"This is How the Russians Got to Lindsey Graham"

[mtnsnake]

"Some have suggested that Russia has kompromat on Graham. I don’t deny that’s possible. But there is information in the public record that shows a blatant financial conduit from the Kremlin and Russian oligarchs to Graham’s coffers.

The single largest donor to Lindsey Graham’s doomed 2016 presidential run was Access Industries. The company paid $800,000 to Graham’s “Security is Strength” PAC and $32,000 to Graham’s campaign. Most of the other donors were conservative groups, banks, hedge funds, and defense contractors, all typical fare. But Access Industries was unique, and it was his number one supporter.

Access Industries is a multinational conglomerate focused on “natural resources and chemicals, media and telecommunications, technology and e-commerce, and real estate sectors worldwide,” according to Bloomberg. It is privately owned by its founder, Leonard “Len” Blavatnik, who was born a Russian citizen in Soviet Ukraine. He lives in London and his company is based in New York City. According to Forbes, he is worth $17.8 billion, making him the third richest person in the UK and the 27th richest person in the world.

Blavatnik is deeply tied to the Russian oligarchy and top-level power structure in at least two ways that connect to the story of how Russia helped Trump become president."

Entire article tying Graham to Russia is here:
https://marcbelisle.com/2018/10/03/this-is-how-the-russians-got-to-lindsey-graham/

[dalton99a]

1. Kick

In 2013, Blavatnik made $7 billion selling his share in Russian-UK joint petroleum company, TNK-BP. The buyer was Rosneft. That was after Russia, under the Vladimir Putin regime, nationalized Rosneft, making it a Russian state-owned asset. When the purchase was completed, Putin essentially became the wealthiest and most powerful oil baron in the world.

So, Blavatnik made Putin super-powerful, Putin paid Blavatnik a cool 7 billion, and Blavatnik paid Lindsey Graham $832,000 while he ran for president against Trump. Were they covering all their bases by funding multiple candidates? Or was Graham merely a foil? Meant to crowd out the field to give Trump breathing room and then bow out once Trump took off? Was the enmity between Trump and Graham during the election all an act?

The second connection is through Blavatnik’s media holdings. Shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Blavatnik and his fellow billionaire friend Viktor Vekselberg formed an investment group called Renova. Renova then joined with Alfa Group to form a conglomerate called AAR Ventures.

Alfa Group is a holding company privately owned by Russian and Israeli billionaire, Mikhail Fridman. Christopher Steele’s infamous MI6 dossier on Trump featured Fridman prominently. In 2017, Fortune argued that the dossier was believable because,

“The dossier paints a picture of a long-standing symbiotic relationship between Alfa Group and the Russian leader. More recently, the dossier claims, Alfa owners Mikhail Fridman and Pyotr Aven have provided Putin with valuable information through their own network of business contacts in the U.S., valued particularly because of the conflicting signals Putin was getting from his diplomats and spies regarding the success of the alleged operation.”

[Samspadesnark]

16. Best questions of the day

"Or was Graham merely a foil? Meant to crowd out the field to give Trump breathing room and then bow out once Trump took off? Was the enmity between Trump and Graham during the election all an act?"

If the answers are yes, then there will be emails to prove it – just in case Graham ends up being investigated for taking laundered NRA and/or laundered Russian money.

My hunch tells me Putin has chosen and compromised a lot of comrades, on both sides of the aisle.

[dalton99a]

17. +1. And you can tell that McCain's death was a relief to him

[BigmanPigman]

22. That makes sense...

If he took Russian $$$ and knew he was compromised why was he anti-tRump for so long after the campaign and then change. It isn't as if he one day wasn't guilty of taking Russian $$$ and the next day he was. That doesn't add up, he was guilty of this crime the whole time.

[SuprstitionAintthWay]

31. More likely Russia was betting on multiple horses... both kompromated?

Last edited Sun Oct 7, 2018, 11:08 PM - Edit history (1)

than that Lindsay was intended to water down the primary votes against Trump. In mid 2015 nobody, not even Moscow, believed that Trump would really wind up president. Not even the deluded narcissist himself believed that.

So, I think it more likely they were just spreading their bets on more than one horse.

The discordant signal working against this whole idea though is that for a year Lindsay was one of only two Repub senators vocally arguing for punishment of Russia for 2016. If he's kompromated, how did that advocacy happen? (Maybe the idea was to first let him establish cred to put him above suspicion?)

That follow-the-big-money trail back to a Putin oligarch sure reads like it's solid on first look.

And if Putin only recently started yanking the reins on him, that could have set off both his sudden TrumpLove and his panicky-looking hysteria.

