NBC News: Former FBI Special Agent in Charge Charlie McGonigal has been arrested and charged in connection with Russian sanctions violations and money laundering violations.
Reported w/ @jonathan4ny
— Tom Winter (@Tom_Winter) January 23, 2023
STORY: https://t.co/woLJVwdEdp
— Tom Winter (@Tom_Winter) January 23, 2023
Federal prosecutors say the former head of counterintelligence for the FBI’s New York office laundered money, violated sanctions against Russia while working with a Russian oligarch and while still at the FBI took hundreds of thousands of dollars from a foreign national and former foreign intelligence official.
Charles McGonigal, 55, was arrested on Saturday after arriving at JFK airport in New York on a flight from the Middle East.
A case filed in federal court in Washington, D.C., alleges that while serving as Special Agent in Charge of FBI counterintelligence efforts in the New York office, McGonigal took $225,000 in cash from an individual with business interests in Europe who had been an employee of a foreign intelligence service.
From August 2017 through his retirement in September 2018, McGonigal allegedly concealed his relationship with this former foreign security officer from the FBI. He allegedly requested and received cash from the individual and traveled abroad with the individual…
On Monday afternoon, McGonigal pleaded not guilty to the New York charges and was released on $500,000 bond…
Given McGonigal’s ties to the Washington and New York area offices of the FBI, the Los Angeles field office led the two-year-long investigation, three senior law enforcement officials said. The decision to move the probe to Los Angeles was to ensure there were no conflicts of interest or competing interests among agents who may have known McGonigal.
McGonigal’s career included a stop as a section chief coordinating the FBI’s cyber and counterintelligence programs at the FBI’s secretive Intelligence Technology and Data Division (ITADD) in Chantilly, Virginia, as well as his position in New York, public records show.
McGonigal was named special agent in charge of the Counterintelligence Division for the New York Field Office in 2016, after serving as the section chief of the Cyber-Counterintelligence Coordination Section at FBI headquarters…
So — when Deripaska needed a little inside help, McGonigal had a proven track record (and no doubt plenty more info to sell).
Perhaps this answers why, on the eve of the 2016 election, someone at the FBI lied to the NYTimes about the links the FBI saw between Trump and Russia. https://t.co/b1SXbLB16g https://t.co/GyrNKbNCRH pic.twitter.com/mNrcVD4Tz8
— Max Kennerly (@MaxKennerly) January 23, 2023
‘… Nothing political, they just do it for the (Russian) money’
Giuliani boasted late in fall 2016 Presidential campaign about his contacts with FBI's New York field office and later said publicly that Director James Comey had responded to "pressure of a group of FBI agents who don't look at it politically." (@NBCNews) pic.twitter.com/puuv1FErrU
— Michael Beschloss (@BeschlossDC) January 23, 2023
Prescient!
There's a lot of wild stuff that came out in the whole Trump-Russia saga, but I still can't get over how there's an email chain that literally says, "this is part of Russia and it's govt's support for Mr. Trump" and the son of the pres. replies, "if it's what you say I love it." https://t.co/IO1kB0xO0a
— Centrism Fan Acct ?? (@Wilson__Valdez) January 15, 2023
If you said at the beginning that there'd be an email chain, put out by the president's son himself, that spelled out in writing the explicit Russian govt support for Trump and then a reply being like, 'hell yeah, give us that RU dirt', most people would laugh in your face.
— Centrism Fan Acct ?? (@Wilson__Valdez) January 15, 2023
*SUBJECT: Russian Collusion. You wanna do it?*
Donald Trump Jr: Let's do the collusion. Give us that dirty dirty Russian dirt.Extremely vindicated journalists: No proof. The Libs & the media have disgraced themselves by implying that there was any there there.
— Centrism Fan Acct ?? (@Wilson__Valdez) January 15, 2023
The entire FBI needs a house-cleaning and perhaps a new director
— Jennifer "Pro-privacy" Rubin (@JRubinBlogger) January 23, 2023
Looks like Marsha Blackburn drew the short straw to run point for the Greedy Old Partisans…
The FBI agent who led the phony investigation into President Trump and Russia has been arrested for his own ties to the Kremlin.
You can’t make this up.
— Sen. Marsha Blackburn (@MarshaBlackburn) January 23, 2023
planetjanet
This news had me doing my happy dance. Something about the wheels of justice grind fine, but they grind exceedingly fine. Please proceed.
