Russian Doll

by Wendell Barnhouse

Last week’s news that Charles McGonigal, a high-ranking FBI agent, has been indicted on charges he was taking payments from a Russian oligarch is not getting much attention. And that’s just fine with the puppeteers who want us treated like mushrooms – kept in the dark and fed shit.

Trump’s “election” in 2016 was a finely crafted Russian op that had an influential insider (McGonigal) helping pull the strings. Take some time and read this. https://snyder.substack.com/p/the-specter-of-2016?r=f9j4c&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

The writer, Timothy Snyder, is an American historian who specializes in Europe and Russia. The spiderweb spun over the last decade is intricate. Some of the information – Clinton’s emails, Trump’s Russia connections, the Mueller Report, Trump’s first impeachment (involving Ukraine, a country that is involved in much of this story) – has been reported and analyzed. However, those stories have often been stand-alone headlines that miss the over-arching plot.

It’s worth watching (and praying and hoping) that McGonigal’s arrest blasts open the vault. Russia’s plan to influence the 2016 election was largely built on cyber intelligence and social media influencing. As you might recall, FBI director James Comey announced 10 days before the election that the FBI was reopening an investigation into Clinton’s emails that it had closed (“nothing to see here”) five months earlier. Two days before the election, Comey announced the new probe had found nothing nefarious, but the damage had been done.

Comey has now said that he made the announcement – which went against FBI policy to not influence an election so close to Election Day – because he believed if that if he did not, news of the investigation would be leaked. Rudy Giuliani was bragging about an “October surprise” that would benefit Trump. The New York FBI office had several agents who hated Clinton and Rudy had plenty of friends in that office.

While Merrick Garland and the DoJ wrestle with pursuing Trump and prosecuting the Jan. 6 insurrectionists, it now has another huge case on its hands with McGonigal.

McGonigal is charged with accepting money from Oleg Deripaska, a sanctioned Russian oligarch. Paul Manafort, who was Trump’s campaign manager for a short time in 2016, was connected (and owed money) to Deripaska. (Memory refresher: Manafort was found guilty of conspiracy and tax charges, was charged with conspiracy, was jailed… and pardoned by Trump in December 2020).

Before muddying this missive with any more character arcs, here’s why the McGonigal arrest is a big deal. Not only was a high-ranking FBI agent accepting money from a major foreign influencer, he happened to be in perfect position of information and influence. In 2016, McGonigal was section chief of the FBI’s Cyber-Counterintelligence Coordination Section.  That October, he was put in charge of the Counterintelligence Division of the FBI’s New York office.

If you want to brush off those two nuggets as “coincidences,” then apologies for wasting your time. But McGonigal was in position, and possessed the ability and the motive (money) to put his thumb on the scale.

Snyder’s story explains with supporting information the who, what, when and why – the “tik tock” – of what occurred. Vladimir Putin has been at war with Ukraine for a year, but he has waged an ongoing shadow war with the United States during the last 10 years. If you don’t believe that, pay attention to the MAGA influence in the House.

Wendell Barnhouse is a retired sportswriter from the golden age of the craft who still quaintly believes in holding truth to power. May his torch continue to burn.