for years now.
1. SHORT THREAD re: RELIGIOUS RIGHT'S longstanding courtship of Russia. Sources.
17:04 11/22/2017
The emerging alliance between Putin and Trump’s God squad; The unlikely partnership is years in the making.
https://thinkprogress.org/religious-right-russia-3e80e2ea2e4a/
Reverence for Putin on the Right Buys Trump Cover
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/14/us/politics/putin-trump-conservatives.html?_r=0
The veneration of Mr. Putin helps explain why revelations about Russia’s involvement in the election — including recent reports that members of Mr. Trump’s inner circle set up a meeting at which they expected a representative of the Russian government to give them incriminating information about Hillary Clinton — and Mr. Trump’s reluctance to acknowledge it, have barely penetrated the consciousness of the president’s conservative base.
Guns and religion: How American conservatives grew closer to Putin’s Russia
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-the-republican-right-found-allies-in-russia/2017/04/30/e2d83ff6-29d3-11e7-a616-d7c8a68c1a66_story.html
Growing up in the 1980s, Brian Brown was taught to think of the communist Soviet Union as a dark and evil place.
But Brown, a leading opponent of same-sex marriage, said that in the past few years he has started meeting Russians at conferences on family issues and finding many kindred spirits.
Brown, president of the National Organization for Marriage, has visited Moscow four times in four years, including a 2013 trip during which he testified before the Duma as Russia adopted a series of anti-gay laws.
“What I realized was that there was a great change happening in the former Soviet Union,” he said. “There was a real push to re-instill Christian values in the public square.”
How Russia Became the Leader of the Global Christian Right
While the U.S. passed gay-rights laws, Moscow moved hard the other way.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/02/how-russia-became-a-leader-of-the-worldwide-christian-right-214755
RACHEL MADDOW: Russia makes inroads with American right via guns, religion DURATION 6:10
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/russia-makes-inroads-with-american-right-via-guns-religion-986677827557
Richard Engel, NBC News chief foreign correspondent, and NBC's Kelly Cobiella look at how members of the American political right are building an appreciation for Vladimir Putin through guns and Evangelical Christianity.
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NRA:
The NRA Placed Big Bets on the 2016 Election, and Won Almost All of Them
https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2016/11/the-nra-placed-big-bets-on-the-2016-election-and-won-almost-all-of-them/
Ted Lieu: Story of Link Between Kremlin And NRA Could ‘Get Bigger’
“Follow the money,” Rep. Ted Lieu said of the National Rifle Association’s pro-Trump efforts.
Last Thursday, investigative reporters Peter Stone and Greg Gordon of McClatchy DC Bureau reported what could be another bombshell in the Russia probe: that the FBI is investigating whether a Kremlin-linked banker illegally channeled funds to the National Rifle Association to aid Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.
On Friday, Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.), who sits on the House Judiciary Committee, told me on SiriusXM Progress that the word on Capitol Hill is that the story of a Russia-NRA-Trump link is going to grow.
“FBI counterintelligence investigators have focused on the activities of Alexander Torshin, the deputy governor of Russia’s central bank who is known for his close relationships with both Russian President Vladimir Putin and the NRA,” Stone and Gordon reported being told by two sources familiar with the matter.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/ted-lieu-russia-nra_us_5a64f350e4b0dc592a09dfab
Muellers Probe Is Dangerously Close to a Republican Red Line
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/01/donald-trump-robert-mueller-nra
According to McClatchy D.C., the F.B.I. is investigating whether a top Russian banker with close ties to President Vladimir Putin illegally channeled money through the N.R.A. to bolster Trump’s bid for the White House. The revelation that the special prosecutor might target the gun lobby, arguably the most influential and sacrosanct faction of the Republican Party, could embolden G.O.P. lawmakers to bring a swift end to the Trump-Russia probe and hasten a Mueller ouster. (The N.R.A. did not immediately respond to the outlet’s request for comment.)
... It is unclear when Mueller’s team opened its inquiry, what stage the investigation has reached, or to what extent the F.B.I. can substantiate the money trail. But of the $55 million the N.R.A. spent on the 2016 election, a staggering $30 million was shelled out to the Trump campaign—three times the amount it spent on Mitt Romney in 2012, McClatchy reports.