Baud
I hope he turns states evidence on Rudy.
dm
The tweets at the end about Don Jr’s response to the offer of dirt reminded me of one of the things that irritated me during that investigation — someone with the best interests of the United States at heart would have turned to the government and said: “The Russians are offering us blackmail material concerning a former Secretary of State, perhaps you should investigate!”
They didn’t do that. That fact alone was damning.
JPL
Where’s Rudy? It wouldn’t surprise me if he tried to make a deal handing over evidence about the NY FBI office.
Chyron HR
“If they can do this to the FBI then what’s to stop the FBI from coming for YOU?”
Elizabelle
Let this be the tip of the iceberg, please. Senate hearings, I guess? We can’t expect the Qevin House to do anything honestly.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I remember when news of the trump tower meeting broke, I thought, neither for the first or the last time, “Finally! We got him!” More as in: “now people will see what a fucking pack of grifters and scumbags they are” than in a “Now they’ll all go to jail!” way. But maybe back then I still believed in orange jump suits. I honestly can’t remember.
Oh well.
When Andrew Weissman’s book came out, a lawyer tweeted out a screen shot of a certain paragraph with the message: This is as close as Weissman can legally come to telling us Junior took the fifth. I wonder how many times he did that.
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: Just Rudy?
The Thin Black Duke
What are the chances of McGonigal falling out of a window?
Kay
@JPL:
lol
Drunk and trying to make 200 dollars on some sleazy grift?
We really need to get tough on this crime wave in law enforcement.
cain
Is this, for the FBI, the katrina of watergate scandals?
tobie
I gather McGonigal left the FBI to be VP of Brookfield Properties which bought Jared Kushner’s failed development project at 666 Fifth Avenue. Too many coincidences here.
WaterGirl
@tobie: Just a coffee boy at the FBI NY office!
OzarkHillbilly
Where in the fuck does an FBI agent find $500,000 to post for bail??? Shit… FBI agents are glorified cops. Most cops couldn’t come up with $20K.
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly:
He left the FBI in 2018 to go into private criming.
JPL
@Kay: At some point everyone is going to be flipping on each other.
Dangerman
@The Thin Black Duke: He better spill it and spell it out or he gets placed on a upper floor.
David 🌈☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
@JPL:
As Colonel Hans Landa would say, “That’s a Bingo!”
Baud
@The Thin Black Duke:
Maybe he’ll get housed in the Epstein suite.
tobie
@WaterGirl: And at Brookfield too! How untoward of me to wonder if he played any part in arranging the financing for Kushner’s billion-dollar fiasco.
ETA–I first heard McGonigal was arrested at JFK after returning from Sri Lanka. Then it became the Middle East. Where was he coming from, I wonder.
EmanG
Well shit. There’s your deep state right there! Also, I hope the secret server connected to RU in Trump’s basement gets drawn back into this. I never felt we got a truthful answer about that one.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: It all makes sense now.
jonas
That tweet by Blackburn is just *chef’s kiss*.
Damn straight you fuckwit. Why do you think certain people in the FBI NY office were trying to *downplay* the Trump-Russia connection? And who knows how many other areas of the investigation this treasonous shitstain tried to compromise? The idea that people in bed with the Russians were complicit in trying to gin up a Trump-Russia conspiracy is just…. what? Oh yeah, Blackburnish. As in characteristic of one of the stupidest members of the Senate this side of Ron Johnson.
Bill Arnold
@tobie:
WTF work would a former FBI counterintelligence guy be doing for a NYC commercial real estate company?
Helping them disguise international money laundering? What else?
David 🌈☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
@Bill Arnold:
It’s almost as if some NYC real estate person got him a job as a payoff for sinking Clinton’s campaign and for tipping them off on the inside aspects of the collusion investigation.
But who could that person be?🧐
tobie
@Bill Arnold: Evidently McGonigal knows something about international financing and shell companies. That must have come in handy for Brookfield.
Marc McKenzie
@OzarkHillbilly: Just to be clear…he was a retired agent and had a more lucrative job. That’s how he could come up with that amount.
I had a sibling who was with the FBI for over twenty years. So I’m used to seeing a lot of falsehoods coming from people who have no real idea what agents do or (as seen frequently over at Lawyers, Guns and Money) think that every FBI agent is a corrupt SOB who pray to shrines with an image of J. Edgar Hoover.
