Yes, It Tastes Bad After Giving Putin a BJ
This story is from 2008, and it seems to me that the issue is not whether or not Trump and his minions were compromised by Putin, but whether the whole damn Republican Party is.
Seriously this ain’t new information, there has been reporting about this since 2008:
McCain’s Kremlin Ties
He may talk tough about Russia, but John McCain's political advisors have advanced Putin's imperial ambitions.
By Mark Ames and Ari Berman October 1, 2008
Over the course of the presidential campaign, John McCain has repeatedly emphasized his willingness to stand up to Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin as proof that only he possesses the fortitude and judgment to become the next leader of the free world. In his acceptance speech at the Republican convention, McCain lashed out at Putin and the Russian oligarchs, who, "rich with oil wealth and corrupt with power…[are] reassembling the old Russian Empire." McCain rushed to publicly support the Georgian republic during its recent conflict with Russia and amplified his threat to expel Moscow from the G-8 club of major powers. His running mate, Sarah Palin, suggested in her first major interview that the United States might have to go to war with Russia one day in order to protect Georgia–the kind of apocalyptic scenario the United States avoided during the cold war.
Yet despite McCain’s tough talk, behind the scenes his top advisers have cultivated deep ties with Russia’s oligarchy–indeed, they have promoted the Kremlin’s geopolitical and economic interests, as well as some of its most unsavory business figures, through greedy cynicism and geopolitical stupor. The most notable example is the tale of how McCain and his campaign manager, Rick Davis, advanced what became a key victory for the Kremlin: gaining control over the small but strategically important country of Montenegro.
According to two former senior US diplomats who served in the Balkans, Davis and his lobbying firm, Davis Manafort, received several million dollars to help run Montenegro’s independence referendum campaign of 2006. The terms of the agreement were never disclosed to the public, but top Montenegrin officials told the US diplomats that Davis’s work was underwritten by powerful Russian business interests connected to the Kremlin and operating in Montenegro. Neither Davis nor the McCain campaign responded to repeated requests for comment. (Davis’s extensive lobbying work, especially on behalf of collapsed mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, has already attracted critical media scrutiny.)
….
Putin’s Ukrainian proxies were also in trouble. Shortly after the Orange Revolution, a murder investigation was launched against the country’s richest oligarch, Rinat Akhmetov, Yanukovich’s main backer. Akhmetov fled the country. In exile in Monaco, he turned to Davis’s business partner, Paul Manafort–the second name in the lobbying firm Davis Manafort. An old GOP hand, Manafort, like Davis, had played a key role in Dole’s failed 1996 presidential run and had worked for dictators like Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines and Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire. Akhmetov initially hired Manafort to improve the image of his beleaguered conglomerate, SCM, but soon Manafort’s role shifted to helping Yanukovich.
…..
Publicly McCain and his campaign chief’s lobbying firm were on opposite sides. In 2005 McCain had nominated Orange Revolution hero Yushchenko for the Nobel Prize, and that spring he’d honored Yushchenko in the headquarters of the International Republican Institute, whose board McCain has chaired since 1993. But behind the scenes the former head of IRI’s Moscow office, Philip Griffin, was recruited by Manafort to work on Yanukovich’s campaign against Yushchenko. Davis Manafort’s work was considered so detrimental to US interests that a National Security Council official called McCain’s office to complain, according to the New York Times. The McCain campaign denies receiving the NSC complaint.
While I find this irony delicious, and have spent a few hours bathing in the schadenfreude, it appears to me that Republican ties to Davis Manafort are a national security disaster that could, and should, be used to impeach the credibility of ALL Republicans on national defense.
Between Putin and the Saudis, it appears to me that all of them are basically on a foreign payroll.
