We Have A Traitor In The White House... And Then There's The NRA, A Russian Front Operation!

In the interview above on CNN, you can watch Carl Bernstein explaining why Trump is "unravelling both factually and also temperamentally... [Trump] recognizes that there is, in this whistleblower's documents terrible evidence of the president's corruption, of his willingness to undermine the free electoral system in this country, to involve foreign powers in our election..."

The Washington Post reported that over 300 former national security and foreign policy officials have signed a statement warning that President Trump’s actions regarding Ukraine are a profound national security concern. They served both Democratic and Republican administrations and all support an impeachment inquiry by Congress to determine the facts. "To be clear, we do not wish to prejudge the totality of the facts or Congress' deliberative process. At the same time, there is no escaping that what we already know is serious enough to merit impeachment proceedings."

Trump may have changed his endless screeches of "No Collusion! No Collusion!" to "No Pressure! No Pressure!" but his NRA allies are drowning in collusion, as Mark Maremont and Julie Bykowicz of the Wall Street Journal pointed out yesterday. First off, the NRA "paid for lodging and travel of Russian nationals throughout 2015 and 2016, as part of a relationship that allowed foreign actors looking to influence the U.S. election, including now-convicted Maria Butina, to infiltrate the gun-rights group." Secondly, "NRA leaders traveled to Moscow in December 2015 partly on the NRA’s dime, even though some went there to pursue their own personal business opportunities. This raises questions... about whether they violated laws on how nonprofit funds can be used. The trip to Moscow gave Russians an opening to the organization as the election was ramping up, as well as access to other events involving Republican party leaders."

All this comes from a well-documented, 76-page report published by Senate Finance Committee Democrats, led by Ron Wyden (D-OR).

Looking At Gun Legislation by Nancy Ohanian

The Democrats’ report also documents a parallel effort by then-Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak to build relationships with NRA officers. It says the NRA delegation in Moscow met with more senior officials than previously known, including multiple oligarchs close to President Vladimir Putin, two sanctioned individuals, and a person Ms. Butina claimed was Mr. Putin’s campaign manager.

Ms. Butina, a Russian gun enthusiast, was sentenced to prison in April after pleading guilty to conspiring to influence U.S. politics. She and a Russian official named Alexander Torshin helped organize the 2015 Moscow trip and developed close relationships with NRA leaders, the report says.

As a nonprofit organization, the NRA is not supposed to use its funds for insiders’ personal benefit. The NRA already is being buffeted by allegations of spending abuses and cozy vendor dealings that have benefited CEO Wayne LaPierre and other top officials or their family members.

The Moscow travel “was an official trip undertaken so NRA insiders could get rich-- a clear violation of the principle that tax-exempt resources should not be used for personal benefit,” said Sen. Ron Wyden, of Oregon, one of the Democrats who has been probing the NRA’s ties to Moscow.

The report calls on Congress to “explore options to reform tax-exempt laws to protect against foreign threats,” but it is unlikely to provoke any immediate legislative impact. Republicans hold a majority of Senate seats, and the party has expressed its continued support of the NRA and has shown little interest in tightening restrictions on tax-exempt organizations.

The Democrats’ report includes new details about the relationship between the NRA and the Russian nationals, pushing back on the gun group’s early assertions that it was not working with them in an official way. The report documents formal communications with the Russian nationals and details how NRA funds ended up in a shell company set up by Ms. Butina to reimburse her for costs associated with the 2015 Moscow trip.

The gun group’s leaders introduced the Russian nationals to Republican Party leaders at its annual meetings and board meetings and helped them gain access to other conservatives at events such as the National Prayer Breakfast, the report says.

“NRA resources appear to have been used to pay for membership and registration fees to third-party events for the Russian nationals as well as to arrange for transit to and lodging for many of those events throughout 2015 and 2016,” the report says.

The report suggests at least somebody associated with the NRA had misgivings about Ms. Butina. After she was introduced to Donald Trump Jr. at the 2016 NRA annual meeting, this person texted the younger Mr. Trump: “I understand that someone introduced a Russian gal to you this week. I’ll fill you in this week but I would steer clear if she tries to reach out to you.”

The previously undisclosed text message was provided by the NRA, the report says, adding that the group didn’t identify the sender or respond to other questions about the message.

A spokesman for Donald Trump Jr. declined to comment.

