Did you think Mitch McConnell wasn't ass deep in Russian shit?

Ukrainian-born billionaire Len Blavatnik, who holds dual U.S.-U.K. citizenship, used to be a fairly run-of-the-mill campaign contributor, donating relatively modest amounts in a bipartisan fashion — and then the 2016 election cycle hit.

Beginning in 2015, Blavatnik lavished contributions on Republicans, with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell alone on the receiving end of $3.5 million between 2015 and 2017.

  The Intellectualist

Yeah, who else? Lindsey Graham wouldn't be one, would he? How about Chuck Grassley?  Orrin Hatch?

Blavatnik, whose family emigrated to the U.S. in the late 1970s, is a longtime business associate of Russian oligarchs Oleg Deripaska and Viktor Vekselberg, both of whom have ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

And the Trump campaign.

Along with McConnell, Republican Senators Marco Rubio and Lindsey Graham received hefty sums from Blavatnik as well.

Well, well, well.

Apparently, this is old news, but I'm just coming to it.

This column originally published December 15, 2017

[...]

As Special Counsel Robert Mueller's team probes deeper into potential collusion between Trump officials and representatives of the Russian government, investigators are taking a closer look at political contributions made by U.S. citizens with close ties to Russia.

Buried in the campaign finance reports available to the public are some troubling connections between a group of wealthy donors with ties to Russia and their political contributions to President Donald Trump and a number of top Republican leaders. And thanks to changes in campaign finance laws, the political contributions are legal. We have allowed our campaign finance laws to become a strategic threat to our country.

[...]

Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., the ranking Democratic leader on the House Intelligence Committee, told ABC News in September: "Unless the contributions were directed by a foreigner, they would be legal, but could still be of interest to investigators examining allegations of Russian influence on the 2016 campaign. Obviously, if there were those that had associations with the Kremlin that were contributing, that would be of keen concern."

Under federal law, [foreign] nationals are barred from contributing directly or indirectly to political campaigns in local, state and federal elections.

  Dallas News

And, as we just saw, that's being challenged in the courts.

McConnell surely knew as a participant in high level intelligence briefings in 2016 that our electoral process was under attack by the Russians. Two weeks after the Department 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, McConnell'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 former FBI Director James Comey publicly testified before the House Intelligence Committee about Russia's interference in the election.

[...]

In total, Blavatnik, Intrater, Shustorovich 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.

[...]

Even if the donations by the four men associated with Russia ultimately pass muster with Mueller, one still has to wonder: Why did GOP PACs and other Trump-controlled funds take their money? Why didn't the PACs say, "Thanks, but no thanks," like the Republicans said to Shustorovich in 2000? Yes, it was legal to accept their donations, but it was incredibly poor judgment.

[...]

And consider Steve Mnuchin, Trump's campaign finance chairman. Could he have known that the Trump Victory Fund, jointly managed by the Republican National Committe and Trump's campaign, took contributions from Intrater and Kukes? Mnuchin owned Hollywood financing company RatPac-Dune with Blavatnik until he sold his stake to accept Trump's appointment as the Treasury secretary.

Jesus. The whole lot of them.

The contributions are legal because the Supreme Court's 2010 ruling, Citizens United, and several subsequent decisions, allowed American corporations and citizens to give unlimited amounts of money to PACs and non-profit 501c4 organizations, regardless of how they make their money, where they make their money, or with whom they make their money. The only caveat is that PACs and non-profits cannot coordinate their activities with the political candidates they support.

The man who led the winning fight for Citizens United was David Bossie, president of the conservative non-profit since 2001. In 1996, Bossie was hired by Republican Rep. Dan Burton to lead an investigation into President Bill Clinton's campaign fundraising. Burton fired him 18 months later for manipulating recordings of conversations among law officials and Webb Hubbell, a Clinton confidant who resigned as associate attorney general and pleaded guilty to tax fraud during the Whitewater investigation. CNN reported at the time that Newt Gingrich, who was speaker of the House, called Bossie's tampering with the Hubbell recordings an embarrassment to the Republicans.

Bossie served as Trump's deputy campaign chairman.

[...]

The changes to our campaign finance laws created an avenue for Russia to try to influence our elections. There are holes in our firewall and they aren't on the internet.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 12/11:



Oh, yeah.  There's dirty Russian money in Hatch's coffers.