Of course, the timing of revelations like this is always an issue (such as in this case, the fact it awaited the transition to a new party in control of the House), but the arrest of perhaps the most consequential person at the FBI, Charlie McGonigal, for ostensible espionage on behalf of a hostile foreign power, the Russians he was supposed to be in charge of stopping, is shaping up to be perhaps the story of the century.
Hardly mentioned for this aspect in the coverage of his arrest this week is the extensive documentation via Twitter by highly-credible Presidential historian Michael Beschloss. It is drawing major attention for its amazing claim of the central role of McGonigal, acting as an insider Russian agent, to influence the outcome of the 2016 U.S. Presidential election. Namely, if Beschloss is to be believed (and there is no reason not to), McGonigal’s elevation to a critical slot at the highest level of the FBI just weeks before the November 2016 election was pivotal in the last-minute decision by FBI Director James Comey to announce the relaunch of his investigation into Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s emails that threw her otherwise certain election in favor of GOP candidate Donald Trump at the proverbial 11th hour.
Comey’s inexplicable decision marked one of the most egregious cases of an intelligence agency’s intervention into a presidential election in history, one which subjected the nation and the world into its greatest crisis ever in the form of the four years of chaos the was the Trump presidency and that still represents the nation’s biggest threat to its democracy since the Civil War.
Beschloss has not minced his words in this. The arrest of McGonigal for acting as the agent of a hostile foreign power at the top of the FBI is the stuff of perhaps the most remarkable espionage case ever, one which, if true, has altered the course of history in favor of Russia’s Vladimir Putin against the strategic interests of the U.S. It has been documented that Trump was Russia’s chosen agent of influence at the top of the U.S. government since 1987, and what he has done to weaken the Western Alliance as the American president has been perhaps irreversible, much less how he disenfranchised the American public since he was declared the winner of the presidential election in November 2016 despite coming up almost three million votes short in the popular vote, and continually insisting he won the 2020 election despite coming up over seven million votes short.
Perhaps this explains the historical essay that appeared in this Monday’s Washington Post that argued strangely that America’s strategic disadvantages since the 1930s only made it stronger. Are we supposed to believe that being wounded by McGonigal’s treachery only strengthened the U.S., notwithstanding the impact of Trump’s presidency?
No, the McGonigal arrest is hopefully only the first step in the Justice Department’s revelations about how Putin’s counterintelligence operations in the U.S. have brought our nation so close to ruin in a sequence of events that have damaged us and that remain far from over. The sabotage of the American national interest was greater than anything the Rosenbergs did in the 1940s that led to their capital punishment.
Curiously, this has now just begun to come to light just weeks after the Democrats had to relinquish power in the House to weaken their ability to bring the full consequences of this to the American public.
Beschloff tweeted that, as is entirely relevant, Trump attorney Rudy Guliani “boasted late in Fall 2016 presidential campaign about the contacts with the FBI’s New York field office and later said publicly that (FBI) director James Comey had responded to ‘pressure of a group of FBI agents.’”
In the final days of the 2016 campaign, Trump surrogate Giuliani said publicly that “help is on the way” for Trump. “He’s got a surprise or two that you’re going to hear about,” Giuliani said.
McGonigal resigned from the FBI in 2018 after his damage was done and he faced internal audits that were beginning to show over $200,000 in unaccounted for funds to him.