Marc McKenzie
@jonas: Indeed. But again, it’s part of the GOP’s plan–spin this to say, “See? Look at the Deep State investigating Trump trying to find a link to Russia!”
I do wonder what Matt “Russiagate is bullshit!” Taibbi will say about this.
HinTN
@OzarkHillbilly: Here’s at least a GS-15. He’s got access to resources.
HinTN
@jonas: Imagine our shame.
Geminid
. If a Russian oligarch can suborn an FBI agent, how much harder would it be to suborn a New York Times reporter, or more than one? It might be easier.
eclare
@HinTN: I am also in TN and ashamed.
OzarkHillbilly
@Marc McKenzie: FTR, how does a glorified cop find $1/2 a mil just lying around in his pocket?
Look, I get that I don’t understand how these things work. At what point will people get how corrupting this money is?
Gin & Tonic
@OzarkHillbilly: A corrupt glorified cop, who’s been an asset of a russian billionaire for years. I’m sure half a mil was no issue.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@OzarkHillbilly: I don’t have much experience with bail, but isn’t it pretty typical that a bail bond is 10% of the actual number ? And I don’t find it shocking that 55 YO with 25 yrs in gov’t service and who left a high-level position for the private sector five years ago, however shady that service and that private sector work has been, could get his hands on $50K
And if he owns a house in the NYC area, $500K in equity would not scandalize me.
Kay
@JPL:
I no longer believe that. There’s a reason these people operated with impunity for 5 years. The criminals are inside the house.
Gvg
@OzarkHillbilly: I think they make more than cops by a fair amount. You can’t have them investigating serious money people year after year and pay them peanuts. Realistically that is a guarantee of corruption and demoralization. We can’t pay them enough to make them laugh at bribes, but we have to pay reasonable. I have heard the salaries before and it seems respectable to me, not that that bail won’t hurt.
Kay
Also he was criming while he was an FBI agent:
OzarkHillbilly
@Gin & Tonic: My point.
I’ve known cops. Some of whom could be bought for a C bill. 1/2 a mil? Now you’re just negotiating.
Mai Naem mobile
@tobie: are you kidding me? I don’t understand how this stuff keeps on happening and it takes 4 years for the feds to do something about it ??? Also, why does he have bail? This guy shouldn’t be allowed out. He’s a flight risk.
Kay
Are media people embarrassed that they defended Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss for their garbage, hackish “Twitter Files” work?
God, it’s just all such flimsy crap they churn out. Do the people relying on these hacks NOTICE that they never, ever go after Republicans? How stupid do you have to be not to notice that?
Is the corrupt FBI agent the NYTimes source for their crap Clinton reporting? You fucking know he is. More junk they fed us., but they all got paid and got book deals and beach houses so alls well that ends well.
Baud
@Kay:
👍
Gvg
I don’t think it is the entire FBI because it was noticeable that the NY office was not saying the same things as the other FBI offices. Not that we shouldn’t check out other offices.
I do think the end of the Cold War turned a certain part of peoples brains off as a society. It seems like a whole bunch of people forgot all kinds of history including people older than me who fought in wars and used to be so anti Russian. The “serious” republicans turned peace dividend=cut every tax then cut every social program so we can keep cutting taxes. They turned isolationist and anti foreigners but stupid not paying attention to foreign affairs and suckers believing bull. It’s not just republicans tho they are worse. People seriously don’t understand spying is real and hurts these days.
or maybe I just learned more from being a daughter of a defense contractor engineer ordinary level who took it seriously. But I seem to remember the news and Congress taking it more seriously a few decades ago, and the voters too.
sanjeevs
There’s a lot we still don’t know about what went on in the FBI NY Field Office in 2016
The IG never looked into any of it.
Citizen Alan
@Marc McKenzie: I’m sure not all of them are. But I’m also certain that enough are that corrupt to justify abolishing the f****** FBI completely. Seriously, what percentage of the FBI do you think should be utterly corrupt before we can talk about maximum structural changes to an organization that has never provided as much benefit to this country as it has harm.
Geminid
@Kay: “I was trying to recruit him.” An evergreen rationale for crooked counter intelligence agents.
