Addendum: Church FISA < Patriot FISA
Who is Charles McGonigal? Have the courts ever taken up FISA/USA-PATRIOT?
In 2020 while speaking at an Atlantic Council function regarding how the FSB sets the tone for politics and economics inside Russia, McGonigal compared the FSB and FBI by saying, "You are seeing an erosion in any rule of law as it relates to the FSB," and that, "It would be akin to having, in the United States, the FBI as a rogue element operating at the behest of the highest bidder engaged in criminal activities.” Yet, it appears that McGonigal himself was involved in criminal activities, both before and after his retirement in 2018.
What is perhaps most damning about McGonigal and his alleged crimes are the ones that aren’t getting much attention. Along with the likes of Andy McCabe, Robert Mueller, Peter Strozk, Lisa Page, Kevin Clinesmith, and others, McGonigal’s most egregious behavior was his involvement with the FBI’s coup against Donald Trump. Let’s not forget Schiff and additional bad actors in government who also played major roles in creating false narratives either. Many of which are still believed by millions of people at the detriment of their own country. Other than Klinesmith, who essentially received a slap on the wrist, no one else has been charged for the path they led the nation down, knowing full well that the entire time they were doing so because of their own political affiliation and leaning combined with their utter hatred of Trump and approximately half of the country.
McGonigal was a pivotal player in opening the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation which propagated the false “Russian collusion” narrative against Trump. Also in 2020, Jonathan Moffa, a Deputy Assistant Director at the FBI, told Senate Judiciary Staffers that a 2016 email from McGonigal “served as the basis for the opening of the case” against Trump. Allegations against McGonigal also include that he was working on behalf of sanctioned (by the Trump administration) Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. Deripaska became a billionaire by working in the aluminum industry when he started Rusal, a global leader in the industry. Deripaska was linked to Paul Manafort, who chaired Trump’s 2016 campaign from March to August, 2016. Manafort was later indicted and charged for a number of criminal activities. Deripaska, because of Manafort, was now part of the Russian collusion narrative.
Private emails revealed that Manafort had contacted Konstantin Kilimnik, a former associate and former Russian military intelligence officer. Manafort asked Kilimnik if Deripaska was aware of Manafort’s ascension in Trump’s campaign and hopeful that it would be “use[d] to get whole.” Manafort and Deripaska had a falling out prior to Manafort’s new position as head of Trump’s campaign, but that detail gets obscured by the Russian truthers who still cling to their false narrative today.
Deripaska filed a lawsuit against Manafort in 2014, well before Manafort was ever associated with the Trump campaign. The deterioration in their business relationship, goes back to around 2008 after Deripaska spent about $26 million that was funneled to and through Manafort ($18.9 million for the investment and $7 million in management fees). That money has seemingly disappeared, which led to Deripaska’s law suit against Manafort. No evidence exists that Manafort and Deripaska ever met, or that Deripaska even knew of Manaforts’s efforts to reach him and fall back into his good graces in 2016.
Misinformation propagandist Chuck Todd, on Sunday said to Rep. Jim Jordan, “You know who his American advisor was, Oleg Deripaska? The former campaign manager to Donald Trump's campaign – Paul Manafort.” Todd is either willfully misleading anyone watching, or is ignorant of the truth. Either way, whether it be incompetence or intentional misdirection of his viewers, Todd is not fit to hold a position as a journalist in any American newsroom. Truth. That is something lacking in journalism from formerly “trusted” sources like MSNBC. In The Elements of Journalism, the authors state that “the primary purpose of journalism is to provide citizens with the information they need to be free and self-governing.” That seems to be missing in most journalistic entities. Instead, they continue to push easily disproven statements like Paul Manafort being Oleg Deripaska’s “advisor” when, in fact, Deripaska has been at odds with Manafort for years.
The media has consistently reported Deripaska as an ally of Vladimir Putin, and he likely is. He is also, or at least has been, an ally of the FBI. Deripaska’s ties to the FBI go back to 2008. Back then, Deripaska was recruited to assist with a search and rescue mission for retired FBI agent Robert Levinson who had since gone to work for the CIA in Iran and was captured there in 2007. According to Deripaska, Andrew McCabe was the agent who approached him. Yes, the same Andrew McCabe who, similarly to McGonigal, played an integral role in starting the Russia collusion hoax case at the FBI. Robert Mueller was the Director of the FBI when McCabe helped recruit Deripaska. Mueller also was central to the Russia collusion fiasco as well, serving as Special Counsel. In 2009 and beyond, Mueller was kept apprised of the Levinson case which, presumably, included updates regarding Deripaska’s involvement according to retired FBI agent Robyn Gritz; a former supervisor on the case.
