ProPublica details what can only be characterized as a multi-year, multinational scheme to use laundered Russian organized crime money to turn stalwart conservative organizations like the NRA into useful idiots or willing accomplices in Putin’s efforts to seize the US government for his own ends:
As the Spanish police investigated the presence of a notorious Russian organized crime group on the resort island of Mallorca in 2012, they realized that a key figure described by some of the suspects as their “godfather” was a powerful Moscow politician: Alexander Torshin…
Now, Torshin, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, has reemerged as a potentially important figure in special prosecutor Robert Mueller’s inquiry into suspected Russian support for the campaign of President Donald Trump.
Yesterday, McClatchy Newspapers reported that the FBI is investigating whether Torshin, now a deputy governor of Russia’s central bank, funneled money to the National Rifle Association that was subsequently spent in support of the Trump campaign. The NRA reported spending $30 million on advertisements and other aid to Trump, part of a record $55 million that the group spent during the 2016 campaign cycle, according to the McClatchy story.
It is illegal for foreign groups and individuals to contribute directly or indirectly to political campaigns in the United States...
In congressional testimony released publicly Thursday, Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS, the research firm whose investigative “dossier” in the Trump-Russia affair has caused considerable controversy, told the House Intelligence Committee that the Russian connections to the NRA were suspicious.
“It appears the Russians, you know, infiltrated the NRA,” Simpson said, according to a published transcript. “And there is more than one explanation for why. But I would say broadly speaking, it appears that the Russian operation was designed to infiltrate conservative organizations.” (emphasis added)
How aware is NRA leadership of where their vacation fund came from? And did they know what it was intended to purchase? Well, it seems they sure as hell did:
In March 2014, the U.S. government sanctioned Dmitry Rogozin—a hardline deputy to Vladimir Putin, the head of Russia’s defense industry and longtime opponent of American power—in retaliation for the invasion of Crimea and eastern Ukraine.
Eighteen months later, the National Rifle Association, Donald Trump’s most powerful outside ally during the 2016 election, sent a delegation to Moscow that met with him.
Which raises the question: Why was the NRA meeting with Putin’s deputy in the first place?
The NRA had previously objected to the parts of the U.S. sanctions regime that blocked Russian-made guns from import into the United States. But curiously, David Keene, the former NRA president and current board member who was on the Moscow trip, insisted the meeting with the high-ranking member of the Kremlin government had nothing whatsoever to do with geopolitics.
“Rogozin is chairman of the Russian Shooting Federation and his Board hosted a tour of Federation HQ for us while we were there,” Keene told The Daily Beast. “It was non-political. There were at least 30 in attendance and our interaction consisted of thanking him and his Board for the tour.” (emphasis added)
And if you believe that line from Keene, I would be happy to speak to you about investing in a time-share joint venture in Vladivostok.
How far back does this Putin/Russian organized crime connection go for Trump? Over twenty years:
Torshin also did business and communicated with other suspected Taganskaya figures, according to the case file. On July 12, 2013, an FBI agent working on organized crime issues at the U.S. embassy in Madrid provided Spanish investigators with a memorandum on the Taganskaya gang, including figures identified by Spanish documents as associates of Torshin. The memo shows that the FBI had been tracking the Russian group since the 1990s.
The FBI described the Taganskaya mob’s involvement in illicit corporate “raids” in Russia and suspected money laundering in New Jersey, according to the memo. It also says that a Taganskaya figure described by the Spaniards as an associate of Torshin “may have been running financial operations for deceased thief-in-law Vyacheslav Ivankov” — a notorious mobster who during the 1990s spent time in New York and reportedly lived in Trump Tower for a while. (emphasis added)
When you let yourself be bought by Putin, you damn well stay bought. And Putin has been cashing out his investments in a big way of late.
Putin isn’t playing.