Mod: The Republicans have their Russian paymaster. All they have to do to get his money is betray America.
Is Russian Money Behind Graham's Growing Defense of Trump? (
Investigate Russia.Org link):
The Intellectualist, a left-leaning news aggregator, points out that
Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) has received at least $800,000 in campaign donations from a man with ties to
Putin-allied oligarchs, which could explain why the
Senator has been increasingly supportive of
President Trump lately.
Ruth May, in a piece for the
Dallas Morning News, details the donations from
Len Blavatnik, "one of the largest donors to
GOP political action committees in the 2015-16 election cycle."
Data from the
Federal Election Commission show that
Blavatnik's campaign contributions dating back to 2009-10 were fairly balanced across party lines and relatively modest for a billionaire. During that season he contributed $53,400. His contributions increased to $135,552 in 2011-12 and to $273,600 in 2013-14, still bipartisan. In 2015-16, everything changed.
Blavatnik's political contributions soared and made a hard right turn as he pumped $6.35 million into
GOP political action committees, with millions of dollars going to top Republican leaders including
Sens. Mitch McConnell,
Marco Rubio and
Lindsey Graham.
In 2017, donations continued, with $41,000 going to both
Republican and
Democrat candidates, along with $1 million to
McConnell's
Senate Leadership Fund.
An infographic accompanying May's article notes the following.
Blavatnik contributed $800,000 to the
Security is Strength PAC, associated with
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., via
Access Industries.
Blavatnik and oligarch
Viktor Vekselberg met attending university in
Russia years ago, and together they now own a 20.5% stake in
Rusal, oligarch
Oleg Deripaska's aluminum company.
Further, nearly 4 percent of
Deripaska's stake in
Rusal is owned by
Putin's state-controlled bank,
VTB, which is currently under
U.S. sanctions.
VTB was exposed in the
Panama Papers in 2016 for facilitating the flow of billions of dollars to offshore companies linked to
Putin.
Earlier this year,
The Associated Press reported that
Paul Manafort,
Trump's former campaign manager, began collecting $10 million a year in 2006 from
Deripaska to advance
Putin's interests with Western governments.
Deripaska's name turned up again in an email handed over to
Mueller's team by
Manafort's attorneys.
Vekselberg has connections to at least two
Americans who made significant
GOP campaign contributions during the last cycle. They are among several
Americans who also merit
Mueller's scrutiny.
The first is his cousin
Andrew Intrater, and the second is
Alexander Shustorovich.
Intrater had no significant history of political contributions prior to the 2016 elections. But in January 2017 he contributed $250,000 to
Trump's
Inaugural Committee. His six-figure gift bought him special access to a dinner billed as "an intimate policy discussion with select cabinet appointees."
Alexander Shustorovich, chief executive of
IMG Artists, attempted to give the
Republican Party $250,000 in 2000 to support the
George W. Bush presidential campaign, but his money was rejected because of his ties to the
Russian government, according to Quartz. So why didn't the
Trump team reject
Shustorovich's $1 million check to
Trump's
Inaugural Committee?
Oil magnate
Simon Kukes, who once worked for
Vekselberg and
Blavatnik, also is of interest. In 2016,
Kukes contributed a total of $283,000, much of it to the
Trump Victory Fund. He had no significant donor history before last year's election.
There is no doubt that
Kukes has close ties to the
Putin government. When he left his job as CEO of
TNK in June 2003, he joined the board of
Yukos Oil, which at the time was the largest oil company in
Russia owned by the richest man in
Russia,
Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Four months after
Kukes joined the board, authorities arrested
Khodorkovsky at gunpoint on his private plane in
Siberia on trumped up charges of tax evasion and tapped
Kukes to be CEO.
In total,
Blavatnik,
Intrater,
Shustorovich and
Kukes made $10.4 million in political contributions from the start of the 2015-16 election cycle through September 2017, and 99 percent of their contributions went to
Republicans. With the exception of
Shustorovich, the common denominator that connects the men is their association with
Vekselberg. Experts who follow the activities of
Russian oligarchs told
ABC News that they believe the contributions from
Blavatnik,
Intrater and
Kukes warrant intense scrutiny because they have worked closely with
Vekselberg.
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