"Fascinating," is what I'll say for the moment. Let's see if this report proves out under scrutiny.

[UpInArms]

2. Graham is one nasty

Steaming pile of rat crap

[eleny]

3. Up to his ass in oligarch cash

[gademocrat7]

4. Lindsey Graham is a traitor.

[dchill]

19. One among many.

[LiberalArkie]

5. BUT.. he fled the corrupt Russia (with the taxpayers money) and went to capitalist nations like

England and the US.

[EricMaundry]

6. Len Blavatnik owns the Warner Music Group

Which owns Warner Brothers and Atlantic Records.

Len Blavatnik: 'I want to be in the music biz for a very long time' - Music ...
https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/len-blavatnik-i-want-to-be-in-the-music-biz...
Len Blavatnik's Access Industries acquired Warner Music Group for $3.3bn on July 20, 2011.

Maybe we should boycott Madonna.

[Lonestarblue]

7. Graham also wants to be Attorney General.

So he sold his one-time friend and fellow senator Jeff Sessions down the river by saying that Trump would replace him after the mid-terms. Other than just being annobnoxious prick, the other reason for Graham’s angry tirade to senators on the Kavanaugh vote was to show Trump that he could be an angry, lying bastard too. Just wait til he gets to the DOJ!

[pangaia]

8. yeah, that is some scary shit.

[empedocles]

26. whoa!

[yurbud]

11. I can't figure out why any Republican with half a brain would want Trump stink on them.

[SergeStorms]

23. Skunks don't know they stink.

The whole rotten nest of Republican skunks can't smell each other. To them it all smells like roses.

[pangaia]

28. PURE GREED POWER.. and/or blackmail....

[lastlib]

35. "Republican with half a brain"--there's your answer.

What repuglikkkan HAS half a brain??

[FakeNoose]

12. For all we know, Sessions may want out

Cheeto has been shitting on him for the last 2 years. It's possible that Graham thinks he's doing Jeff Sessions a favor.
I'm certain that Sessions knows enough dirt on Graham that he could out him if he wanted to.

[JudyM]

9. Hoping Mueller goes there.

[yurbud]

10. I thought there was a simpler explanation his behavior: he wanted the conservative majority

on the court and got his knickers in a knot when someone got in the way.

[dawnie51]

13. There's a Russian or two....

behind ALL of them. I doubt if you even have to dig very hard. They're that unconcerned about it all.

[Mr. Ected]

14. He's only going to pay the price if someone has the guts to prosecute him

The villainy inherent in the Republican Party will have no consequence without an apolitical solution. Dem vs. Republican is ingrained in the American psyche, and the gradual introduction of propagandized news to the right over a period of several decades has weaponized this to the extent that we may only have one more chance to reverse field.

If discovery leads to it, prosecute these rat bastards.

We're ready for the truth, dammit. It's not a Dem thing. It's the fucking truth.

[moondust]

15. Well, well, well...

now isn't that there a little ol' coincidence.

Oh Lindsey boy...borscht is on!

[kimbutgar]

18. I keep thinking back to when President Obama said because of citizens united foreign money

Would taint our elections and Alito mouthing “no”. Our elections and democracy are so tainted with the repukes in a cesspool of foreign money donations.

Citizens united is a cancer on our democracy and country and the main beneficiaries are the repuke party.

Now with Rapey k (thanks to Ellie phasing it) on the Supreme Court the last foundation of our 3 branches of government are now rotten to the core. I fear some type of civil war will occur in the next couple of years. Will it be Democrats shot in the streets ( hearing the orange maggots tweet from yesterday causes me concern) or a French Revolution takedown of the repuke controlled government? Something is going to happen that could go either way

[dalton99a]

20. +1. And Kennedy wrote the Citizens United decision - his lasting masterpiece

[Takket]

21. Graham had a sudden change..................

Last year he was, i wouldn't say opposing drumpf, but he was somewhat outspoken in his criticism of drumpf. He wasn't a robotic MAGA head.... then at some point last year, there were lots of reports and posts on DU about Graham and drumpf playing a round of golf together...........

I don't know what was said that day........... how drumpf (or Putin) got to Graham, but he has been full force MAGA head ever since then.

I don't know if he was bribed or threatened that day.... but he's been even more insufferable than he was before, ever since.

[a kennedy]

24. Some think Graham is itching for the AG post......

[SuprstitionAintthWay]

46. If this money link to his campaign is true, "threatened" is the answer.

Lindsay a year ago was one of the only Repub voices saying America needs defending from Russian political attacks. (The other being the Batman to his Robin, John McCain.)

And now, he's not. Now he's 100% a trumpling, and an emotional, squirrelly one at that.