David McGee, an attorney who has represented Levinson’s family, has said that Derpipaska nearly succeeded in brokering a deal between the US and Iran for Levinson’s release. Deripaska, who spent approximately $25 million on the endeavor, has also said that his personally funded rescue team came close to a deal, but was thwarted by Hillary Clinton’s State Department, according to his FBI handlers. McGee confirms that Clinton herself presented a barrier to securing Levinson’s return saying, “We were told at one point that the terms of Levinson’s release had been agreed to by Iran and the U.S. and included a statement by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pointing a finger away from Iran. At the last minute, Secretary Clinton decided not to make the agreed-on statement.”
As an aside, the US government paid $5 billion and traded the “Taliban Five,” four of whom became part of the new Afghan government after America’s botched withdrawal, for the treasonous Bowe Bergdahl, but weren’t willing to save Levinson because they didn’t want to owe Deripaska for his assistance.
As if Deripaska’s role couldn’t get more tangled, he also had hired Christopher Steele back in 2012 for opposition research against one of his business rivals. Christopher Steele, who later compiled the since debunked “dossier” that was funded by Clinton and the DNC. Unbeknownst to Deripaska, Steele also had a relationship with the FBI which included recruiting Russian oligarchs for US intelligence purposes. Deripaska claims that Steele invited him to a meeting with Department of Justice officials in 2015 for reasons relating to his visa problem, but that it truly was an attempt to recruit him.
Shortly before Trump was elected in 2016, three FBI agents, including one who worked with Deripaska on the Levinison case, allegedly visited him at his New York home. Those agents broached the theory that Trump was colluding with Russia. According to Deripaska’s lawyer, he told the agents that they “were trying to create something out of nothing.” That didn’t stop the FBI from again trying to elicit information from Deripaska in 2017 though either.
Oleg Deripaska is not only of interest now because of McGonigal’s arrest, but also because of the troves of classified material that Joe Biden has had scattered around, including one of his homes in Delaware. Why does a “government servant” have more than one house anyways? Must be really dedicated to serving their constituents… Anyways, information about Deripaska was being peddled by Hunter Biden back in 2011. He was seeking $55,000 from US aluminum company Alcoa Inc. for which he would provide “statistical analysis of political and corporate risks, elite networks associated with Oleg Deripaska, the Russian CEO of Basic Element company and United company RUSAL,” according to emails unearthed on his laptop.
You know, the laptop that the FBI and big tech censored leading into the 2020 presidential election, even though the FBI had the laptop since December 2019 and knew that it was not Russian disinformation. Yeah, that laptop. Furthermore, it seems likely that the FBI tipped Twitter off the night before the New York Post released the initial Hunter Biden laptop story, which Twitter suspended their account for. Shortly thereafter, 51 “intelligence experts” signed off on a memo which claimed that the Hunter Biden laptop story “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” The only disinformation was that of US disinformation. The FBI, these former intelligence officials, and others throughout government and big tech/media were in on it. Hunter offered more information on Deripaska, including “a list of elites of similar rank in Russia, a map of [Deripaska’s] networks based on frequency of interaction with selected elites and countries.” How was Hunter privy to such information? Could it be because his father had droves of classified information in areas that were easily accessible to Hunter? At a minimum, it’s worth finding out.
As discussed in Church FISA < Patriot FISA, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) approves virtually 100% of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) applications it receives. When it was reported that in approximately it’s 33 year existence (at the time), the FISC only denied 11 out of nearly 34,000 FISA applications, it should have been seen as a clear abuse of government power and overreach by governmental entities like the NSA, FBI and FISC itself. Nonetheless, the FISA and FISC continue to operate with impunity, keeping matters of your “national security” secret from you. We’ll likely never know, but out of the mere 11 applications that the FISC denied, how many of those were redrafted and then approved? It’s a question worth asking, even though we’ll most assuredly never find out. Your “national security” is too secret for you to ever know the finer details about it.
