#MoscowMitch
Moscow Mitch and the Kremlin-owned NRA
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/9/27/1888308/-Moscow-Mitch-and-the-Kremlin-owned-NRA
If Moscow Mitch McConnell truly wants to ditch that nickname, he’s got work to do. A very good start would be to stop blocking the House gun safety bills from coming to the Senate floor. If he doesn’t want to be considered a “foreign asset” of Russia, he needs to prove he’s not beholden to the NRA—which is definitely a foreign asset of Russia.
That’s according to a new Senate investigation spearheaded by Democrat Ron Wyden from Oregon. An 18-month probe by the Democratic staff of the Finance Committee, where he’s ranking member, found that “the NRA underwrote political access for Russian nationals Maria Butina and Alexander Torshin more than previously known—even though the two had declared their ties to the Kremlin.”
The NRA knew that Butina and Torshin were Kremlin operatives, and jumped in with both feet. NRA leadership traveled to Moscow in 2015, and when then-NRA Vice President Pete Brownell went to Russia on what was supposedly a private, personal visit to explore business opportunities, the NRA covered some of the costs. The report shows, using contemporaneous emails and interviews, that the NRA was knowingly and purposefully building ties with Russia and with the Kremlin. While Wyden’s focus was the NRA and proving it has been violating its tax-exempt status, the flip side is that Russia used the NRA as another means to infiltrate American politics, specifically the Republican party.
@ScottWalker with arrested Russian nationalist and @NRA lifetime member Maria Butina.