The Media’s Shameful Refusal To Report On Putin’s Ties To The American Left
7/29/2017
Since last November, Democrats and their allies in the mainstream media have obsessively shifted blame for their improbable election loss to Russia, pointing to Russia’s suspected role in leaking hacked Democratic National Committee emails to Wikileaks .
While the delightful irony of the Left morphing into anti-Russia hawks shouldn’t escape those of us who spent decades resisting appeasement of the Soviet Union, we shouldn’t outright dismiss Russia’s interest in influencing U.S. policy, either. Of course, had Russia not been implicated in the DNC hacks, the American Left would have continued its neo-appeasement policy, best exemplified by President Obama’s 2012 hot mic moment when he instructed outgoing president Dmitry Medvedev to relay to incoming President Putin that Obama would have “more flexibility” after his reelection.
The leaked DNC emails’ effect on the outcome of the election is impossible to measure—most political experts on the right and left will tell you that it was at most negligible. Regardless, what is abundantly clear is that Putin’s Russia has been actively trying to influence U.S. public policy for years.
To be fair, it didn’t start with Putin. Russia has been in the business of influencing Americans’ beliefs and indirectly our electoral decisions for 100 years. Virtually every faction of the 60s era Left got its Marxist talking points from Moscow, and many of the themes pervading mainstream liberal schools emanated from Russia.
A great example of Russia’s influence on American politics is that Bernie Sanders—the senator who could have been a major party’s presidential nominee, were it not, according to some of his supporters, for the DNC’s “rigged” primaries, allegedly exposed (again perfectly ironically) by Russia—made comically absurd overtures to a totalitarian state when he was the mayor of Burlington .
The evidence of Russia’s prolific history of meddling in U.S. politics is incontrovertible. And it would behoove our elected leaders to shed some light on this insidious foreign influence. A good starting point is Russia’s financial ties to powerful anti-fracking and anti-oil lobbies in the United States.
The evidence is overwhelming—and laid out in my recent report, Russia’s Ties to U.S. Environmentalist Groups , published by the Center for Freedom and Prosperity—even if the graph connecting the dots between Moscow and U.S.-based environmental advocacy groups is non-linear, and at times as one would expect, obfuscated.
Let’s consider motive. What is Russia’s interest in meddling in U.S. energy policy?
It’s simple, really. The fracking revolution has played a central role in driving down global oil prices, which has significantly hampered Russia’s oil-centric economy. So what’s bad for fracking is good for Russia.
But as anyone who watches Perry Mason reruns will tell you, motive is insufficient in proving guilt.
Also included in my report is concrete evidence to solidify the case.
The full story involves an organization called Sea Change Foundation that bundles millions for radical, left-wing environmentalist groups determined to stop all oil and natural gas development in the U.S. Such bundling is not illegal, and not necessarily nefarious by itself, but the foundation is fed by a paper organization called Klein Ltd. based out of a Bermuda law firm, Wakefield Quin, run by Putin cronies.
As the Washington Free Beacon meticulously documents , Wakefield Quin clients include 20 companies and investment funds with ties to the Russian government. Two of founders of Klein Ltd., one of whom is also a Wakefild Quin senior counsel, also happen to be executives of Spectrum Partners Ltd ., a fund with offices in several countries, including Moscow, with a portfolio that’s heavy on Russian securities.
If Klein and Sea Change aren’t the smoking guns linking Putin to left-wing environmentalist groups, they’re at the very least the warm pistols left at the scene of the crime.
To see the lengths Russia is willing to go to in order to affect global oil and gas markets, we need only consider its well documented role in the building of the “South Stream” pipeline to Bulgaria.
As The New York Times (to its credit) reported in 2014, shortly after Russia annexed Crimea, Bulgaria’s parliament drafted legislation sanctioning a gas pipeline from Russia to Bulgaria. The legislation was largely written by Russia’s state-owned energy giant, Gazprom, and was spearheaded by Putin’s energy minister, with the explicit intent of enriching Putin and his cronies.
Russia’s funding of left-wing U.S. environmentalist groups is a relatively passive gambit compared to the Bulgaria scandal, but that’s all the more reason to suspect more is yet to come.
Congressmen Lamar Smith and Randy Weber, both of whom chair energy-related House panels, recently sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Mnuchin asking for the Department to investigate “evidence that Russia is also behind the radical statements and vitriol directed at the U.S. fossil fuel sector.” It’s a good start, but will require follow-up action.
We know that Putin is fanatically committed to expanding Russia’s sphere of influence and strengthening her economic position. We know the risk U.S. fracking poses to Russia’s economy, and we know of direct Russian ties to firms that contribute tens of millions of dollars to environmental extremists.
As Democrats and their media friends continue to obsess over Trump surrogates’ ties to Russia, it’s incumbent on everyone else to further examine Russia’s ties to anti-fracking groups. After all, we wouldn’t want a foreign power to influence our public policy. Or elections.
