A former top FBI official leaked secrets to help a Chinese company—and it ruined a major investigation. That’s what a new government report says about Charles McGonigal, the FBI’s former head of counterintelligence in New York. The Department of Justice’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) just released a report showing how McGonigal tipped off a foreign contact, who passed along that inside information to people under investigation. One of those people escaped arrest and never came back to the United States.
First, let’s back up. Charles McGonigal used to be one of the FBI’s most powerful agents. In 2023, he was sentenced to four years in prison for helping a Russian billionaire dodge U.S. sanctions. But now we know that wasn’t the only thing he did wrong.
According to the new OIG report, McGonigal also leaked secret information about a case involving CEFC, a massive energy company based in China. CEFC had deep connections around the world, including with the United Nations and even with Hunter Biden, the son of former President Joe Biden.
The FBI had been investigating CEFC for years. In 2017, agents were preparing to arrest five people tied to the company. None of this was public. But suddenly, the targets started acting suspicious. One of them, a man named Gal Luft who lived in Maryland, left the country and never came back. According to the report, Luft later told U.S. investigators that he suspected he was a target because of what McGonigal had told someone he knew.
Here’s how it happened. McGonigal had been meeting with an Albanian official, known as “Person B” in the report. McGonigal wasn’t supposed to be sharing information with him. Other FBI agents warned him not to get involved. But McGonigal ignored them. He kept meeting with Person B and even used those meetings to set up connections for personal business deals.
At one point, Person B got invited to a CEFC event in New York. He called McGonigal to ask if he should attend. McGonigal told him to stay in Albania and said something like, “we are ready for them,” hinting that arrests were coming. Person B passed that message along to the CEFC group, without saying it came from McGonigal. That warning caused at least one of the targets to stay out of the country. The FBI then missed its chance to search his home and phone. That was a big loss in a major criminal case.
The report says McGonigal’s actions “undermined the FBI’s integrity” and hurt a multi-year investigation. He used sensitive information not to help national security, but for his own benefit. He even bragged about the information he was giving away, saying later that it was just “bravado.”
The fallout didn’t stop there. One of the CEFC leaders, Patrick Ho, was later arrested and convicted of bribing officials in Africa to get business deals. But the bigger picture is even more troubling. CEFC had paid millions to Hunter Biden and his associates, raising serious questions about foreign influence in American politics. And now we know that while this case was unfolding, a top FBI agent was giving inside tips to people connected to the targets.
The full damage from McGonigal’s leaks may never be known. But one thing is clear: this was a betrayal at the highest level of law enforcement. It wasn’t just one man’s mistake—it was a breakdown in trust that let powerful people walk free. And it raises the question: how many other cases were compromised in the same way?
In a time when Americans are told to trust the system, this case shows what happens when the people in charge break that trust. The truth came out, but only years later. And the people who benefited from McGonigal’s leaks? Some of them are still out there.