Tuesday, January 23, 2018

NRA’s Ties To Putin Allies Go Back Years

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/nras-ties-to-putin-allies-go-back-years
"The FBI is probing whether a Russian banker with Kremlin ties illegally funneled money to the NRA in a bid to help Donald Trump’s presidential candidacy, McClatchy reported Thursday. There’s already a lot of reporting out there on the unlikely ties between the gun group and right-wing Russians. The banker at the center of the probe, Alexander Torshin (pictured), is a lifetime NRA member who’s spent years attending the group’s events and amassing a circle of influential American conservative friends. Several of those American conservatives have attended events organized by a Russian gun-rights group that Torshin helped launch. It’s also worth noting that the NRA’s dark money arm spent more on the 2016 election than did any other dark money group. It spent three times as much in support of Trump as it did for Mitt Romney in 2012, despite the group’s antipathy to President Obama. Here, in chronological order, is what we know on the NRA’s Russian ties"