This nightmare just will not go away. We know that Oleg Deripaska was a key coordinator of Russia’s foreign influence operation in the 2016 presidential campaign. We know he was associated with Paul Manafort, the ex-operative for Putin’s puppet regime in Ukraine, ex-campaign adviser for President Trump, and ex-felon whom Trump pardoned and for whom he unwound seized assets.

We now know that Charles McGonigal, a former senior FBI counterintelligence officer in the New York office, was indicted in January on money laundering and corruption charges in connection with none other than Deripaska, Putin’s go-to guy. We now know that Rudy Guiliani was very close to the FBI’s New York office, which had a reputation for being pro-Trump.

This arrest of McGonigal makes it clear that we still do not know all of the facts surrounding our 2016 presidential campaign and that we are still vulnerable to Russian influence operations. We do not know why the Justice Department has not indicted Trump with obstruction of justice charges. Special Counsel Robert Mueller stated that after Trump left office he could face criminal charges as a private citizen.

Is Rep. Jim Jordan’s investigation into the FBI an attempt to muddy the waters about the McGonigal case similar to then-Attorney General William Barr’s attempt to muddy the water in the Mueller investigation?

Dan Kremer

Youngwood

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