NRAs Ties To Putin Allies Go Back Years
By Sam Thielman at Talking Points Memo
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/nras-ties-to-putin-allies-go-back-years
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Here, in chronological order, is what we know on the NRA’s Russian ties:
2011: According to the Washington Post, G. Kline Preston, a lawyer in Nashville, Tenn. with a specialty in Russian affairs, introduces Torshin to David Keene, at the time the president of the NRA and a former head of the American Conservative Union. Torshin,then a senator in the Duma from Putin’s United Russia party, was friends with Mikhail Kalashnikov, the revered inventor of the AK-47. Preston, who did not return TPM’s request for comment, told the Post that “the value system of Southern Christians and the value system of Russians are very much in line.”
November 2012: At Preston’s invitation, Torshin observes the 2012 U.S. elections. Preston told the Post the two men saw violations of U.S. law in the form of Obama signs too close to a polling place. Preston had served as an international observer of the 2011 legislative elections in Russia, and reported that they were fair — a conclusion at odds with that of many international observers.
May 2013: Torshin attends the NRA convention in Houston, where conservative players Sarah Palin, Bobby Jindal, John Bolton, Rick Santorum, Ted Cruz, and Rick Perry address one of the most important blocs in the Republican base.
Summer 2013: According to Spanish newspaper El Pais, Torshin is set to attend a birthday party on the Spanish island of Mallorca for Alexander Romanov, a member of the Moscow-based Taganskaya gang. Torshin, El Pais reported, is believed to be the Taganskaya boss. Twelve Spanish police officers wait for him at the airport and the hotel where he would have stayed, ready to arrest him in connection with money allegedly laundered to buy a hotel in the Spanish vacation spot. But, the newspaper reported, a Russian prosecutor tips Torshin off at the last moment, and he never shows up.
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