gentlemen. Aluminum magnate Deripaska, who has ties to Russian President Vladimir V. Putin, was a client of Paul Manafort, who served as Donald J. Donald J. Trump ran for the presidency for months and was convicted in 2018 of financial fraud and other crimes.
gentlemen. McGonigal’s attorney, Seth D. DuCharme, said his client intends to plead not guilty when he appears in Manhattan federal court on Monday.
“Charlie has served America skilfully and effectively for decades,” he said. Ducharm. “We have carefully reviewed the allegations made by the government and we look forward to receiving evidence so we can understand what the government intends to rely on.”
The indictment also charges another man, Sergey Shestakov, 69, a former Soviet and Russian diplomat turned U.S. citizen who worked as a Russian interpreter in courts and government offices . gentlemen. Shestakov’s attorney, Bennett M. Epstein, declined to comment.
gentlemen. McGonigal was arrested at John F. Kennedy Airport around 2 p.m. Saturday, according to a spokesman for the Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s Office. Shestakov was arrested around the same time at his home in Morris, Connecticut.
gentlemen. McGonigal’s arrest shocked former colleagues who worked closely with him. They said he spent his long career at the FBI investigating Russian counterintelligence and espionage. McGonigal also took on an extremely sensitive assignment in the intelligence community, leading an FBI team investigating why a CIA informant was arrested and killed in China.
Charges against former or current senior FBI executives appear to be extremely rare. In 2018, former acting and deputy director Andrew G. McCabe was turned over for prosecution after the Justice Department’s inspector general accused him of misleading investigators. But the case was eventually dropped. In 1996, a senior FBI official was charged with obstructing a deadly 1992 standoff in a remote area called Ruby Ridge, Idaho. The acting FBI director and his deputy, along with another counterintelligence officer, were indicted on conspiracy charges nearly two years ago. The charges are the first criminal charges against an FBI director or former bureau director.
Adam Goldman Contribution report.