NRA-Russia connection is a pipeline for dirty money and dangerous ideas

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/1/18/1733911/-NRA-Russia-connection-is-a-pipeline-for-dirty-money-and-dangerous-ideas
"The NRA’s involvement with Russia goes far beyond the single connection currently under investigation by the FBI. NRA leadership has been instrumental in connecting Republicans to associates of Vladimir Putin, including arranging paid speaking gigs and visits. And they were not shy in their attempts to bring Trump and Putin together. A conservative operative trumpeting his close ties to the National Rifle Association and Russia told a Trump campaign adviser last year that he could arrange a back-channel meeting between Donald J. Trump and Vladimir V. Putin, the Russian president, according to an email sent to the Trump campaign. The email header on that note, which went to Jeff Sessions along with other Trump advisors, was “Kremlin Connecton.” That outreach to Trump came within days of another attempted contact, both of which lead back to Alexander Torshin, a deputy of the Russian central bank and leader in Putin’s United Russia Party. The extent to which the FBI has evidence of money flowing from Torshin to the NRA, or of the NRA’s participation in the transfer of funds, could not be learned. However, the NRA reported spending a record $55 million on the 2016 elections, including $30 million to support Trump – triple what the group devoted to backing Republican Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential race. Most of that was money was spent by an arm of the NRA that is not required to disclose its donors. News that investigators are looking into connections between the Trump campaign and Russian officials that involved the NRA as a middleman was far from new. The idea that Torshin might have directly used the NRA as a proxy for the Trump campaign would make for a shockingly direct and obvious violation of U.S. law, but it’s far from the limit of the NRA’s connections to Russia."