The since-convicted FBI official who led counterintelligence efforts in New York leaked information to an affiliate of a Chinese company which was linked to Hunter Biden’s business efforts, according to a DOJ watchdog who concluded the leak tipped the Chinese conglomerate off about the bureau’s criminal investigation.
Charles McGonigal, the former special-agent-in-charge of the FBI Counterintelligence Division in New York, leaked information to “Person B” – an unnamed businessman who worked for the Chinese energy conglomerate CEFC – even as the FBI was secretly investigating the Chinese company, according to the new report by Acting DOJ Inspector General William M. Blier.
McGonigal, who was sentenced in December 2023 for money laundering related to a Russian oligarch and in February 2024 for receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars from an Albanian government official, met with prosecutors in November 2023 and “acknowledged during the proffer interview that he shared information with Person B about the CEFC investigation and anticipated arrests arising from it.”
The DOJ watchdog said that “Person B was a consultant to foreign governments and businesses on international investments, and, in addition to his work for CEFC China, Person B was a non-governmental advisor to the Prime Minister of Albania.”
The watchdog report assessed that “although the full extent of the harm from McGonigal’s leaks of sensitive investigative information to foreign subjects and targets will likely never be fully known, we determined that the impact of McGonigal’s conduct on the CEFC investigation, a significant FBI criminal investigation, was substantial.”
President Joe Biden’s son held a lucrative position on the board of Ukrainian energy giant Burisma when his father was vice president. He also pursued business deals in China and elsewhere during and after his father’s tenure and received millions from Chinese government-linked entities. He raked in millions thanks to these associations from 2013 to 2018.
CEFC was a multibillion-dollar Chinese conglomerate founded by Ye Jianming, a Chinese Communist Party-linked business tycoon who subsequently disappeared in China but with whom Hunter Biden had attempted to work out numerous deals. Chinese state-run media named Ye in an alleged corruption case in 2018, and China allowed CEFC to go bankrupt.
