Former high-ranking FBI agents who were involved in the investigation of the Trump campaign’s interactions with Russia during the 2016 election are now reportedly being investigated by federal prosecutors for their links to Russia and other foreign countries.
According to internal court records acquired by Buisness Insider, US lawyers secretly assembled a grand jury to investigate the actions of Charles McGonigal, the former chief of counterintelligence at the FBI field office in New York City, late last year.
McGonigal was an integral part of the investigation into former President Trump’s alleged ties to figures in Russia. An investigation which ultimately did not uncover any evidence of direct connections between Trump and Russia.
The Justice Department refused to comment on the grand jury’s investigation or if it was still continuing.
A witness subpoena obtained by the government, however, indicates that the government was investigating McGonigal’s business dealings with a top aide to Oleg Deripaska, the billionaire Russian oligarch at the center of allegations that Russia colluded with the Trump campaign to interfere in the 2016 election.
The subpoena, filed in November, wants documents pertaining to McGonigal and a mysterious consulting business known as Spectrum Risk Solutions.
A week after the subpoena was issued, a Soviet-born immigrant called Sergey Shestakov claimed in a separate document that McGonigal assisted him in “facilitating” an introduction between Spectrum and Deripaska’s assistant.
According to the petition, McGonigal assisted in introducing the assistant to Kobre & Kim, a New York legal firm that specialized in representing clients under investigation for fraud and misconduct.
While working on behalf of Deripaska would not have been unlawful, failing to report actions covered by the Foreign Agents Registration Act is punishable by a $250,000 fine and up to five years in jail.
The records sought in the witness subpoena raise concerns about whether a top FBI agent may have used the relationships he built during his years of public service for personal advantage.
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