Web of elite Russians met with NRA execs during 2016 campaign
Source: McClatchyDC
BY PETER STONE AND GREG GORDON
ggordon@mcclatchydc.com
June 11, 2018 05:00 AM
WASHINGTON - Several prominent Russians, some in President Vladimir Putins inner circle or high in the Russian Orthodox Church, now have been identified as having contact with National Rifle Association officials during the 2016 U.S. election campaign.
The contacts have emerged amid a deepening Justice Department investigation into whether Russian banker and lifetime NRA member Alexander Torshin illegally channeled money through the gun rights group to add financial firepower to Donald Trumps 2016 presidential bid.
Other influential Russians who met with NRA representatives during the campaign include Dmitry Rogozin, who until last month served as a deputy prime minister overseeing Russias defense industry, and Sergei Rudov, head of one of Russias largest philanthropies, the St. Basil the Great Charitable Foundation. The foundation was launched by an ultra-nationalist ally of Russian President Putin.
The Russians talked and dined with NRA representatives, mainly in Moscow, as U.S. presidential candidates vied for the White House. Now U.S. investigators want to know if relationships between the Russian leaders and the nations largest gun rights group went beyond vodka toasts and gun factory tours, evolving into another facet of the Kremlins broad election-interference operation.
Read more: https://www.mcclatchydc.com/latest-news/article212756749.html
lagomorph777
(30,613 posts)Fred Sanders
(23,946 posts)cash to be spent on domestic politics, by the hundreds of millions per year...just part of the immense legalized political corruption in America, aid d and abetted by the silent corporate media...please look away.
Botany
(70,523 posts)End of story.
Achilleaze
(15,543 posts)repubes like to pretend that they are "conservative" and "patriotic" - but that is just utter bullshit hypocrisy.
Berlin Expat
(950 posts)register as a foreign lobbying organization.
lastlib
(23,251 posts)Hang that on 'em like a cement block!
empedocles
(15,751 posts)FailureToCommunicate
(14,014 posts)because he knows that behind every tree is a patriot with a gun"
Who's laughing now you NRA/Russian patsy?
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ehrnst
(32,640 posts)movement, of "the people."
Yep.