This money connection is all hard to figure because I've never seen Graham as this dumb. But if he campaigned on $800k of Russian money, I have to think he didn't know that at the time.

And that a messenger at some point came around later to catch him up on things(?). "Hi there. You're ours. Heres why: ..... You'll be hearing from us again soon."

Because that IS what they do, and they're VERY good at it.

If Lindsay had to work for Putin and Trump from that point forward, it's somerhimg he hid from his mentor, Cold Warrior John McCain, until he died. Then, immediately, it was bootlick-to-Donald time.

I'm speculating. Still trying to suss out if something like this is what has actually happened. Seems surreal...but these are surreal, trumpian times in our deeply endangered democracy.

If Mueller can expose and save the country from something that really is this sprawling, he'll be a national hero for all time... him and the press.

[Lunabell]

25. You don't think it has to do with his penchant for teen age boys?

That's what I think it is.

[TexasBushwhacker]

30. Many gay Republicans go through the motions

of having a wife and kids like Dennis Hastert did. Hastert is still married BTW. This kind of fraud was something Graham never managed to pull off.

[Scarsdale]

49. Graham should have taken notes

from McConnell on "beard" wives. Ol' Mitch goes for his "aides".

[TexasBushwhacker]

55. I didn't know Mitch had a history of predation

Of course, I have no idea why his attractive wife would have anything to do with him. I found it interesting that Mitch's first wife is a feminist.

[Scarsdale]

57. A while ago, one of his

aides left to take another job a few blocks away. Mitch CRIED while announcing the loss.

[mr_lebowski]

52. Or maybe Hastert's simply a pedophile and actually NOT gay ...

Funny how nobody ever really considers that possibility ...

Thinking is 'well he messed with little BOYS, therefore ... CLOSET GAY'.

How about 'boys are easier targets for (usually male) pedophiles, for a large variety of reasons', and therefore ostensibly 'straight' pedophiles ... still target them ... because their primary sexual interest is 'kids', and it's actually not 'gender-based'?

The general 'thinking' in DU world seems to be 'gender attraction is all-powerful/set at birth', and being 'pedo' is a later, subservient (if you will) 'desire' that comes 'later', or some such.

But ... what if it is not?

Or ... 'not in every case?'

I believe nothing is set in stone with regards to 'People's Sexuality', at best ... you have 'trends'.

To be clear, it does still make his Wife a 'beard', in a sense, but not in the traditional sense of the term. Unless his sexual proclivities have totally changed in the interim, of course.

[SuprstitionAintthWay]

53. Good points about the range of pedophilia that exists, easiest targets, etc (eom)

[SuprstitionAintthWay]

33. I knew Lindsay is gay, but is there actually indication he's indulged with teenagers?

Because that is the exact kind of thing the FSB and GRU swarm all over like bees on honey. If there is that kind of secret and it's findable, they WILL find it and leverage it as the most effective form of kompromat when they're ready to.

That kind of thing would be, and many times has been, more useful to the Kremlin than a target being financially compromised.

[Lunabell]

34. Being gay would be no big whoop.

They have something very damning on him and I believe it is pedophilia. Only my opinion. But, what else could it be for him to slobber at trump's feet now?

[roamer65]

38. I think the kompromat is definitely sexual in nature.

[Lunabell]

39. Pedophilia, young teen age boys?

Something very damning.

[SuprstitionAintthWay]

44. It doesn't have to be anything other than oligarch money connected to the Kremlim

having funded Graham's 2015 campaign in order for Putin to have leverage over him. Putin could end his career with just that. It'd be enough to render him a Russia-loving bootlick of Trump's.

If this all pans out like it looks at the moment, it was an incredibly stupid move by Graham.

[democratisphere]

27. Lindsey Graham is "little drumpf".

Perhaps Mueller has a special place for him too!

[Botany]

29. Lock him up

Little shit weasel.

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

32. Is there a single Republican politician who is not under the sway of Russia?

Hypocritical bastards.

[HeiressofBickworth]

40. I've said before, I believe

any Repub who took money from the NRA has, in fact, taken money from Russia.

the NRA spent more money on the 2016 election than ever before. Where did they get the money?

From Vanity Fair, June 2018:

The F.B.I. and special counsel Robert Mueller are investigating meetings between N.R.A. officials and powerful Russian operatives, trying to determine if those contacts had anything to do with the gun group spending $30 million to help elect Donald Trump—triple what it invested on behalf of Mitt Romney in 2012. The use of foreign money in American political campaigns is illegal. One encounter of particular interest to investigators is between Donald Trump Jr. and a Russian banker at an N.R.A. dinner.

