The court interpreter accused alongside ex-FBI agent Charles McGonigal of accepting payments from a Russian oligarch isn’t a “traitor” aligned with the Kremlin, his lawyer claimed in court Thursday.

Sergey Shestakov, 69, of Connecticut, and McGonigal, 54, the former special agent In charge of New York FBI counterintelligence, appeared in Manhattan federal court on charges of violating US sanctions and money laundering.

The Justice Department alleged the pair worked for Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska, an aluminum mogul who had been sanctioned by the US in 2018. 

During his tenure at the FBI, McGonigal supervised investigations against Deripaska, and after leaving in 2018, the DOJ said, he and Shestakov, then a court interpreter, accepted payments to get the billionaire off the sanction list and to investigate one of his rival oligarchs. 

Shestakov’s attorney, Rita Glavin, slammed the US Attorney’s Office in court on Thursday, claiming prosecutors painted her client — a former Soviet and Russian diplomat who later became a US citizen — as a Kremlin-loving spy.

“This is simply not true,” she told the court, noting that Shestakov worked for 20 years in America for a company called Media Most, which Glavin hailed as an “enemy of Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin.”   

Glavin — who represented disgraced former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo in his sex-pest case — accused the DOJ of creating a “media frenzy” when it put out a press release portraying Shestakov as “some type of traitor aligned with the Russians in the Kremlin.” 

She also criticized federal agents for arresting her client on a Saturday last month, meaning he was unable to appear before a magistrate judge and make bail until two days later.

This was after he’d already been cooperative with the feds for months, Glavin claimed.

“Mr. Shestakov, who is a good man, was going to spend two days at MDC (Metropolitan Detention Center), in the SHU (Special Housing Unit),” she said.

“They knew darn well he was going to spend two days in jail. And I don’t have to educate your honor on how bad things are at the MDC,” Glavin added, referring to the problem-plagued Brooklyn lockup.

Glavin also demanded that prosecutors get cracking on handing over her client’s discovery, arguing the DOJ has been investigating the case for a year and a half. 

“What intelligence community files have you gone through?” she demanded. “Is it classified information? These are the questions we’re not getting answers to.” 

Seth DuCharme, the attorney for McGonigal , was much more subdued, telling the court that despite a snag with firewalls, “everything’s on track” with reviewing the government’s discovery material. 

The court was also presented with several pieces of evidence to be used in the trial, which include phone messages, drafts of contracts, emails from the defendants discussing Deripaska, financial records and surveillance images showing the defendants meeting with an “Agent 1.” 

Both defendants are due back in court March 9. 

McGonigal also stands accused of taking $225,000 in cash bribes from an unnamed Albanian spy, whom he met with in 2017 when warning the country’s prime minister about awarding oil field drilling licenses to Russian companies.  

Prosecutors allege McGonigal got the spy to serve as a confidential source for a criminal lobbying investigation without ever revealing to intelligence officials his financial connections to the man. 

Despite his ties with Albania’s leadership, which opposes the Russian-led conflict in Ukraine, McGonigal was quick to accept the job from Deripaska, who was sanctioned by the US for allegedly acting on behalf of the Kremlin, the DOJ said.

The sanctions against Deripaska were lifted in 2019, and the Russian billionaire then hired McGonigal and Shestakov to investigate a rival oligarch, according to the feds.

The duo was ultimately indicted in January for conspiring to commit money laundering and violating the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.

McGonigal has denied the allegations and pleaded not guilty. He was released on a $500,000 bond.

McGonigal served the FBI from 1996 until his retirement in 2018, and he played a key role in Robert Mueller’s investigation over the alleged collusion between Russia and Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. 

Last month, The Post reported that McGonigal has recently worked for the Aman Resorts, a five-star hotel owned by Russian billionaire Vladislav Doronin. 

An Aman spokesperson confirmed McGonigal began his tenure last fall, and has since left the company, which opened its first New York property in August on Fifth Avenue.   

A former Aman employee told The Post that it was “very strange” that McGonigal was brought in given reports of his alleged crimes had begun to surface at the time.