FALLS CHURCH NEWS-PRESS | FCNP.COM
McGonigal Arrest Reveals Role in 2016 Trump Win N������� F. B����� FALLS CHURCH NEWS-PRESS
Of course, the timing of revelations like this is always an issue (such as in this case, the fact it awaited the transition to a new party in control of the House), but the arrest of perhaps the most consequential person at the FBI, Charlie McGonigal, for ostensible espionage on behalf of a hostile foreign power, the Russians he was supposed to be in charge of stopping, is shaping up to be perhaps the story of the century. Hardly mentioned for this aspect in the coverage of his arrest this week is the extensive documentation via Twitter by highly-credible Presidential historian Michael Beschloss. It is drawing major attention for its amazing claim of the central role of McGonigal, acting as an insider Russian agent, to influence the outcome of the 2016 U.S. Presidential election. Namely, if Beschloss is to be believed (and there is no reason not to), McGonigal’s elevation to a critical slot at the highest level of the FBI just weeks before the November 2016 election was pivotal in the last-minute decision by FBI Director James Comey to announce the relaunch of his investigation into Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s emails that threw her otherwise certain election in favor of GOP candidate Donald Trump at the proverbial 11th hour. Comey’s inexplicable decision marked one of the most egregious cases of an intelligence agency’s intervention into a presidential election in history, one which subjected the nation and the world into its greatest crisis ever in the form of the four years of chaos the was the Trump presidency and that still represents the nation’s biggest threat to its democracy since the Civil War. Beschloss has not minced his words in this. The arrest of McGonigal for acting as the agent of a hostile foreign power at the top of the FBI is the stuff of perhaps the most remarkable espionage case ever, one which, if true, has altered the course of history in favor of Russia’s Vladimir Putin against the
strategic interests of the U.S. It has been documented that Trump was Russia’s chosen agent of influence at the top of the U.S. government since 1987, and what he has done to weaken the Western Alliance as the American president has been perhaps irreversible, much less how he disenfranchised the American public since he was declared the winner of the presidential election in November 2016 despite coming up almost three million votes short in the popular vote, and continually insisting he won the 2020 election despite coming up over seven million votes short. Perhaps this explains the historical essay that appeared in this Monday’s Washington Post that argued strangely that America’s strategic disadvantages since the 1930s only made it stronger. Are we supposed to believe that being wounded by McGonigal’s treachery only strengthened the U.S., notwithstanding the impact of Trump’s presidency? No, the McGonigal arrest is hopefully only the first step in the Justice Department’s revelations about how Putin’s counterintelligence operations in the U.S. have brought our nation so close to ruin in a sequence of events that have damaged us and that remain far from over. The sabotage of the American national interest was greater than anything the Rosenbergs did in the 1940s that led to their capital punishment. Curiously, this has now just begun to come to light just weeks after the Democrats had to relinquish power in the House to weaken their ability to bring the full consequences of this to the American public. Beschloff tweeted that, as is entirely relevant, Trump attorney Rudy Guliani “boasted late in Fall 2016 presidential campaign about the contacts with the FBI’s New York field office and later said publicly that (FBI) director James Comey had responded to ‘pressure of a group of FBI agents.’” In the final days of the 2016 campaign, Trump surrogate Giuliani said publicly that “help is on the way” for Trump. “He’s got a surprise or two that you’re going to hear about,” Giuliani said. McGonigal resigned from the FBI in 2018 after his damage was done and he faced internal audits that were beginning to show over $200,000 in unaccounted for funds to him.
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JANUARY 26 - FEBRUARY 1, 2023 | PAGE 5
Our Man in Arlington B� C������ C����
Transatlantic plaudits to the Arlington Heights Civic Association, for forging new ties with historical allies in the United Kingdom. The “Friendship Community Relationship”—not as elaborate as the larger sister city program but still fun—was just announced by association delegate Mark Murawski. The goal is to “open the lines of communication” to create goodwill between the South Arlington neighborhood and the quaint Cotswold village of Bibury in the English county of Gloucestershire. The reason: ancestral roots of the Custis family, whose scion George Washington Parke Custis created Arlington House, which is the source of our own county’s name. As a biographer of Custis (17811857), I did my own examination of the once-prestigious family tree of this step-grandson of Martha Washington raised at Mount Vernon under THE Founding Father. That included a dive into the gentle dispute over exactly how Arlington derives its name (officially so-christened in March 1920 after decades playing second fiddle as the rural section of Alexandria County). For those of you not keeping score, GWP Custis chose the name Arlington for his Potomac-side monument to George Washington to invoke his 17th-century ancestor John Custis II. Raised in the Netherlands as a wool trader, Custis immigrated to America and bestowed the name Arlington on his tobacco plantation on Virginia’s
Eastern Shore. (You can visit the Northampton County site near Cape Charles.) In one 19th-century telling, John Custis was honoring a hero, Henry Bennet, a 17th-century Earl of Arlington, often spelled as “Harlington.” That’s an ancient town in the British county of Middlesex, near Heathrow Airport. To further confuse things, there is also an old English village called Arlington south of London in East Sussex. But more common is the view that the older Custis was honoring his father’s birthplace in the Bibury, where 581 souls inhabit a picturesque village on the River Coln—with a splendid array of stone cottages called Arlington Row. At least one American Arlingtonian has visited the lovely Cotswolds with the express purpose of finding our county’s roots. That would be Arlington Historical Society president Warren Clardy, who wrote it up in the Arlington Historical Magazine in 1989. Today, the Arlington Heights folks, says Murawski, would like to “dispel the rumor that we were named after” that long-gone earl (also called Baron Arlington). He put me in touch with Craig Chapman, chairman of the Bibury Parish Council, who knows the subject. Chapman assured me that his study of the 370-year association between our two hometowns shows no link to the other two British Arlingtons, only Bibury’s, as he wrote in an article in the local magazine Village Life. He is equally excited about
the new Friendship Community Relationship with the 1,000 households in the Arlington, Va., neighborhood off Columbia Pike and South Glebe Road. Chapman looks forward to an “opportunity to build a relationship between our two communities, to explore our historical links, share ideas and promote further exchange.” He promised to scout for British descendants of the Custis family still in the mother country. *** The county board Jan. 25 voted 5-0 to advertise for two months the disputed proposal to loosen zoning to allow more “Missing Middle” housing types. Nearly 200 speakers had given up their Saturday Jan. 21 to address the board and decry or praise the plan. The advertisement ruled out seven- and eight-plex units. As opponents waved slogans on camera behind the microphone, advocate Christine Purka of the Yorktown neighborhood attacked existing zoning and economic inequalities as “opportunity hoarding.” Critic Elizabeth Grossman of Arlington Forest asked why the board is “more concerned about future populations than the people who live here now.” Homebuilder Larry Smith of Arlington Green Homes challenged opponents’ assertion that the 8-plex units so upsetting to some would be common. More likely we’d go for duplexes, or townhouses with a common wall, he said. YIMBY’s of NoVa estimated that 90 speakers favored the proposal, with 79 opposed. Organized opponents cited their 5,000 names on a protest petition.