The Russian wooing of N.R.A. executives goes back to at least 2011, when that same banker and politician, Alexander Torshin, befriended David Keene, who was then president of the gun-rights organization. Torshin soon became a “life member,” attending the N.R.A.’s annual conventions and introducing comrades to other gun-group officials. In 2015, Torshin welcomed an N.R.A. delegation to Moscow that included Keene and Joe Gregory, then head of the “Ring of Freedom” program, which is reserved for top donors to the N.R.A. Among the other hosts were Dmitry Rogozin, who until last month was the deputy prime minister overseeing Russia’s defense industry, and Sergei Rudov, head of the Saint Basil the Great Charitable Foundation, one of Russia’s wealthiest philanthropies.

This would explain why Repubs fail to do their over-sight duties on the executive branch.

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

41. So, the NRA is even more evil than I had suspected.

And I'd suspected they were pretty damn evil.

[SuprstitionAintthWay]

45. Moscow$ to NRA to Republican election campaigns is for real.

If we had a functioning Federal Election Commission it sure would help enforcing finance laws.

As it is, we're about down to, Robert Mueller, please help us!

[NurseJackie]

36. Is it really "outing" someone if it's common knowledge already?

[Nitram]

37. If Russia has succeeded in buying out the entire Republican leadership, as well as

the president, and a majority on the Supreme Court, I really wonder if our democracy can survive. We're not operating according to the Constitution any more, if that's the case, and unless we take back at least the House, and preferably the Senate, too, we cannot overcome the power nexus they have built. Even then, without the Supreme Court operating according to the constitution, we are fucked.

[Eyeball_Kid]

50. My armchair amateur estimate:

There's a 20% chance that the GOP will rig the votes in November, and by some "miracle", the GOP will retain control of the House. They know how to flip votes, and the vote tabulating machines are controlled by GOP-leaning corporations. Beware. There were a number of people in the GOP who said, during the 2016 campaigns, that the 2016 election will be the last, and that, from that point forward, elections would be window dressing and nothing more. Guiliani is one of the characters who made a similar remark.

[lindysalsagal]

42. The short end summary:

To recap, the largest donation that Graham received in 2016 was from Blavatnik, who connects him to the Kremlin. Blavatnik’s money connects him to a Russian oligarch who was apparently pinging Trump’s secret server. It also connects him to the Russian-UK-American illegal data analytics and social media propaganda operation that helped get Trump elected. Far from being a legitimate Trump critic, Graham has been one of the offshoots of this democracy-strangling vine of corrupt influence from the very beginning.

[bucolic_frolic]

43. Republicans

have a lot more in common with international oligarchs than they do with Americans

[DeminPennswoods]

47. Doubt there was any big effort to vet campaign contributions

Blavatnik owns legitimate businesses (that I'm sure he's using to launder money); no further research needed. I don't think Graham in influenced or compromised by Russia. I think he's just another ambitious pol who sees upcoming openings for jobs in the Trump admin and is sucking up to Trump to snag one.

OTOH, there is no doubt the GOP, especially McConnell/Ryan and their PACs, took a lot of money from Russians. There's also no doubt there will be a companion indictment of Americans to the one indicting the Russian GRU officers. The question is if that will include McConnell, Ryan or other GOP leadership as co-conspirators.

[SuprstitionAintthWay]

51. Laundering corrupt foreign money through U.S. businesses and real estate

...looks to be EXTREMELY easy, and much worse, SAFE. I'm aghast at how safe it seems to be. Telling me our laws and investigative tools are no match for what's been going on. It's taking a top flight team like Mueller's, with all the resources being poured into that effort, to convict anybody... and even they couldn't convict Manafort on 10 out of 18 mostly money-laundering related charges. If we can only rarely and with tremendous effort enforce these laws, we're in trouble. The Trumps and DJTJs of the world flout them with impunity and reap the very lucrative profits for decades running.

Doubtless this is another consequence of the 1% getting to write their own laws and regulations, and install partisan enforcement officials, U.S. attorneys, and judges. In other words, it's one more destructive result of Republican political power.

Different subject (but not really), I agree it looks like Lindsay's auditioning to replace Jefferson Beauregard. But giving up a secure Senate seat to take, of all things, Trump's Apprentice tv-show-like ejection seat of a cabinet position seems nuts to me. Unless he's otherwise thinking of retiring. (If Trump's presidency implodes, Graham will, I'm sure, run for President again, so there is that angle -- AG is higher visibility.)

[Achilleaze]

48. republican sell-out to russian have betrayed America

treasonous

[oasis]

54. Spineless, squirrelly, slime.

[Mendocino]

56. They offered him a

lifetime supply of mint julep.