New Report Reveals McConnell And Ryan Took Millions From Russian Oligarch Tied To Putin

"A series of top Republican elected officials have just been exposed for accepting outsized donations from one of the world’s richest men, Leonid “Len” Blavatnik. Blavatnik is a Ukrainian-born businessman whose fortune comes from owning a company purchased by Putin’s Rosneft, the state-run Russian oil company cited in the infamous Russian “pee tape” dossier.

Americans have asked why Congressional Republicans continued to defend President Trump’s secret relationship with Putin and their collision in last year’s elections, and these massive Super PAC donations could help explain why.

The Dallas News just issued a stunning report based on public records recently uncovered by the Democratic Coalition, that the Republican Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and Senate Majority leader McConnell have taken a Putin-connected billionaire Blavatnik’s cash:

Donald Trump and the political action committees for Mitch McConnell, Marco Rubio, Scott Walker, Lindsey Graham, John Kasich and John McCain accepted $7.35 million in contributions from a Ukrainian-born oligarch who is the business partner of two of Russian president Vladimir Putin’s favorite oligarchs and a Russian government bank.

During the 2015-2016 election season, Ukrainian-born billionaire Leonid “Len” Blavatnik contributed $6.35 million to leading Republican candidates and incumbent senators. Mitch McConnell was the top recipient of Blavatnik’s donations, collecting $2.5 million for his GOP Senate Leadership Fund under the names of two of Blavatnik’s holding companies, Access Industries and AI Altep Holdings, according to Federal Election Commission documents and OpenSecrets.org.

Len Blavatnik now owns Warner Group Music and has become a pillar of the Republican Party’s donor class, but many of his billions come from windfall profits on a Russian oil deal personally orchestrated by Vladimir Putin.

These days, Blavatnik is so close to the Trump administration that he recently announced a partnership deal with Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin to finance Hollywood films!

Republicans have reaped a major benefit from Russian oil money for twenty years, since the dark days of Jack Abramoff, whose lobbying scandal led to multiple felony corruption convictions and the GOP losing the House of Representatives.

In the last election, Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Richard Burr (R-NC) received over $8 million dollars from McConnell’s Super PAC in last year’s election. He later became part of Trump’s transition team and is now heading the Senate’s investigation into Russian election interference.

Who can forget that Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan’s Super PAC also benefitted from targeted opposition research hacked by Russians from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee?..."

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http://washingtonjournal.com/2017/08/04/new-report-reveals-mcconnell-ryan-took-millions-russian-oligarch-tied-putin/

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I remember when The Manchurian Candidate was a really scary movie.

Thanks to the greed and ideological blindness of the modern Republican party, now it's just, like, Thursday.

Not a big fan of Ronald Reagan, but he'd be whizzing around his grave like a fidget-spinner if he knew what his party's turned into.

zsomething wrote:I remember when The Manchurian Candidate was a really scary movie.

Jesus, I must be getting old. I remember when The Manchurian Candidate was a really scary book.

"I am you and you are me and what have we done to each other?"
The Keener's Manual

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/ukraine-sabotage-trump-backfire-233446

Donald Trump wasn’t the only presidential candidate whose campaign was boosted by officials of a former Soviet bloc country.

Ukrainian government officials tried to help Hillary Clinton and undermine Trump by publicly questioning his fitness for office. They also disseminated documents implicating a top Trump aide in corruption and suggested they were investigating the matter, only to back away after the election. And they helped Clinton’s allies research damaging information on Trump and his advisers, a Politico investigation found.

A Ukrainian-American operative who was consulting for the Democratic National Committee met with top officials in the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington in an effort to expose ties between Trump, top campaign aide Paul Manafort and Russia, according to people with direct knowledge of the situation.

The Ukrainian efforts had an impact in the race, helping to force Manafort’s resignation and advancing the narrative that Trump’s campaign was deeply connected to Ukraine’s foe to the east, Russia. But they were far less concerted or centrally directed than Russia’s alleged hacking and dissemination of Democratic emails.

Russia’s effort was personally directed by Russian President Vladimir Putin, involved the country’s military and foreign intelligence services, according to U.S. intelligence officials. They reportedly briefed Trump last week on the possibility that Russian operatives might have compromising information on the president-elect. And at a Senate hearing last week on the hacking, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said “I don't think we've ever encountered a more aggressive or direct campaign to interfere in our election process than we've seen in this case.”

There’s little evidence of such a top-down effort by Ukraine. Longtime observers suggest that the rampant corruption, factionalism and economic struggles plaguing the country — not to mention its ongoing strife with Russia — would render it unable to pull off an ambitious covert interference campaign in another country’s election. And President Petro Poroshenko’s administration, along with the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington, insists that Ukraine stayed neutral in the race.

Not even close...but I understand this particular article was shared across the right-wing spectrum to try and diffuse some of the obvious corruption by Drumpf and his gang of cohorts. Did Ukraine interfere in our election? All they apparently did was cooperate with an investigation into Manafort. Good try tho...really.