Some FISA applications that we eventually did learn about were those of the FISA against former Trump aide Carter Page, which resulted in four court approved FISA applications; the initial application plus three renewals. We know that the FISC approved all four. We also know that Russiagate was nothing more than a $32 million fraud against the American people, many of whom still believe it to be true because many main “news” outlets report that it was, and continue to do so today. How atrocious were the 11 FISA applications that the FISC did approve considering they didn’t bat an eye at these four? Eventually it was learned that convicted-criminal-former-FBI-lawyer Kevin Clinesmith forsook his Constitutional oath when he altered an email to obtain approval for the final FISA renewal; he likely betrayed that oath well before altering that email.
What isn’t known about this clear example of FISC/FISA abuse is if it was ever divulged by the FBI to the FISC that one of the FBI’s very own Russian sources, or at least past Russian sources, Oleg Deripaska, told three FBI agents who visited him at home that he found the idea of Trump colluding with Russia to be laughable. One would think that someone the FBI vetted and trusted enough with privately funding (to the tune of $25 million remember) and reaching an agreement with Iran to release a retired FBI agent turned CIA spook would’ve been pertinent for the FISC to know when deciding whether or not to grant the initial FISA, much less the renewals.
It may have been further pertinent that the FISC know that this same Russian source, or former source, also told the FBI that Trump colluding with Russia was the FBI making “something out of nothing.” Perhaps Mueller had a conflict of interest and that is why Deripaska was likely missing from FISA applications and indictments in the peak Russiagate years, only to be later sanctioned by the Trump administration. Or maybe Deripaska was still on the FBI’s books as Confidential Human Source (CHS) if McCabe opened him as one after their initial meetings in Paris and elsewhere regarding the Levinson case.
What other FISC/FISA and USA-PATRIOT abuses are known? Sadly, not many. Because of their “national security,” and therefore secret nature, the vast majority of matters pertaining to the FISA process and FISC will never be known. Likewise with Patriot Act matters. Thankfully, groups like the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the Constitution Project, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the Heritage Foundation and others have legislated against, or otherwise spoken in opposition to, government overreach, intrusion and Constitutional violations regarding these secretive governmental programs.
Brandon Mayfield, an American convert to Islam, was falsely accused and jailed by the FBI (shocking I know) for two weeks in 2004 in relation to the Madrid train bombing. This was done after the FBI incorrectly identified him based on fingerprint analysis. Mayfield, who had never been to Spain, was not only subjected to the false accusation and weeks in jail, but also to having numerous personal records obtained by the FBI because of the broad authority granted to it under the Patriot Act. Furthermore, Spain disagreed with the FBI’s assessment that Mayfield had anything to do with the terrorist attack. The FBI, in their hubris (which is a common FBI thread) went so far as to inform federal prosecutors that authorities in Spain agreed with their assessment, something that Spanish officials deny.
Furthermore, a report found that fingerprint examiners in the FBI operated in a culture where they were “discouraged from disagreeing with their superiors.” This likely won’t come as a shock, but that culture doesn't just exist for fingerprint examiners, and it didn’t cease after this black eye to the Bureau in 2004 either. Shortly after Mayfield’s incarceration, Spanish authorities traced the fingerprint to Ouhnane Daoud, an Algerian citizen, and issued an arrest warrant. Eventually, Mayfield won a $2 million settlement, however, no amount of money can reverse what happened to him, nor do judgements against the FBI or other government entities seem to ever resolve these types of abuses and overreach.
Perhaps the most recent public case regarding FISA is Federal Bureau of Investigation v. Fazaga (2022) in which Sheikh Yassir Fazaga, Ali Uddin Malik, and Yasser AbdelRahim claimed the the FBI used a Confidential Human Source to covertly surveil them and other members of their place of worship, the Islamic Center of Irvine, solely because of their practice of Islam. Their suit alleged the government violated various First Amendment rights, the Equal Protection Clause of the Fifth Amendment, the Due Process Clause of the Fourth Amendment, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and the Federal Tort Claims Act. In a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court ruled that FISA did not mention the “states secrets privilege” of the Executive Branch, and since Congress failed to explicitly annul that privilege with statutory language, there was no violation. In this case the FBI recruited an informant who then acted like they converted to Islam. This CHS began attending the Islamic Center and eventually made calls to violence, which resulted in a call to the police and a restraining order from the Center. Essentially, this is a timely reminder that the government can still do just about whatever they want as long as “national security” is their reason for doing it.