The new report digs into the origins of the December 2015 NRA trip to Moscow, and what happened afterward. Although the NRA has claimed the members who traveled to Russia were not authorized to do so in an official capacity, the Democrats’ report provides evidence to the contrary.

The report says NRA then-President Allan Cors withdrew from the trip, but wrote Mr. Torshin, the Russian official, on his NRA letterhead designating others as representing “the NRA and our five million members.”

After the Treasury Department cautioned then-NRA Vice President Pete Brownell against meeting with U.S.-sanctioned Russians while abroad, the compliance director of Mr. Brownell’s private company assured him such meetings would be permissible because “he planned to do so as part of a cultural exchange in his official capacity as a member of the NRA’s delegation.”

Mr. Brownell agreed to go on the trip only because his gun-retail operation, Brownells Inc., had business interests in Russia, the report alleges. “I am not interested in attending if just an nra trip,” Mr. Brownell wrote his compliance director, saying the trip was “an opportunity to be hosted in Russia to broaden our business opportunities.”

A representative of Mr. Brownell didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Mr. Brownell and Ms. Butina traveled around Russia together for three days to explore business opportunities before the rest of the NRA delegation arrived in Moscow, the report says.

The Republican rebuttal says Mr. Brownell’s dual-purpose trip “appears to be entirely normal behavior for a CEO of a major firearms retailer, as the facts show Mr. Brownell started his December 2015 trip to Russia for this personal-professional purpose and then concluded it with an NRA-focused goodwill purpose.”

Mr. Brownell initially picked up some of the trip costs, including a $6,000 payment to Ms. Butina’s shell company, and shortly afterward was reimbursed by the NRA, the report says. When the trip came under scrutiny in early 2018, Mr. Brownell repaid $17,000 to the NRA as a way of “getting the trip off the NRA’s books,” Mr. Brownell’s counsel told investigators.

Thoughts And Prayers: The NRA, Russia And Trump... Bonus Track: Ollie North vs Wayne LaPierre

This morning, NPR reporter Tim Zak noted that on the same day Russian spy/saboteur Maria Butina, who has admitted to infiltrating the NRA on behalf of the Kremlin, was sentenced to 18 months in prison, Señor Trumpanzee, on whose behalf the Kremlin sent Butina to work on the NRA, spoke at the NRA convention in Indianapolis.

That the Butina/NRA case is redacted from the Mueller report indicates that the evidence she provided the FBI-- so that her sentence was 18 months rather than 18 years-- is part of the on-going investigation into the NRA. The Kremlin's goal was to exert influence on Trump and the Republican Party through the NRA and a US Attorney for the District of Columbia filing for her sentencing noted that her activities had "tremendous intelligence value" for the Russians along with the potential for "harm to the integrity of the United States’ political processes and internal government dealings, as well as to US foreign policy interests and national security."

The public document-- there is also a sealed one for the judge to see-- states that from 2015 to 2017 Butina was was a Russian agent working with Alexander Torshin, a Russian senator and Putin operative. "Under his direction," the document states, "the defendant provided key information about Americans who were in a position to influence United States politics and took steps to establish an unofficial line of communication between Russia and these Americans."

Butina and Torshin "sought to establish unofficial lines of communication between Russia and Americans having power and influence over U.S. politics and to use those lines of communication for the benefit of the Russian Federation." In April 2015, Butina and Torshin traveled to the U.S. to attend the annual NRA convention where she highlighted her experience as a gun-rights advocate in Russia and was introduced to influential members of the Republican Party, "one of whom [Trump? Scott Walker?] announced his Presidential campaign shortly thereafter." In her report, "she emphasized the fact that she was introduced to one of that candidate’s three advisors for matters concerning international politics."

By the end of the year she brought NRA officials to Moscow "as part of the conspiracy’s plan to establish the unofficial channel of communication... [T]he types of services the defendant provided to the Russian Federation are specifically of the type that that Russia would seek to use against the United States, and the United States is a primary target of these types of Russian operations. Such operations can cause great damage to our national security by giving covert agents access to our country and powerful individuals who can influence its direction."

Butina had access to high-level donors to the NRA, to advisors to candidates "and sometimes to candidates themselves." Her work "involved building a rolodex of and information about powerful people who had, or were likely to get, access to and influence over the next presidential administration." According to the memo, Butina told Torshin that she was using her contacts in Trump's circle to help vet his secretary of state pick, that she "provided [Torshin] with the name of an individual she claimed was being considered for secretary of state... asked [him] to seek the input of the Russian government on the name she provided and told him, 'our opinion will be taken into consideration' in the United States." And Trump's choice for Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, just happened to be... Putin's first choice as well. What a coinky-dink!