UncleEbeneezer
@Gin & Tonic: Right. Which means that 1.) Blue Lives/Back-The-Blue supporters, 2.) organized crime and 3.) MAGAts, would all happily fill his GoFundMe, even if Russia refused to pick up the tab.
Baud
@sanjeevs:
Probably the same guy investigating the Dobbs leak.
oclday
Sorry, I just can’t forget the rumors about Rudy and the NY office of the FBI, how much they hated Hillary and the rumors that the NY office forced Comey to spill the beans about the huge nothing burger of Weiner’s laptop.
All looks different today.
bbleh
@The Thin Black Duke: more likely being shanked in holding.
Kent
Trump
JPL
@Geminid: You must have been really good at connect the dots games. I could never understand the NYT’s coverage of Hillary, and that seems plausible.
Rocks
Lock him up!!!
JPL
The Russian mob helped Rudy become a hero by bringing down the Mafia. IMO Payback is hell though. It will take decades before the final chapter is written.
Kent
He had 20 years as a Fed so probably has at least $500K in his Federal TSP account alone (Federal 401(k). Probably much more.
If he was a supervisor he was probably about a GS-15 which has this pay scale: federalpay.org/gs/2022/GS-15 which is $113K to $147K plus the 36.16% locality pay for NYC which would put him in the $160K – $200K range.
And he apparently resigned the FBI for a higher paying corporate job.
different-church-lady
@Kay:
Well, they’d have to have a sense of shame for that to happen.
Immanentize
@Citizen Alan:
Kent
If they didn’t have shame for the Iraq War and Hillary’s emails then I promise they won’t have shame for that.
UncleEbeneezer
The fact that this DOJ is actively going after its’ own former members (Jeffrey Clark- DOJ, McGonigle- FBI) is very important and a very good thing. It shows that even their people, aren’t out of bounds.
Immanentize
@Citizen Alan:
This rather suggests you have no clue what the FBI actually does. Where. How. Who. How much, etc.
Kay
@Baud:
Imagine how naive you have to be to believe that Republicans didn’t lobby Twitter and that Twitter (of course) responded?
Matt Taibbi’s fans are that dumb- they actually believe this corporation is (genuinely) “woke” and responds only to Democrats. I’m in middle of nowhere Ohio and I 100% knew it was both R and D. Of course it was.
Bari Weiss is starting a media company, so we have more of this top quality work to look forward to. Another ridiculous “woke” expose!
different-church-lady
@sanjeevs:
Well, it took that long for Comey to decide whether he was going to be the most upstanding person in the country or the most upstanding person in history.
cain
So, another mass shootings – cnn.com/2023/01/23/us/half-moon-bay-california-shooting-incident/index.html
Didn’t we just have one yesterday? Is there a mass shooting season we need to be aware of?
different-church-lady
Personally I could stand to hear a lot less about Weiner’s laptop.
cain
@UncleEbeneezer: This is Garland – protecting the institution – in many ways, going after your own is even higher priority than going after congress.
Kay
@Kent:
I (actually) love newspapers and I obviously support the First Amendment but these people are impossible to defend and I can defend just about anyone.
I give up. They’re bad and they should all get fired. They have no redeeming qualities.
CaseyL
@cain:
We do!
It’s January 1 – December 31.
No shootings outside that time period, though.
cain
@Gvg: we all knew that the NY office had lost their damn mind and hated Hillary with the heat of a thousand suns. Even more they betrayed their country by weakening democracy with their bullshit.
gene108
@Citizen Alan:
The Feds are the reason lynchings stopped. The Feds are the reason no white supremacist group ever got organized enough to replicate the violence posed by the pre-1960’s KKK. The Feds investigate possible hate crimes, just in case local law enforcement doesn’t think anything too bad happened.
The FBI has its role. It might not be important to you, but it matters to others.
lee
How much longer until we find out Comey is a Russian stooge as well?
cain
@CaseyL: there outta be a law…
Baud
@Kay:
I’m sure it’s not naivete that explains these folks.
cain
@lee: when he’s flying out a window.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Oh hell, as easy as Donald Trump is to manipulate, he’s fucking Metternich compared to Chris Cillizza or Andrew Ross Sorkin. The latter could be seduced forever by some MBA/Davos buzzwords over a fancy dinner at some swank NYC restaurant, the former could be had for two Bud Lights, a plate of chicken wings and a “I have very much enjoyed your insightful analysis on the CNN” at Chili’s
dnfree
The building in Washington is still named for J. Edgar Hoover. That says a lot about organizational values.
