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Mattathias Schwartz Profile picture
Mattathias Schwartz
@Schwartzesque
legal affairs correspondent @nytimes first dot last at nytimes dot com; DMs open
Janet Mathis Profile picture maria bowen Profile picture 2 subscribed
Sep 22, 2023 • 11 tweets • 3 min read
NEW: Ex-FBI counter-spy chief Charles McGonigal pleaded guilty in DC.

In court he admitted taking $225,000 in cash while at the FBI — a "loan" from a "friend and potential biz partner."

Off-the-books trips to Albania were "personal biz dev efforts." /1

businessinsider.com/charles-mcgoni… This second guilty plea makes it very unlikely that there will be a trial.

I'm left with a couple of questions.

McGonigal admitted working for Deripaska after he retired.

In the Albania case, he admitted taking off-the-books money and free travel while still at the FBI... /2
Aug 8, 2023 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Charles McGonigal will likely plead guilty next week, marking a new chapter in one of the worst scandals in FBI history.

@thisisinsider was first to break the McGonigal story.

So if you're just catching up now, start here... /1

businessinsider.com/exclusive-fbi-… @thisisinsider Our 2nd story went deeper into the importance of McGonigal's role — running counterintel in NYC, one of the great spy capitals.

But McG was also allegedly taking bags of cash & doing business with the same oligarchs that the FBI tracks and flips... /2

businessinsider.com/charles-mcgoni…
May 17, 2023 • 4 tweets • 3 min read
Here's a diagram from a report by me and @carrierana22, showing an underground tunnel complex beneath Putin's Black Sea palace.

Waaay too many racks for conduit, which suggests the tunnel was intended to serve as an emergency comms/power network in the event of an attack... Image @carrierana22 More in the story below, including a link to the archived Wayback Machine site where Putin's contractor originally posted this, along with a few other sensitive diagrams.

Whoops businessinsider.com/revealed-vladi…
May 17, 2023 • 5 tweets • 3 min read
🚨NEW: Today, Insider is publishing diagrams that show a doomsday tunnel complex underneath Putin's Black Sea palace.

Power and ventilation systems show how long he's been prepping for the worst — existential conflict with the West. w/ @carrierana22 businessinsider.com/revealed-vladi… @carrierana22 Years ago, the diagrams were posted online by the Russian contractor that dug the tunnels, before being deleted. Whoops Image
Apr 17, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
people will eventually realize that this simply doesn't exist -- my man is a singular demagogic talent feral instincts, unbridled will to power, sense of humor, compelling TV persona, id-stoking racism, you name it — dude is the total package
Apr 15, 2023 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Yes, attention tends to focus on the leaker and not the leak.

But, that's not because of some conspiracy.

It's because that's the story that's less complicated, easier to humanize, easier to write. Documents are rich, and also very complicated.

Any leak worth its salt will leave a legacy that casts a far longer shadow than its leaker.

Betty Medsger's excellent book is about one of those... amazon.com/Burglary-Disco…
Mar 10, 2023 • 11 tweets • 4 min read
NEW: A story about the Nord Stream mystery.

Much attn has been paid (and rightly so) to a sailing yacht, the Andromeda. German investigators think it was involved in the sabotage.

But there's a 2nd vessel you should know about — the Minerva Julie... 🧵/1 businessinsider.com/nord-stream-my… The Minerva Julie is a 600-foot tanker. I learned about it thanks to some incredibly dogged research by @OAlexanderDK.

Click on that handle and follow him right now.

Oliver spent weeks digging through tracks of ships moving through the Baltic Sea. Here👇is the MJ's track... /2 Image
Mar 9, 2023 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
WSJ Day 2: Germans were mostly right on Day 1 wsj.com/articles/nord-… German press Day 2: We figured out the name of the yacht, it is called the Andromeda spiegel.de/panorama/justi…
Feb 16, 2023 • 8 tweets • 4 min read
How did FBI learn about the McGonigal/Russia problem?

After McG's girlfriend revealed a bag of cash and envelopes, some guessed that she tipped them off.

She says she emailed FBI in 2019.

But now we know that the FBI was onto McGonigal before that.. /1 businessinsider.com/british-uk-lon… Our exclusive from this morning reveals that in 2018 — the same year McGonigal retired from the FBI — he met with a Russian contact in London.

What McG doesn't seem to have known at the time is that the British were watching that Russian very closely.. /2 businessinsider.com/british-uk-lon…
Feb 16, 2023 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
🚨🚨SCOOP: In 2018, British authorities alerted FBI about a meeting between spy chief Charles McGonigal and a Russian who was under surveillance, in London.
businessinsider.com/british-uk-lon… McGonigal 3: Sergey Shestakov's manilla envelopes, the second phone for encrypted comms, McG's rough childhood and political views businessinsider.com/fbi-charlie-mc…
Feb 15, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
logging into Amazon dot com to order some extra Drudge Sirens have a few sitting around the house but need to stock up
Feb 9, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
On a colleague's advice, I would like to add something to yesterday's Charlie McGonigal story. Here goes...

Guerriero recalls having dinner with McGonigal and Shestakov, and seeing S hand manila envelopes to McG both before *and* after McG retired from the FBI in fall 2018. I thought this was clear from the piece but it might not have been. As the story said, the envelopes passed 3-4x. Guerriero never found out what was inside.She said that the content might have been entirely legit. From the outside, the envelopes appeared to contain documents.
Feb 8, 2023 • 6 tweets • 4 min read
NEW: My 4,000-word profile Charlie McGonigal.

McGonigal used to be the FBI's top NYC spy-hunter. He had top-level access to classified intel.

Now he's accused of illicitly taking Russian money, among other things... /1

businessinsider.com/fbi-charlie-mc… McG's high rank, access to classified intel, and alleged work for Oleg Deripaska (remember the Trump-Russia-Manafort saga?) mean this is shaping up to be one of the worst scandals in FBI history.

@thisisinsider broke the news about it back in Sep... /2 businessinsider.com/exclusive-fbi-…
Feb 8, 2023 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
🚨🚨 NEW: The McGonigal Labyrinth 🚨🚨 businessinsider.com/fbi-charlie-mc… more tweets about this one TK
need to make some coffee first
Feb 4, 2023 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
I went to Paul Manafort's apartment.

Ate my first ham sandwich.

Got him to admit for the first time that he passed Trump campaign data to a suspected Russian asset.

Here are 8,000 words about it, no paywall... businessinsider.com/paul-manafort-…
Feb 3, 2023 • 5 tweets • 3 min read
Earlier today, @SenatorDurbin requested that FBI Director Christopher Wray brief the Senate Judiciary Committee and answer some hard questions about Charles McGonigal... Image @SenatorDurbin full letter here... judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/…