Other primary examples of FISA ending up in federal court, instead of the additionally secretive United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review (FISCR) where they usually go for review, are United States v. Duggan (2d Cir. 1984) and United States v. Nicholson (E.D. V.A. 1997). In Duggan, the court held that the treatment of US citizens compared to that of non-resident aliens raised compelling national security considerations. The defendants were members of the Provisional Irish Republican Army who had been engaged in illegally shipping weaponry.
The defendants argued on appeal “(1) that the district court erred in refusing to suppress evidence obtained through a wiretap pursuant to FISA on the grounds that (a) FISA is unconstitutionally broad and violates the probable cause requirement of the Fourth Amendment, and (b) the government failed to comply with FISA's prerequisites for wire surveillance; (2) that the district court erred in excluding their defense that their actions were taken in reasonable good faith reliance on the apparent authority of one Michael Hanratty, a government informant, to act as an agent of the Central Intelligence Agency ("CIA"); and (3) that the conduct of government agents was so outrageous as to deprive them of due process of law.” The court ruled against the defendants and affirmed their convictions. Citing Duggan throughout, Nicholson also flatly rejected the defendant’s claims that FISA violated the Due process clause of the Fifth Amendment, Equal protection, Separation of powers, and the Right to counsel provided by the Sixth Amendment.
Clapper v. Amnesty International USA (2013) was a challenge to the government’s unchecked power granted through FISA, and specifically the FISA Amendments Act of 2008. That updated FISA law gave the FISC the ability to authorize surveillance without government actors having to show probable cause that whoever they are targeting is likely an agent of a foreign power. The Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 decision against the plaintiffs, deciding that "the claims of the challenges that they were likely to be targets of surveillance were based too much on speculation and on a predicted chain of events that might never occur, so they could not satisfy the constitutional requirement for being allowed to sue."
Part of the Supreme Court’s decision centered on the idea that plaintiffs must show that they have been the subject of government monitoring under FISA for the Court to intercede. But, the government does not release information pertaining to who their targets are, and since FISA/FISC are secret, we rarely ever find out who has been targeted. In his dissent, Justice Stephen Breyer said, “Indeed [spying] is as likely to take place as are most future events that commonsense inference and ordinary knowledge of human nature tell us will happen.” Justices Ginsberg, Sotomayor and Kagan joined Breyer’s dissent.
In Gaslighting Grifters the “Release the Memo” hashtag on Twitter, which officials like Adam Schiff labeled Russian disinformation even though they knew that was false, was mentioned. That memo, authored by Rep. Devin Nunes, indicated that James Comey, then Director of the FBI, signed three of the FISA applications for Carter Page, with McCabe signing the fourth. Those FISA applications were primarily based off of the, as Comey himself publicly put it, “salacious and unverified” Steele dossier. Looks like Breyer was correct in his Clapper dissent about spying being likely to take place; even though he likely didn’t have the foresight to know that it would occur against a presidential campaign and then sitting president. As discussed in COINTELPRO 2.023, the FBI wiretapped and surveilled Martin Luther King Jr. for years under the guise that he was “the most dangerous Negro of the future in this Nation from the standpoint of communism, the Negro and national security.” While James Comey was Director of the FBI he kept a copy of the wiretap order for MLK on his desk as a personal reminder of the types of civil rights violations the FBI has been guilty of in the past. Ironic.
Postscript
Ten minutes after I finished writing this substack, episode 32 of System Update, which is Glenn Greenwald’s latest journalistic endeavor, was posted. Greenwald, if you are unfamiliar, is the journalist Edward Snowden worked with when he was making his disclosures about NSA abuses. Greenwald won the Pulitzer Prize for his reporting regarding Snowden/NSA. Greenwald went on to co-found The Intercept, which he left in 2020 after editors there censored his story about Hunter’s laptop. Greenwald lives in Brazil with his husband, who is a socialist congressman there. By any stretch, Greenwald is a left leaning liberal, who like others such as Matt Taibbi, has been lampooned by the unholy union of corporate media and government that attacks anyone who seeks the truth when the truth comes too close to exposing their misdeeds.
That was a well-written and researched indictment on the FBIs abuses of FISA and how executives like McGonigal all too easily succumb to their temptations of power.
Thanks, Bill. I memory hole this stuff myself sometimes. It's good to be reminded on occasion to remember the depths of their wickedness. It covers such a vast swath of components of government that some of it fades to the back over time.