skews13
Diamond Member
- Mar 18, 2017
- 10,746
- 14,389
- 2,415
Russian mob figure Oleg Deripaska and Right-wing criminal Mitch McConnell
According to Unger, the Russians had their claws deep into the Republican Party by 2014:
Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, who had hired former senator and Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole as a lobbyist in 2005, later tried, unsuccessfully, to woo Senator John McCain, the GOP presidential nominee in 2008. Russian conglomerate Alfa paid nearly $2 million in lobbying fees to Barbour Griffith & Rogers, the lobbying firm cofounded by former Mississippi governor Haley Barbour.
Similarly, in 2014, former Senate majority leader Trent Lott (R-MS) and former senator John Breaux (D-LA) became the main lobbyists for Gazprombank, a subsidiary of Russia’s largest supplier of natural gas. More recently, in 2016, millions of dollars in Russian money was funneled to Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell and other high-profile Republicans to finance GOP senatorial candidates. (My emphasis.)
Foreign nationals are prohibited from contributing to Senate races, but, according to the Dallas Morning News, during the 2015–16 election season, Ukrainian-born oligarch Leonard “Len” Blavatnik, who has British-American dual citizenship, put a small fraction of his $20 billion fortune into GOP Senate races. McConnell, who took $2.5 million for his GOP Senate Leadership Fund from two of Blavatnik’s companies, was the leading recipient. (My emphasis.) Others included political action committees for Senator Marco Rubio, Senator Lindsey Graham, Ohio governor John Kasich, and Arizona senator John McCain.

Why is McConnell Getting Away with the Deripaska Scandal?
Not since the days of Joseph McCarthy has a member of the Senate been as recklessly irresponsible as Mitch McConnell. Not since the Gilded Age in the late 19th century has anyone in Congress been as corrupt as Mitch McConnell. Not since the dark days...
www.dailykos.com
This will be a priority for the new year, hanging this around McConnells neck often and repeatedly.