Charles McGonigal, ex-FBI counterintelligence official, to be sentenced for working with Russian oligarch
CBSN
Washington — Charles McGonigal, the former top counterintelligence official at the FBI's New York office, is set to be sentenced Thursday afternoon for accepting secret payments from a sanctioned Russian oligarch and close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
McGonigal pleaded guilty to a federal charge in New York in August to conspiring to violate a law known as the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. He admitted to helping Oleg Deripaska dig up dirt on a rival Russian oligarch and laundering money by concealing the source of the payments for that work. He has also been charged and pleaded guilty in a separate case in Washington.
The Justice Department is seeking a five-year sentence and $200,000 fine for the charge in the New York case, saying McGonigal "betrayed his country and manipulated a sanctions regime vital to its national security." Such a sentence would be a warning to other former national security officials who may consider "abusing their positions in the service of hostile foreign actors," the government wrote in a sentencing submission last week.
Two Native Hawaiian brothers who were convicted in the 1991 killing of a woman visiting Hawaii allege in a federal lawsuit that local police framed them "under immense pressure to solve the high-profile murder" then botched an investigation last year that would have revealed the real killer using advancements in DNA technology.
In one of his first acts after returning to the Oval Office this week, President Trump tasked federal agencies with developing ways to potentially ease prices for U.S. consumers. But experts warn that his administration's crackdown on immigration could both drive up inflation as well as hurt a range of businesses by shrinking the nation's workforce.