Hunter link to tainted G-man
THE FBI’s reputation problems have accelerated with the arrest on corruption charges of Charles McGonigal, the former chief of counterintelligence for the FBI’s New York field office, one of the most powerful spy-hunters in the country — who also happened to be connected to Hunter Biden.
In twin indictments last month, McGonigal was charged with taking secret cash payments from a former Albanian intelligence officer, holding secret meetings with Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama, and attempting to remove top Kremlin oligarch Oleg Deripaska from a US sanctions list.
The Albanians cited by prosecutors tie this scandal to Hunter Biden and the Chinese energy company CEFC that paid him and uncle Jim millions of dollars in a deal which Joe Biden was slated to join after his vice presidency ended.
According to prosecutors, McGonigal received $225,000 in cash in the fall of 2017 while he was the FBI’s counterintelligence chief in New York, from an Albanian former intelligence official, identified in the Albanian and European media as Agron Neza.
In turn, Neza introduced McGonigal to another well-connected Albanian, Dorian Ducka, who was an adviser to Rama and also worked for CEFC.
A photograph published last month in Albanian media sourced from China Daily in May 2017 shows Ducka standing with CEFC chairman Ye Jianming, who famously gave Hunter a 3.16-carat diamond estimated to be worth $80,000 in February 2017.
Ye also put Hunter on a $1 million legal retainer in mid-2017, which ultimately was paid to assist CEFC colleague Patrick Ho after his arrest.
Someone with the same unusual first name as Ducka appears in Hunter’s abandoned laptop in an email discussion about CEFC between Hunter and associates James Gilliar and Rob Walker.
“Dorian was a real help early on so we should consider how we include him,” Gilliar wrote in the May 13, 2017, email.
“No way we don’t do it,” replies Hunter, “and if majority says no I’ll take it out of my salary.”
This was uncharacteristic generosity from Hunter, who at the time was crying poor to his business partners and demanding a larger cut of the profits.
“Hunter wouldn’t give up a penny,” says a source, who believes that the “Dorian” mentioned could be Ducka, as Gilliar had been doing business for CEFC in Albania. “So Hunter saying he would pay [Dorian] is a demonstration of strong ties.”
Why were the Albanians paying McGonigal?
According to Belind Kellici, the Opposition Democratic Party candidate for May’s mayoral election in Tirana, Albania, McGonigal opened FBI investigations into political opponents of the Albanian Socialist Party PM Rama, probes used to declare them persona non grata, unable to do business or open a bank account in the US.
McGonigal ‘blacklist’
About a dozen opposition politicians or business people supporting the opposition party were added to the McGonigal “blacklist.”
That included former opposition leader Sali Berisha, who was slapped with a persona non grata status and forbidden to travel to the US by Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
Last weekend, the McGonigal scandal played a starring role in an antigovernment protest in Albania in front of the main government building calling for the PM’s resignation for alleged corruption because of his meetings with McGonigal.
Placards with the former FBI agent’s name were ubiquitous.
Hunter’s connections with the FBI also were a topic of discussion among his business partners. One source recalls being told about a conversation that occurred sometime between July and September 2017, in which Hunter was asked by Chairman Ye of CEFC if he could discover through his FBI or DOJ contacts if Ye or Ho were targets of an FBI probe.
Hunter then reported back to Ye that the two were in the clear and were not being investigated.
Soon after, in November, Ho arrived back in the US and was arrested by FBI agents at JFK Airport.
“Chairman Ye was livid” that Hunter’s intelligence was wrong, recalls the source.
“He specifically asked Hunter to look into whether Patrick Ho or he was a target. [Hunter] goes back to Chairman Ye and says no. Ho then flies into the US and is detained at JFK. People went apes--t . . . Whoever Hunter talked to at the FBI lied to him and said Ye and Ho were not targets.”
We know Hunter had at least one mole in the FBI because New York lawyer Edward Kim, to whom Hunter offloaded the legal work to assist Ho after his arrest, asked Hunter in an email if he could lean on his FBI contacts.
“If you’re able to find the names of the FBI agents you spoke with, that would be helpful,” Kim wrote to Hunter on Nov. 18, 2017, in response to Hunter’s request that his firm act for Ho.
At that time, McGonigal was in charge of the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division in the New York field office that conducted the arrest.
A tenuous link also exists between Hunter and McGonigal in their personal lives, as their names appear together as recipients of 29 lacrosse-match emails referring to their thenteenage daughters from a posh DC school attended by Hunter’s children, at the time when McGonigal was working at the FBI Washington field office. There is no evidence they met at that time.
McGonigal left the bureau in September 2018 after a former mistress reportedly spilled the beans to his boss about bags of cash lying around his Brooklyn apartment.
But, ironically, he was one of the well-connected experts tapped by the Atlantic Council before the 2020 election to warn about Russian interference on behalf of Trump.
At the time he allegedly was taking money from Deripaska.
McGonigal, a protégé of former FBI chief James Comey, also was involved in the bogus FBI investigation into Trump-Russia collusion, as section chief of the Cyber-Counterintelligence Coordination Section at the FBI DC field office. He reportedly was instrumental in opening the original Crossfire Hurricane probe.
After he moved to New York one month before the 2016 election, McGonigal also reportedly was involved in the fraudulent surveillance warrants on Trump campaign aide Carter Page.
While both GOP and Dem lawmakers are trying to spin the McGonigal scandal in their own political favor, there is nothing FBI Director Chris Wray can do to restore the public’s faith in his tattered agency.