NRA Heavyweight Wanted Access to Putin: Leaked Email

[MelissaB]

NRA Heavyweight Wanted Access to Putin: Leaked Email

“Impressing the NRA’s Russian hosts is the quickest way to secure a private interview with President Putin,” an organizer of the NRA’s infamous 2015 trip to Moscow wrote.

A former NRA president hoped to win access to Vladimir Putin on a trip to Moscow, according to an email from one of the trip’s organizers. That organizer, Republican operative Paul Erickson, also said the trip could have “enormous diplomatic consequences.” The email, sent in November 2015 and reviewed by The Daily Beast, came just months before the Kremlin’s election meddling went into full gear.

In the email, Erickson wrote that an official with the Russian Central Bank had made a tantalizing, though tentative, offer to former NRA president David Keene: an interview for his newspaper with Russian President Vladimir Putin. At the time, Keene was the opinion editor for The Washington Times, a conservative newspaper. He had previously helmed the NRA, and he maintained close ties with its top officials. And he was one of the small group of people on the trip.

“Impressing the NRA’s Russian hosts is also the quickest way to secure a private interview with President Putin on behalf of David Keene and the Washington Times – a plum that was dangled in front of Keene by Torshin himself visit to Washington, DC,” Erickson wrote. “High stakes all around.”

The NRA’s Russian hosts were a powerful group. Alexander Torshin, who Erickson said had tentatively offered Keene a Putin interview, was a deputy governor at Russia’s powerful central bank at the time. Justice Department prosecutors later alluded to him when they charged Erickson’s girlfriend, Russian gun rights activist Maria Butina, with conspiring to act as an unregistered foreign agent in the U.S. Butina pleaded guilty to the charge last month. Her organization, called The Right to Bear Arms, had helped organize the trip Keene went on.

More: https://www.thedailybeast.com/nra-heavyweight-wanted-access-to-putin-leaked-email

[MelissaB]

1. More

The NRA officials on the trip also met with Dmitry Rogozin, a Putin deputy and prominent figure in the Russian defense industry who is under U.S. sanctions. And they met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, according to The Washington Post.

The Erickson email, which has not been previously quoted, indicates that the NRA officials on the Moscow trip believed they were meeting with Kremlin power players who could influence the country’s president. The existence of this email was first reported by The New York Times.

[dalton99a]

5. +1

[Johnny2X2X]

2. Insane

The NRA trying to get in with a foreign enemy. This is just incredible.

[BigmanPigman]

3. Their days are numbered since Mueller is investigating

them now too. Hang it up NRA!

[stopdiggin]

4. whataboutism

Sitting hear trying to imagine the bloodcurdling screams of protest that we would be hearing if some left leaning civic organization was attempting to insert itself into our country's foreign policy in this manner. (and with a major foreign adversary at that) The mind boggles.

But, you know -- both sides --