Sanjeevs
@gene108: Biden should have stripped Counterintelligence completely from the FBI and set up a new agency.
When you actively work to put a Russian asset into the WH there need to be some radical changes
Baud
@CaseyL:
Imma gonna take off work.
Anne Laurie
IMO, Comey’s more ‘useful idiot‘ than ‘paid agent’. He didn’t need to be suborned; he just craved the attention.
gene108
@Sanjeevs:
I agree.
There needs to be changes, but getting a major government agency, like the FBI, to change requires a very serious and focused Congress, as well as a serious and focused Executive.
I doubt Republicans will allow the potential for Russia to cultivate FBI assets to be too greatly hindered, as this arrangement has benefited them.
Gin & Tonic
@Mai Naem mobile:
When the guy in question is in charge of counterintelligence in one of the country’s largest FBI field offices, you have to be very careful going after him. Notice that they didn’t use any NY Field Office resources to get him – somebody at DoJ knows that office can’t be trusted. I’m actually impressed that DoJ go a warrant for him, and nabbed him getting off a plane at JFK. That’s quality work, in which a fair number of people had to be involved, and it didn’t (apparently) leak to the target.
Jeffro
Here it is, at long last: Russian oligarch money suborning a highly important FBI officer in order to kneecap HIllary Clinton and cover up for trumpov.
It’s good to be right. But to have been THIS right, for THIS long? It is extremely satisfying.
There’s other shoes just waiting to drop, GOP. Years and years of rot just waiting to be exposed. Millions and millions y’all took from a hostile foreign power, just because you couldn’t bear to share a country with (much less be ruled by) the dirty libs.
And every night, we dirty libs sleep well.
And every morning, we dirty libs get up and thank our lucky stars/moral principles/priorities of country before party, and be glad we’re not you.
Geminid
@JPL: I never connected the dots until a couple hours ago. Marcy Wheeler retweeted Michael Beschloss showing a couple representative NYT headlines for articles about Trump and Russia. Something to the effect of, “FBI says no Trump-Russia connection.” Their unnamed sources told them so.
It could be that outsiders like Mcgonigle pulled the wool over the NYT’s eyes. But maybe they had a guy on the inside to make that easy, a sure thing. McGonigal wouldn’t even have be told exactly what was going on, just given the slightest of hints that reporter X might be ok to talk to. Then maybe reporter X rushed back to the office with his scoop and said, “Chief, look what I’ve got!” And editor Y said, “Imagine that!”
This of course is speculation, but it’s an explaination of that newspaper’s malign behavior that had not occurred to me before.
Amir Khalid
@dnfree:
Hoover was the FBI’s longest-serving Director. He made it the premier investigative body in the US Government. He even opened the very first X-File. He should also have a women’s clothing store named after him.
prostratedragon
On JEHoover: Grrrrr!
But why not take a dance break? Danzón No. 2, Marquez; Orquesta Sinfónica Simón Bolívar/Dudamel
Kent
@Amir Khalid: He was our first LGBT agency head!
Ryan
This seems… suboptimal.
Sanjeevs
Speaking of Russian infiltration, the current UK PM assisted Prigozin to legally harass Bellingcat by evading sanctions.
opendemocracy.net/en/prigozhin-government-russia-ukraine-hack-libel-slapp/
Jim, Foolish Literalist
The NYT had an institutional hatred of Clinton world, in which I include Al Gore, going back to Yeltsin’s days, when I don’t remember any talk of interfering in US politics, though I imagine there was a lot of Russian cash in Manhattan in those days. I think it was Bill Keller in particular who really, really hated Gore. And of course, then Village It Girl MoDo. They could never get Bubba, could never even really hate that charming rascal, but boy could they get their hate on for Al and Hillary
(No less a hater than Newt Gingrich said he couldn’t resist BC’s charm in person. I can’t find the direct quote but I remember him using that phrase, “weak in the knees”
raven
never mind
Fake Irishman
@Gin & Tonic:
I cannot agree with your comment more. Also, if there’s a counterintelligence angle there may in fact be a lot of other moving parts we have’s seen and may never see.
different-church-lady
@Jeffro:
Unfortunately it also seems that, in our current timeline, being right is utterly fuckin’ useless.