Last night, Mark Maremont, writing for the Wall Street Journal, didn't have anything to say about the Russian infiltration of the NRA but instead reported on petty NRA internal politics and leaders stealing petty cash from the organization. Wayne LaPierre is now at war with Oliver North. LaPierre told the NRA's board of directors he's "being extorted and pressured to resign by the organization’s president, Oliver North, over allegations of financial improprieties," not over the NRA's massive money laundering operation for the Kremlin on behalf of the Trump campaign but over LaPierre's spiffy $200,000 wardrobe.

In a letter sent to NRA board members late Thursday afternoon, Mr. LaPierre, the group’s CEO and executive vice president, said he refused the demand. Instead he called on board members to “see this for what it is: a threat meant to intimidate and divide us.”

...The behind-the-scenes brawl is taking place amid the gun-rights group’s big annual meeting, at which President Trump spoke Friday.

Insiders say matters will come to a head by Monday, when the NRA’s full 76-member board is set to meet.

...The dispute pits two high-profile conservative figures against each other. Mr. LaPierre has headed the NRA for close to 30 years. During his tenure, the group shifted from being a grass-roots organization to a nationally powerful advocacy organization with strong political sway when it comes to its core gun-rights message.

Mr. North is a conservative folk hero from his tenure in the 1980s on the National Security Council and his role in the Iran-Contra scandal. He became NRA president a year ago as the group searched for a higher-profile figure as its finances sagged after Mr. Trump’s election eased concerns about more gun regulations under another Democratic administration.

The NRA president must stand for reelection every year, but in recent years most presidents have served for two years. Mr. North’s first term is scheduled to end Monday.

I was hoping that on Monday we would find out all about what LaPierre was talking about when he wrote "a devastating account of our financial status, sexual harassment charges against a staff member, accusations of wardrobe expenses and excessive staff travel expenses." LaPierre also claimed that North was extorting him into resigning but that if he continues to support North's own tenure as NRA president, "North stated he could negotiate an 'excellent retirement' package for the NRA chief." Instead, just moments ago, a bitter and angry Oliver North announced-- via letter read to the assembled NRA members-- that LaPierre had won and that he (North) is not being renominated president.

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

Rick Santorum and Russian spy Maria Butina. How bought and sold do you have to be to smile and eagerly pose, openly, no less, with a Russian spy?

After seeing this cuddly photo of these two lowlifes, it can no longer be surprising why Rick Santorum has been one of Traitor Don's biggest TV defenders any time questions about Trump's close relationships with Putin and assorted Russian oligarchs come up. Santorum, in fact, has been nothing short of a Trump surrogate. It might be time to confiscate his American passport and find out if he has a Russian one. While we're at it, do the same with the entire NRA leadership.

Benedict Trump? Individual 1

What's crazier-- Trump's furious twitter stream howling at the moon about his legal jeopardy (above)-- much of which was certainly written by his current lawyer-- or the very timely Trump Code of Dishonor (below). Yesterday, tacitly admitting he directed Michael Cohen to pay off the hookers Trump feared would derail his presidential bid, Individual 1 claimed he did not direct Cohen to break the law while making the payoffs. Trumpanzee tweet: "I never directed Michael Cohen to break the law. He was a lawyer and he is supposed to know the law." At his sentencing session, Cohen attributed his offenses to his "duty to cover up [Trump's] dirty deeds."

Salon published an essay by Lucian Truscott, Maria Butina’s plea is the worst news ever for Trump and Trump is yet to make up what cockamamie story he wants his moron, primarily lo-education white evangelical followers to repeat to each other. The Russian spy plead guilty to engaging in a conspiracy against the U.S. The conspiracy, she admitted, was acting as an illegal foreign agent. Spies gotta spy.

She admitted to acting under the direction of Putin crony Alexander Torshin (who seems to have disappeared a couple of days ago). And here's the bad news for Trump and the Republican Party and the now bankrupt NRA: "She agreed to turn over any evidence of crimes she is aware of, submit a full accounting of her financial assets, sit for interviews with law enforcement (and waive right to counsel during those interviews) and testify before grand juries or in trials in Washington or elsewhere." Presumably she will have the goods on how the Russians laundered tens of millions of dollars into the Trump campaign through the NRA.



