The truth is worse than that. It’s bad enough that a top FBI official got involved unpleasantly, for cash, in the internal politics of an American ally. This column can report that what McGonigal did on that fateful trip to Albania was considerably worse than the federal authorities or media have admitted. High-level Albanian sources who witnessed McGonigal’s appalling conduct while he was in that country recount that the FBI senior official worked a shakedown operation on wealthy Albanians for personal profit.

McGonigal told successful Albanians, not all of whom were in the good graces of the Rama government, that they were facing imminent U.S. sanctions, which would destroy their businesses, seize their bank accounts, and end their foreign travel. However, McGonigal could fix this problem for a modest fee of a few million dollars. The message was clear: Pay me or I will destroy your life. The worried Albanians took this threat seriously, given McGonigal’s FBI position, and many of them paid up. Some paid “only” 3 million euros. Others paid much more.

[This comes at a very bad time for the FBI. They have spent the last several years fueling a social panic over “disinformation,” only to apparently miss one of their top counterintel officials selling access to the sanctions system. Be sure to read it all, and let’s hope House Republicans are reading it too. — Ed]