StringOnAStick
@Fake Irishman: One has to wonder how many others in the office can be implicated, and just how nervous they are right now given who just got popped. Probably lots of careful watching of these people going on right now.
dnfree
@Amir Khalid: He also tried to get MLK to commit suicide and targeted civil rights and Vietnam war protesters.
...now I try to be amused
@EmanG:
It’s always projection with these people. Always.
Omnes Omnibus
@dnfree: He didn’t say a nice women’s clothing store.
James E Powell
@sanjeevs:
My impression at the time was that the FBI agents who had Weiner’s laptop with copies of emails told Rudy what they had. He told them to wait for the right moment to leak it. If Comey had not written the letter, they would have leaked it.
For reasons that have never made sense to me, the FBI agents apparently hate Hillary Clinton & love Donald Trump.
Geminid
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I’m not saying there might not be other explainations, and the NYT’s political coverage has never been what I would call “good” But their behaviour over the last ten years just seems “off” in some way, a difference not just in degree but in kind.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
FBI, Secret Service, ICE, most local LEOs…. I don’t remember seeing precise polling but I’ve always assumed there’s no trumpier demo than cops, I guess of all stripes. I think even active duty military has never been more than 50/50 for trump, I would guess its much higher amount those LE agencies
Kay
@Geminid:
They’re much more conventional than that. The boring answer is the correct one in this case- they’re rigidly conventional, unimaginative people who believed the email scandal was excellent for the news business. Hating on Hillary Clinton always sells. Safe bet, but then they only take safe bets.
And it was good for the news business- NYTimes reporters benefitted financially. Both the Trump and Clinton reporters from 2016 wrote profitable books. The Clinton reporter got an HBO special. They all project this phony, snooty disgust with the Clintons – that they’re somehow trashy for making money- yet no one trades on celebrity gossip like the NYTimes political team.
I wish they were Russian spies. It’s grimmer and much more boring than that. Just ordinary careerism and money.
stinger
@James E Powell:
“For reasons” = Russian $$$$$$$$$
Kay
@Geminid:
Remember how horrified they were when they had to watch someone who had had a stroke speak?
“I CANNOT watch John Fetterman speak so slowly!” They’re in their 30s and 40s and 50s and this is the first person they have encountered who has compromised speech. They had a collective nervous breakdown.
Rigid, brittle people.
PJ
@Kay: Olivia Nuzzi, who was, I think, the leader in the “It’s so horrifying to watch a person recover from a stroke” brigade, is just 30. These are people who’ve been raised in privilege and coddled their entire lives. That people might have real difficulties, physical and otherwise, in life is something they’ve never had to cope with. Which is why so much of our press is pro-Republican and pro-wealthy tech assholes – they see the rich and callous as their peers.
danielx
I have online subscriptions to both WaPo and FNYT. Comparing and contrasting front pages from online editions, the McGonical story is second on the Post web page. The Times? Well, it’s way buried about halfway down the page and you have to look hard for it. Could this be, we wonder, because Times reporters have connections with the NY FBI office and this could be perceived as embarrassing by Times editorial staff?
Say it ain’t so!
Edit: from the Post:
Soprano2
@James E Powell: The FBI is full of white people, especially white men. That’s explanation enough to me.
different-church-lady
Things Hillary Was Right About, Vol. 73
Kent
They are the most conservative Federal agency BY FAR. More so even than the military because they are FAR less diverse than the military and also older. The military has a MUCH lower average age than the FBI and only the officer corps tend to be older. So yes, a much higher percentage of Trumpers in the FBI than in any other Federal agency.
The only close second is probably ICE but they are more diverse even than the FBI (more Hispanic agents for example). And Trump deliberately coddled their asses in a way that he didn’t do with the FBI so lots of Trumpers there too.
David ⛄ 🎅The Establishment🎄 🦌 🕎 Koch
Only the best people
Tim Ellis
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Yep. Cops, ICE, most of the front law enforcement folks tend heavy right-wing. Military is often thought of as conservative – I remember when I was in, people would tell stories about how “you’re a soldier so you’re a Republican now” – but it’s not really, at least not anymore. Bernie scored by far the majority of donations from active duty military in the last primary; even blew away Trump (who was raising for the general).