Back to Truscott who makes the point that this is the worst news Señor Trumpanzee has faced in months. Before she appeared and 'fessed up Thursday morning, Truscott wrote that she would "admit to conspiring with a Russian official believed to be Alexander Torshin 'to establish unofficial lines of communication with Americans having power and influence over U.S. politics . . . for the benefit of the Russian Federation' (Torshin recently retired from being a deputy director of the Russian central bank). She will also admit to attempting to influence the National Rifle Association and 'Political Party 1,' believed to be the Republican Party. Butina will admit to setting up a meeting between senior officials of the NRA and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in December 2015, in the early months of the Trump campaign. She later reported to Torshin, 'We should let them express their gratitude now, we will put pressure on them quietly later.'

Butina has been indicted by the U.S. Attorney of the District of Columbia, whose investigation was separate from that of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, so you would think that would come as good news to Trump. But Trump’s campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, was also charged by the D.C. U.S. attorney and the U.S.attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia as well, and it is known that Mueller has been cooperating with the U.S. attorneys for D.C., Eastern Virginia, and the Southern District of New York as well. So the fact that Butina is pleading guilty and agreeing to cooperate means that Mueller will be a beneficiary of what she knows about Russian influence in the election of 2016. But even that isn’t the worst news Trump got this week.

No, what Trump should really be worrying about is what Butina’s guilty plea says about his friend Vladimir Putin in Russia. Butina was obviously operating as an intelligence agent of the Russian state, and she wouldn’t be agreeing to plead guilty and cooperate with investigators for Mueller or anyone else if she hadn’t been given the go-ahead by her bosses back in Moscow. Butina faces a sentence of zero to six months under the federal statute she was charged with, and even if she ends up serving time, she will be deported immediately upon her release from prison.

Marina Butina wouldn’t have anyplace to go in Russia if her handlers at the Kremlin hadn’t told her it was okay to tell U.S. prosecutors everything she knows about how her attempt to influence American politics worked from 2015 through 2016. If Putin has decided to cut Butina loose, he’s cutting Trump loose as well.

...With all of the guilty pleas and sentencings in court this week, speculation has been flying that Special Counsel Mueller is reaching the end of his investigation. Don’t believe it. The Washington Post reported this week that 14 Trump friends, associates, and campaign and transition officials had contacts with Russians during the 18 months of his campaign.

Note: Congressman Lieu, a former Air Force JAG officer, serves on the House Judiciary Committee

Every single one of them lied about Russia. They started out by flatly denying they had any contacts at all with any Russians. Then they admitted they had a few, but the contacts were innocuous. When numerous meetings with Russians came to light, they said the contacts didn’t amount to anything. When it turned out the contacts were serious, they began denying there had been any “collusion” with the Russians. Trump made it a refrain, that there had been “no collusion” with Russians during the many times he now had to admit his people had met with them.

Robert Mueller, who has indicted and/or taken guilty pleas from 33 individuals and at least three companies, is turning from indictments of Russians to indictments of their American counterparts. He is focusing his investigation not on “collusion,” but on conspiracy to defraud the United States of America. That’s what he indicted 13 Russians who worked for the Russian troll factory, the Internet Research Agency in St. Petersburg: conspiracy “to defraud the United States by impairing, obstructing, and defeating the lawful functions of the government through fraud and deceit for the purpose of interfering with the U.S. political and electoral processes, including the presidential election of 2016.”

Mueller indicted 12 Russian military intelligence agents for “Conspiracy to Commit an Offense against the United States” by hacking into Democratic Party emails and to “stage releases of the stolen documents to interfere with the 2016 presidential election.” He accused the Russians of using false identities and making false statements to hide their connections to “Russia and the Russian government.”

Mueller has been after a conspiracy between Trump and the Trump campaign and the Russian government all along. And he’s using fraud and conspiracy statutes under the U.S. Code to do it.

Mueller is going to connect Donald Trump and his campaign directly to the government of Vladimir Putin. This week, with the guilty plea of his agent Maria Butina, Putin appears ready to help him.

Robert Mueller has never cared about “collusion.” All he has cared about is breaking the law, which Donald Trump has done plenty of. Trump can tweet all he wants, but he can’t stop the big truck coming straight at him driven by Robert Mueller.