targeted recruitment by the Russian government” — a claim Page has denied.
The application — which also cited claims from the discredited anti-Trump “Steele dossier” — was granted and renewed three times, leading the Justice Department’s inspector general to issue a scathing 2019 report that called it a “clear abuse of the FISA process.”
In 2020, former FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith pleaded guilty to falsifying an email tied to the final FISA application to monitor Page and was sentenced to one year of probation.
McGonigal’s name is also first on a list of FBI officials who received an Oct. 22, 2015, memo about a “classified defensive briefing” given to lawyers for Clinton’s presidential campaign about…
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