The Russian side of the McGonigal scandal is the tame one. Although the media never paid it sufficient attention, the accused is facing more federal charges stemming from McGonigal’s taking $225,000 from a former Albanian intelligence officer in 2017, when the accused was still an FBI official. This is fundamentally a Balkan spy-meets-corruption scandal, and that wasn’t addressed by McGonigal’s guilty plea this week.

The Balkan angle here is unpleasant and raises disturbing questions. As the New York Times put it gently this week, the accused “befriended the prime minister of Albania, Edi Rama, and used his position to drum up foreign business for his associates, according to the indictment filed against him in Washington. On one occasion, McGonigal opened an FBI investigation into a lobbyist for the Albanian prime minister’s main political rival.”

The truth, as The Examiner reported on multiple occasions , is considerably more troubling than that. In exchange for cash, McGonigal became the “heavy” for Rama and his Socialist government, threatening their political rivals and shaking down Albanian oligarchs for cash in exchange for protection from U.S. sanctions. This was a secret, mafia-like extortion ring run by a top FBI official, which netted tens of millions of dollars, according to multiple sources. Such underworld tactics are hardly unexpected since, during the decadelong rule of Rama and his Socialists, little Albania has become Europe’s epicenter for the global illegal narcotics trade, with the tacit support of the Biden State Department.

[McGonigal still has another case to settle with the DoJ, this one, and supposedly plea talks are underway. John thinks the DoJ may be more motivated to settle than McGonigal, and that Congress will need to intervene. He’s probably right. He’s been following this case for months, at least, and knows just how embarrassing it would be to have it break out into the open. — Ed]