I think the reason is likely demographic. The average age of an employed cop is 40; the average age of an active duty soldier is around 25. And I don’t have hard stats, but certainly when I was in, the military was chock full of young people who were coming from poor, desperate backgrounds, and it was extremely diverse (at least in the enlisted ranks, not sure about officers). And it’s a cosmopolitan setting in a way, because it’s people from all over mingling together and finding common cause (also everyone is getting free government healthcare and housing lol).
Cops though tend to be kids of cops, or small town folks who never encountered much of the outside world, things like that.
Also the “thin blue line” stuff was really effective agitprop until the MAGA folks went and tried an insurrection and found themselves on the other side of law enforcement lol. I think they’ve punctured that a bit now.
Tim Ellis
@Kent: I should have kept reading – you said everything I just said, but more succinctly and better lol.
rikyrah
@PJ:
No lie told
rikyrah
@Jeffro:
Love this😂😂😂
rikyrah
Hillary was right. About everything😒
Anyway
Still struck by the fact that McGonigal is 54 and has been retired for 5 FIVE years !!!! Yes, yes, I know LEOs have their own rules, many of them are ex-military but a NYC desk jockey retiring at 47 with a whole nother career where he leverages his connections in the first one is just bonkers.
Anyway
FTFNYT. Bill Keller had Clinton Derangement syndrome bad. Dean Basqet was a different case — he seems to have been all about “how dare you plebs question us about our motives???” And doubled down on every bad headline, bad decision — got played by crooked Russian assets. Do they ever question the motivation of their sources?
Princess
@danielx: I don’t think it’s the Times reporters who’ve been suborned. I think they write the stories they’re told to. I think it’s someone much much higher up. Someone is telling the editors to put those stories on page 6. I think it starts with the owner. My guess is somehow the NYT or its owner is heavily in debt to a bunch of oligarchs of the Russian mob. But I repeat myself.
it explains why they sat on the Santos story, why the Hillary hate, everything.
SFAW
@Anyway:
I think it was further up the ladder than Keller and Baquet; I think Pinch Sulzberger, for some reason, hated the Clintons with a passion bordering on obsession. Whether his father (i.e., Punch) was similarly inclined, I don’t know. However, his son, Pinche, is a rotting apple that fell not far from his dad’s tree.
Keller and Baquet probably did too, but the publisher (a/k/a owner) runs the show, I believe.
And: FTFTFNYT.
SFAW
@different-church-lady:
Only 73? You must have taken a break from counting for awhile.
J R in WV
Obviously the FBI is owned and operated by Russian mobsters and spies, along with the DHS, which appears to be owned and operated by home grown fascists, and in a love affair with international fascists from Hungary to Brazil.
Isn’t it time we at least attempted to set those traitors up against one another to put the bad guys down?
DHS at least should be disbanded, they don’t work to make the “Homeland” more “Secure” at all… and the Secret Service is obviously working against America when the VP (not the sharpest knife in any drawer) knows not to get into their car!
I’m amazed that the nation can pretend to keep its shit together~!!~ Fat Leonard bought the US Navy, and then walked away from house arrest for Dog’s sake. Do we not have jail any more ?? Or is jail full of Democrats so there’s no room for real criminals?
Chris Johnson
You see THIS is the kind of guy, unlike Trump, Rudy et al, who is capable of actually working as a Russian agent. Some of them were run just as loose cannons and guided in the same way Russia guides QAnoners, and I’m not surprised at all that there are some who are capable of opsec and interacting more directly.
I think Mitch McConnell has been in that category. I think Tucker Carlson is another in that category, smart and capable enough to be much more in the loop and maintain his own deniability. Tulsi Gabbard. Possibly Sinema depending on whether her flounce is a pose.
I like seeing some of this category brought to justice. They know more than just that of which they’re guilty directly, because this has been a BIG operation this whole time.
Tony Jay
@Sanjeevs:
Absolutely fucking disgraceful and something the UK Media will simply ignore. The deep infiltration of Russian (and other countries’) money into the UK Establishment is one of the major reasons we are where we are on the Failed State scale.
Also, Margaret Hodge can go fuck herself with a dead hyena. That two-faced lying bitch knows all about spreading fear on behalf of authoritarian governments and getting away with it. 100% proof scumbag.