Tags
Who is online
77 visitors
This is just the tip of the iceberg. We've only begun to tell the truth.
I think it is hilarious the DNC is still blaming the loss on the Russians
Especially since the Intelligence Agencies have never put their hands on the server. I think the Democrats have something to hide. Why else would they hire a third party who has a owner who hated Putin come up with the conclusion Putin did it?
And based on the emails showing how they rigged the Primary Election in favor of Hillary Clinton, throwing Bernie Sanders to the dogs in doing so. I think there should be Independent Councils to investigate Hillary Clinton's Campaign as well as Donald Trump's Campaign, including all those who we already have evidence they influenced the election, such as Comey and Lynch. Fair is fair and if we really want to get to the bottom of the issue, it's not a waste of money to follow the money.
No surprise the media won't report on the ties of the left with Russia. What would their excuse b3e for losing then?
They aren't going to report on it because that is were they are still getting their money from.
Judicial Watch: John Podesta Needs to Be Investigated About His Russia Connections
July 14, 2017
John Podesta, former chairman of the
Hillary Clinton presidential campaign.
John Podesta, the former chairman of the 2016 Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, served on the board of a company that received at least $35 million from a Russian investment group that was created and funded by the Kremlin and, given the current standard for investigating the Trump administration, Podesta’s Russia connections certainly merit investigation, said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.
Earlier this week on Fox’s The Intelligence Report , host Trish Regan asked Fitton, “I want to know about John Podesta and what you think there. Does he need to be investigated?”
Fitton said, “Well, if the standard is if you’re talking to the Russians and doing business with the Russians you need to be investigated, [then] John Podesta fits the bill to a T.”
“He served on a board with Russian government officials,” said Fitton. “His board, his company took $35 million out of $110 million raised from a Russia-centered organization, or state organization.”
“So, by all standards, he ought to be subject to an investigation on Russia collusion – if that’s the standard they’re using to investigate the Trump team,” said Fitton.
As investigator and author Peter Schweizer explained to the New York Post , Podesta was appointed to the board of the green energy firm Joule Unlimited , in Massachusetts, in January 2011.
Several months later, Rusnano, “a Kremlin-backed investment fund founded by Vladimir Putin, pumped $35 million into Joule ,” reportedly more than 30% of Joule’s $110 million in outside financing.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Anatoly Chubais, chairman of Rusnano, which
invested $35 million in Joule Unlimited, where John Podesta was a member of the board
and of which he owns 75,000 stock shares. (Moscow Times)
On the Joule board with Podesta were “senior Russian official Anatoly Chubais and oligarch Ruben Vardanyan, who has been appointed by Putin to a Russian economic modernization council,” said Schweizer.
Podesta holds 75,000 shares of Joule stock. In 2013, Podesta reportedly transferred those shares to an LLC controlled by his children, before he went to work at the White House as counselor to President Barack Obama. He joined the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign in the spring of 2015.
Although Podesta notes that he left the board and divested his Joule shares before joining the Obama White House, he “resumed communicating with Joule and Joule investors after leaving the White House and joining Clinton’s campaign,” reported Schweizer.
“In fact, he received an invoice from his lawyers in April 2015 — a consent request for Dmitry Akhanov of Rusnano USA to join Joule’s board,” said Schweizer.
Furthermore, “there’s also this inconvenient fact,” reported Schweizer, “In 2016, Russia’s largest bank, Sberbank, where Joule board member Reuben Vardanyan formerly served as head of its investment banking division, had a $170,000 lobbying contract with the Podesta Group — which is owned by John Podesta’s brother, Tony Podesta .”
“In short, Clinton’s top campaign chief and a senior counselor to Obama sat on Joule’s board alongside top Russian officials as Putin’s Kremlin-backed investment fund funneled $35 million into Joule,” said Schweizer.
“No one looking at the Podesta fact pattern can claim to care about rooting out Russian collusion and not rigorously investigate the tangle of relationships,” he said.
Link
the dnc is garbage . Im not a fan of Bernie sanders but I give him credit because I think he is genuine in what he believes. He was screwed at run for the white house. Tell the new face of Maxine Waters hi She complete garbage!There all types of crimes on the left and no one doing anything. Muller can charge a ham sandwich. There a problem when the judge know the trial not on tax evasion. Many Americans have been delinquent and its reported many irs agents are delinquent. A prosecutor will over charge you to get a conviction even if your innocent. Not one request was made for Russians indicted. Complete which hunt. We wont help our own citizens like veterans or the disabled but spend millions chasing the boogieman. I bet California 20,000 homeless would like one of those beds were giving to illegal immigrants. us constitution only applies to its citizens not foreign invaders. We are waiting billions on courts for illegal migration . That's insanity there should be no court for a foreign invader but sent home or build prisons on the border