@Maxfacter @MissJava I, too, recall hearing that a McConnell PAC had received large sums of Russian-connected funds, but I couldn’t remember the source or any details – so I did some digging around.
All of the references related to this seem to point back to two articles published by The Dallas News (links below). The second article is an update of the first, but I could only find a reference to the sources in the first (Federal Election Commission documents and OpenSecrets) – and the author doesn’t specify which FEC documents or where to find the information in OpenSecrets). So, it’s annoying not being able to trace the figures back to their source. The Dallas News is asking us to take them at their word – I will because they appear to be reputable, but I’d sure like to see more transparent sourcing along with some additional reporting. I wish WJT, WaPo, or NYT would pick this up.
Anyway, here are the two articles with some relevant quotations.
TIP: The Dallas News has a paywall (which is fine with me – got to pay the light bills). They allow a few free views, but be aware that those are very limited. In other words, you’ll want to read the article the first time you click on it – or print it out – or you may hit the paywall on your return.
First version of the article from August 2017:
Paragraph that mentions sources:
During the 2015-2016 election season, Ukrainian-born billionaire Leonard “Len” Blavatnik contributed $6.35 million to leading Republican candidates and incumbent senators. Mitch McConnell was the top recipient of Blavatnik’s donations, collecting $2.5 million for his GOP Senate Leadership Fund under the names of two of Blavatnik’s holding companies, Access Industries and AI Altep Holdings, according to Federal Election Commission documents and OpenSecrets[dot]org.
[Note from KJ: I used [dot] above to prevent the forum software from automatically creating a link to the Open Secrets website – that’s because The Dallas News article does not link to it – in other words, the article does not site specific web pages.]
The second version of the article is much longer, but does not mention any sources (unless I missed them):
https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/commentary/2017/12/15/putins-proxies-helped-funnel-millions-gop-campaigns
This second version was published Decemeber 15, 2017, and was then republished (without additional changes, I believe) on May 8, 2018.
Paragraph regarding McConnell, Rubio, and Graham:
In 2015-16 . . . Blavatnik’s political contributions soared and made a hard right turn as he pumped $6.35 million into GOP political action committees, with millions of dollars going to top Republican leaders including Sens. Mitch McConnell, Marco Rubio and Lindsey Graham
If you go to the first info-graphic and hover your cursor over McConnell’s photo, you’ll see this text box (aside: it’s truly aggravating to be forced to garner information in this “interactive” way):
Blavatnik contributed a total of $3.5 million to a PAC associated with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. Blavatnik contributed $1.5 million to the GOP Senate Leadership Fund PAC in the name of Access Industries and another $1 million in the name of AI-Altep Holdings during the 2015/2016 election season. And as of September 2017, he had contributed another $1 million this year through AI–Altep.
Note that this updated version of the article (Dec., 2017) adds another million delivered from Blavatnik to McConnell’s PAC, upping the total to $3.5 million compared with the reporting of $2.5 million in the original version of the article (Aug., 2017).
I understand that Blavatnik’s contributions do not violate laws prohibiting donations from foreigners because he has dual-citizenship: in the U.S. and U.K. You might say he is a true “man of the world.” He was born in the Ukraine, educated for a time in Moscow, then at Columbia, then Harvard. He resides in the U.K. (All this according to Wikipedia). He also has close ties to Putin (according to various accounts, e. g., these pieces from The Guardian and Forbes – but these aren’t about campaign donations).
So we can’t really say unequivocally that the McConnell PAC donations were “Russian money” – they would be if they were sent from Putin (or a Russian associate or the Russian government) to Blavatnik and then to the PAC. Unfortunately, I think this would be hard to prove since Blavatnik is worth billions and does a lot of business with Russia so it seems it would be fairly easy to hide the money trail (at least from reporters – maybe not from the FBI, though). I hope we see some more reporting on this and I sure hope Mueller is all over it.
Footnote: IMHO, after we flip the House, one of the very first orders of business must be to plug the loopholes that are being used to route foreign money into U.S. campaigns and we need to apply some real muscle to enforcement. The GOP appears to be making zero effort here – never mind that the very foundations of our democracy are under attack.