New York attorney general seeks to dissolve NRA in suit

[UpInArms]

51. NRA Was 'Foreign Asset' To Russia Ahead of 2016, New Senate Report Reveals

The National Rifle Association acted as a "foreign asset" for Russia in the period leading up to the 2016 election, according to a new investigation unveiled Friday by Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore.

Drawing on contemporaneous emails and private interviews, an 18-month probe by the Senate Finance Committee's Democratic staff found that the NRA underwrote political access for Russian nationals Maria Butina and Alexander Torshin more than previously known — even though the two had declared their ties to the Kremlin.

The report, available here, also describes how closely the gun rights group was involved with organizing a 2015 visit by some of its leaders to Moscow.

Then-NRA vice president Pete Brownell, who would later become NRA president, was enticed to visit Russia with the promise of personal business opportunities — and the NRA covered a portion of the trip's costs.

More at:

https://www.npr.org/2019/09/27/764879242/nra-was-foreign-asset-to-russia-ahead-of-2016-new-senate-report-reveals

The Top Ten Donald Trump Russia Quotes (a Mini-Timeline)

1986: "The Russian market is attracted to me!"

But how did the mutual attraction start? Soviet ambassador Yuri Dubinin sought out Trump on his first day in New York in 1986 and "hooked" him, per his daughter Natalia's personal recollection. It was Dubinin who later planted the idea of a Moscow Trump Tower in Trump's brain and persuaded him to visit Moscow, where he slept in the Lenin suite of a KGB-monitored hotel. Hence the "pee tape" or something like it might very well exist. (*)

1996: "Tremendous financial commitments!" with "almost all of the oligarchs in the room!"

After 20 years of seeking to build a Moscow Trump Tower, it finally seems like a reality when Trump announces a $250 million investment at a 1996 news conference in Moscow, citing "tremendous financial commitments!" An article in the Moscow Times lauds Trump as the city's first grand builder since Stalin. Trump describes one meeting where "almost all of the oligarchs were in the room." Trump would host cocktail parties in Moscow to recruit Russian investors and buyers. Trump would also trademark his name in Russia in 1996. In fact, four of the trademarks were officially renewed the day he was elected president!

2007: "It's ridiculous that I wouldn't be investing in Russia." — Donald Trump, testifying under oath in 2007

Trump also said under oath that there would be a Trump International Hotel and Tower in "Moscow, Kiev, Istanbul, etc., Poland, Warsaw." Trump had been doing major real estate deals with Bayrock, a company whose principals had apparent ties to the Russian mob. Those ties were exposed when Bayrock's director of finance revealed them in a 2010 lawsuit. (**)

2007: Trump launches his Trump Super Premium Vodka brand in Moscow.

2008: "We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia." — Donald Trump Jr., speaking in Moscow, Sept. 15, 2008

2008: "Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets. — Donald Trump Jr., speaking in Moscow, Sept. 15, 2008

2008: According to Felix Sater, while visiting the Kremlin, pampered Ivanka Trump sits and spins in Vladimir Putin's chair! Who does that?

2013: "I've done a lot of business with the Russians." — Donald Trump, Oct. 17, 2013

2013: I have plans for the establishment of business in Russia. Now, I am in talks with several Russian companies to establish this skyscraper. — Donald Trump, Nov. 9, 2013, discussing the Trump Tower Moscow Project in an interview with RT (Russia Today)

2014: We don't rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia. — Eric Trump in 2014, explaining how the Trumps were able to expand their golf holdings during a major financial crisis when American banks refused to make such loans to anyone, much less the Trumps

Anyone reading these quotes would not get the impression that Trump had "nothing to do with Russia," no knowledge or Russia, no dealings with Russia, and no possibility of any deals with Russia whatsoever, as he would later claim.

NOTES

(*) Please see the expanded Timeline for fascinating details about how Trump was recruited by Yuri Dubinin, as witnessed by his daughter Natalia after she picked him up at the airport on his first day in NYC. The Soviet ambassador had her drive him straight from the airport to Trump Tower, making a beeline for the perfect American kompromat. It was Dubinin who first planted the idea of a Moscow Trump Tower in Donald Trump's acquisitive little brain, then invited him to stay (probably for "free&quot in the Lenin suite of a hotel run and monitored by the KGB, complete with cameras, listening devices and other compromising paraphernalia. Politico called Dubinin's offer "a classic cultivation exercise, which would have had the KGB's full support and approval." And it's very interesting, and perhaps not coincidental, that after Trump returned from Russia, he first began to talk about running for president. Was that idea also planted in the Trump brain by Russian operatives skilled in the dark arts of manipulation? Did the KGB start prepping Trump to become Russia's man in the White House more than 30 years ago?