I've become pretty well convinced that one of the big reasons for the deafening silence coming from the Republicans in congress is that the NRA has been a major carrier for channeling Russian money into American politics.
Betsy Woodruff, Daily Beast:
As a result of the deal, Butina will become the first Russian national since the 2016 election to plead guilty to a crime connected to efforts to influence American politics. After running a gun rights organization in Russia, she moved to the United States, where she spent years building relationships with conservatives in hopes of influencing a future Republican presidential administration. During the campaign season, she questioned then-candidate Donald Trump about sanctions; built relationships in the upper echelons of the American gun rights community; arranged for NRA leaders to travel to Moscow; and bragged that she was a channel between Team Trump and the Kremlin, as The Daily Beast first revealed.
She also struck up a romance with Paul Erickson, a longtime Republican gadfly close to NRA leaders. He sang Disney songs with her on camera, called her his “Siberian princess” in emails reviewed by The Daily Beast, and—since her July arrest—has visited her regularly in jail.
In March 2015, according to the plea deal, Butina worked with an unnamed U.S. person—known to be Erickson—to draft a proposal for a diplomatic endeavor. Given the fraught relationships between the governments of Russia and the United States, she “cast herself as a possible unofficial transmitter of communications” between the two countries.
This thing is very deep and very wide.
And every day is a new illustration of the immediate need to get a handle on the problems caused by allowing too much money into our political system. Particularly the unregulated dark money that always fucks up a good thing. Always.
Every chapter in the consolidated American Theme Book has a cautionary tale about the shitty things rich people do when they get to thinking they can do whatever the fuck they want because they're rich and they own everything.
I'm gob-smacked thinking the "conservatives" can't quite get their little pea brains to remember the message of every fucking one of those John Wayne movies they say they love so much.
Suddenly, all these idiots are siding with bosses paying Liberty Valance and Santa Ana and Ned Pepper.
Anyway -
45* kept saying he was really rich, and didn't need anybody's help financing his campaign, but we knew all along that 1) he's not as rich as he claims, and 2) his disclosure forms were always a little fuzzy, never really divulging where the money came from during his run in the primaries.
And we can leave aside the fact that the Press Poodles gave him many millions in unearned media, cuz that only gets him so far.
And I'm not taking about the RNC raising and spending a jillion dollars after he got the nomination.
The efforts on his behalf came from people and places of very dubious repute, and so the money that went into those efforts is (and has to be) invisible.
But anyway again, I also like thinking about the turnaround where Ms Butina is concerned. Most people want to be released on bail while they maneuver their defense. Maria Butina knows she'll need protection from her "friends" for the rest of her life - so the greatest threat Mueller can make against her is to let her out of jail. And that's kinda fun.
Also fun is the thought of the NRA going into austerity mode, possibly because all that Russian money dried up - kinda sudden-like.
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