... As The New York Times reported in December, Erickson sent a May 2016 e-mail to Trump campaign adviser Rick Dearborn with the subject line “Kremlin Connection.” In the e-mail, Erickson reportedly asked Dearborn, and then Senator Jeff Sessions, for advice in setting up a meeting between Trump and Putin and sought to use the annual N.R.A. convention in Kentucky that year to make “first contact.” (Erickson could not be reached by the Times for comment.) While Erickson did not explicitly name Torshin, sources familiar with the situation who spoke to the Times said that the message appeared to refer to the Russian banker.
NRA's 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
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.
(really long)
The Trump-Russia-NRA Connection: Here's What You Need to Know
Did a shadowy Russian banker close to Vladimir Putin illegally give money to the National Rifle Association to support the presidential campaign of Donald Trump? That's the subject of an active FBI investigation, according to an explosive report by McClatchy.
Here's what you need to know:
Unprecedented Trump Support
The National Rifle Association spent tens of millions of dollars backing Trump's presidential bid in 2016. The NRA endorsed Trump in May 2016. And the NRA disclosed it spent at least $30 million on Trump's behalf and attacking Hillary Clinton. That level of support is unprecedented – more than twice what the NRA disclosed it spent on Mitt Romney's 2012 presidential run.
The true sum the NRA spent to install Trump in the White House may be far higher. Campaign finance disclosures do not cover spending on unregulated Internet advertising or voter mobilization; citing two sources close to the gun group, McClatchy suggests the NRA may have spent upwards of $70 million on Trump's presidential bid.
President Trump is clearly indebted: "You came through for me, and I am going to come through for you," Trump promised the NRA at its 2017 convention. "I will never, ever let you down."
Dark Money
In the age of Citizens United and unlimited campaign donations, the NRA has emerged as an important "dark money" hub in Republican politics. Under its tax code designation, the NRA is a "social welfare" organization, largely exempt from disclosing its donors. To skirt disclosure, other big-dollar political players – including a SuperPAC linked to Karl Rove and a "chamber of commerce" controlled by the Koch Brothers – have routinely steered money into the NRA, confident that the gun group's spending will advance the GOP cause.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-trump-russia-nra-connection-heres-what-you-need-to-know-w515615
20:24 1/18/2018
FBI investigating whether Russian money went to NRA to help Trump
The FBI is investigating whether a top Russian banker with ties to the Kremlin illegally funneled money to the National Rifle Association to help Donald Trump win the presidency, two sources familiar with the matter have told McClatchy.
FBI counterintelligence investigators have focused on the activities of Alexander Torshin, the deputy governor of Russia’s central bank who is known for his close relationships with both Russian President Vladimir Putin and the NRA, the sources said.
It is illegal to use foreign money to influence federal elections.
.... Disclosure of the Torshin investigation signals a new dimension in the 18-month-old FBI probe of Russia’s interference. McClatchy reported a year ago that a multi-agency U.S. law enforcement and counterintelligence investigation into Russia’s intervention, begun even before the start of the 2016 general election campaign, initially included a focus on whether the Kremlin secretly helped fund efforts to boost Trump, but little has been said about that possibility in recent months.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/article195231139.html
31. Well, Senator Ben Cardin's been making news.
He is our ranking member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and will become its chair if we get a majority in November. So, obviously, one of the Americans Putin is most afraid of.
Cardin and other committee Democrats just issued an important call for protecting our democracy that's been taken note of by many, “Putin’s Asymmetrical Assault on Democracy in Russia and Europe: Implications for U.S. National Security.”
If you can't read this article, try opening it in a Chrome incognito window. Or read about it in many other journals.
Senate Report Outlines Playbook to Prevent Future Russian Election Meddling
Conspicuously absent from the report, however, is Republican buy-in.
http://foreignpolicy.com/2018/01/10/senate-report-outlines-playbook-to-prevent-future-russian-election-meddling-trump-elections-congress-europe-putin-senator-cardin-democrats-nato-european-union/
Btw, this is also a big, aggressive political move against the Republicans as more and more of their entanglements with Russia are being uncovered.
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