There’s a name at the crossroads of much of the skullduggery in America’s headlines for years now — “Russian collusion,” “the laptop from hell,” “Hunter’s foreign friends.” Yet I doubt very many know it.

 

He’s Charlie McGonigal. And we’re about to lose perhaps our last opportunity to find out what he knows.

And he probably knows a lot.

For those of you unfamiliar with Mr. McGonigal, he is the former “SAC” (Special-Agent-in-Charge — an unfortunate acronym that J. Edgar should’ve foreseen) of FBI New York’s Foreign Counterintelligence Unit. McGonigal was indicted last year in Washington, D.C. on charges related to his receipt of $225,000 from an Albanian agent. He was later also indicted in New York — by his former squad! — on charges of sanctions-evasion and money laundering based on his relationship with notorious Russian oligarch, Oleg Deripaska. He has since pled guilty in both cases.

So what’s Charlie got to do with Trump and Hunter?

According to the reports, it was McGonigal who triggered the investigation into Donald Trump’s “Russian collusion” — an investigation which failed more soundly and often than a Buffalo sports franchise.

As for Hunter: His main contact with the Chinese government was Patrick Ho (representative in the U.S. for Chinese oil company CEFC). It was McGonigal’s squad that convicted Ho in 2019 on influence-peddling charges. Yet strangely, Ho was never flipped against Hunter (this while DOJ had an open investigation of Hunter).

And despite the fact that Hunter and his uncle Jim were reportedly on the FBI wiretaps of Ho — to the tune of $30 million.

Instead, Ho went to jail for only about a year on a three year sentence — and was then quietly repatriated to Hong Kong.

 

(Patrick Ho — you’d be smiling too if you only did 1/3 of your federal sentence…)

Charlie McGonigal — who, full disclosure, this writer crossed paths with professionally — is to be sentenced Thursday of this week. The prosecution is asking for the harshest sentence of five years.

Hey, I’ve got an idea: How about a reduced sentence in return for testifying in the ongoing case against Hunter?

Didn’t think so.

Meanwhile, the question remains: What’s on those wiretaps? And will Representative Comer’s committee ever ask for them? Because clearly David Weiss has not.

For more background on all this, see our prior substack here. But to be honest — you’ll just get more frustrated.

In the meantime, the OpsDesk is going to file a FOIA request for a transcription of the Patrick Ho wire. We expect a response sometime around 2045.

With redactions.