Comments by "" (@DavidJ222) on "Fareed Zakaria: Liberty and law are under attack" video.

  1. GOP Sens. Ron Johnson and Marsha Blackburn, AKA Moscow Marsha, are tied to Russian money and Trump conspiracy theories. Going back to her 2007 meeting with Russian diplomat Igor Matveev, Marsha Blackburn has a more than decade-long history of meeting with Russian nationals on Tennessee soil. At least a dozen Republican congressional campaigns used materials stolen from Democrats by Russian hackers during the 2016 election. Several other Republican campaigns received millions in contributions from an oligarch with close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin. In 2018, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee called on the National Republican Congressional Committee to make a bipartisan pledge not to utilize stolen or hacked information in House elections. After months of negotiations, in September of 2018, House Republicans backed out and refused to sign the pledge. Now we know why Republicans have been hesitant to criticize Trump’s willingness to accept “dirt” on an opposing candidate from a foreign government. Republican lawmakers also spent the 4th of July in Russia seeking "better relations" with a country that interfered in the U.S. presidential election and continues to deny it. Sen. Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.) led the eight-member delegation on a multiday tour of St. Petersburg and Moscow, a trip that included meetings with Russia’s foreign minister and parliamentarians.  This is just more proof that Trump and the GOP have been bought and paid for by the Russians.
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  2. Republican campaign finance reports, which are, available to the public, show connections between a group of wealthy donors with ties to Russia and their political contributions to Trump and a number of top Republican leaders. And thanks to changes in campaign finance laws, the political contributions are legal. Bottom line,  our campaign finance laws are now a threat to our country. Len Blavatnik, isa dual U.S.-U.K. citizen and one of the largest donors to GOP political action committees in the 2015-16 election cycle. Blavatnik's family emigrated to the U.S. in the late '70s from the the Soviet Union and he returned to Russia when the Soviet Union began to collapse in the late '80s. In 2015-16, Blavatnik's political contributions soared as he pumped $6.35 million into GOP political action committees, with millions of dollars going to top Republican leaders including Moscow Mitch, Rubio and Lindsey "Two-faced" Graham. Oleg Deripaska is said to be one of Russian President Vladimir Putin's favorite oligarchs, and he is founder and majority shareholder of Russia's Rusal, the second-largest aluminum company in the world. Blavatnik holds a stake in Rusal with a business partner. Nearly 4% of Deripaska's stake in Rusal is owned by Putin's state-controlled bank, VTB, which is currently under U.S. sanctions. VTB was exposed in the Panama Papersin 2016 for facilitating the flow of billions of dollars to offshore companies linked to Putin. We already know that Manafort, Trump's former campaign manager, began collecting $10 million a year in 2006 from Deripaska to advance Putin's interests with Western governments. Deripaska's name turned up again in an email handed over to Mueller's team by Manafort's attorneys. In the email dated July 7, 2016, just two weeks before Trump accepted the Republican nomination, Manafort asked an overseas intermediary to pass a message on to Deripaska: "If he Deripaska needs private briefings, tell him we can accommodate." Viktor Vekselberg is one of the 10 richest men in Russia. He and long-time business partner Blavatnik hold a 20.5 percent stake in Rusal. Vekselberg has connections to at least two Americans who made significant GOP campaign contributions during the last cycle.  Andrew Intrater, is Vekselberg's cousin. He is also chief executive of Columbus Nova, Renova's U.S. investment arm located in NY.  in January 2017 he contributed $250,000 to Trump's Inaugural Committee. His six-figure gift bought him special access to a dinner billed as "an intimate policy discussion with select cabinet appointees,"  Simon Kukes is an oil magnate who has something in common with Intrater. From 1998 to 2003, he worked for Vekselberg and Blavatnik as chief executive of TNK. In 2016, Kukes contributed a total of $283,000, much of it to the Trump Victory Fund.  In total, Blavatnik, Intrater, and Kukes made $10.4 million in political contributions from the start of the 2015-16 election cycle through September 2017, and 99 percent of their contributions went to Republicans. The common denominator that connects the men is their association with Vekselberg. Moscow Mitch knew from receiving intelligence briefings in 2016 that our electoral process was under attack by the Russians. Two weeks after the Dept of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued a joint statement in October 2016 that the Russian government had directed the effort to interfere in our electoral process, Moscow Mitch's PAC accepted a $1 million donation from Blavatnik's AI-Altep Holdings. The PAC took another $1 million from Blavatnik's AI-Altep Holdings on March 30, 2017, just 10 days after Comey publicly testified before the House Intelligence Committee about Russia's interference in the election.
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  3. Bovine One 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 Leonard "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. Marco Rubio's Conservative Solutions PAC and his Florida First Project received $1.5 million through Blavatnik's two holding companies. Other high dollar recipients of funding from Blavatnik were PACS representing Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker at $1.1 million, Lindsey Graham at $800,000, John Kasich at $250,000 and Arizona Senator John McCain at $200,000.
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  4. Bovine One In 2018, Parnas and Fruman donated directly to Texas GOP Rep. Pete Sessions. Fruman also gave to South Carolina GOP Rep. Joe Wilson and to a joint fundraising committee tied to Florida Gov. Rick Scott in his successful bid for Senate. Both Sessions and Wilson have acknowledged meeting with both men.  Fruman and Parnas also gave to other joint fundraising committees, which drew more GOP lawmakers. FEC records show that 22 other Republicans who were lawmakers at the time received contributions from Fruman, who misspelled his last name as “Furman” in filings in “a further effort to hide the source of the funds and to evade federal reporting requirements,” according to the indictment. Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida received nearly $50,000 from Igor Fruman according to a report by The Miami Herald. Parnas attended fundraisers for DeSantis in 2018 Fruman made many of his donations through the joint fundraising committee “Protect the House,” which House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy helped found for the 2018 cycle. FEC records show that Fruman donated $100,000 to the joint fundraising committee, while Parnas donated $11,000.
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  5. Daisy Elmir 👍 🌼
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