1) New NRA-Russia thread. Talking about covert influence opreation in which Maria Butina & Paul Erickson were worker-bees. Stay with me, this is going to get crazy...
2) Yesterday, I spoke about NRA brd mbr David Keene's central role in the conspiracy. Keene recruited Erickson in 2013 as NRA rep. He also used his other positions of power (ACU, CFTNI, Wash. Times) to further operation.
3) Keene joined the NRA board in 2000. He joined the Center for National Interest (CFTNI), a pro-Russia think tank, in 2009. On their board at that time were Henry Kissinger, Putin confidant Dmitri Simes and AIG crook "Hank" Greenberg.
4) Simes credits Kissinger & Greenberg with being the primary founders and shapers of CFTNI. See this vid where CFTNI honored Greenberg 5 months after he settled massive AIG fraud case. cftni.org/videos/2017-cf…
5) While Keene was recruiting Erickson & hosting Alexander Torshin/Maria Butina at one NRA annual meeting after another, CFTNI, where Keene is a board mbr, was also working w/ the Russians.
6) Simes goes to Moscow to meet with Putin before NRA delegation visit there. Greenberg sits in on all CFTNI meetings w/ Torshin & Butina, inc. w/ Obama Treasury officials. Butina tries to get Greenberg to pay more $ for fraudulent Russian bank.
7) But Kissinger is also very busy during this period. He privately meets repeatedly w/ Trump campaign & transition, urging them to adopt a foreign policy that befriends Russia as counterweight to China.
8) Kissinger has also met personally with Vladimir Putin an eye-whopping 17 times!!! For a guy who hasn't been Secretary of State since the mid-70s, that's a hell of a lot of meetings with a foreign dictator.
9) After Helsinki summit disaster, Kissinger says the meeting "had" to happen and says of Putin, "I do not think Putin is a character like Hitler. He comes out of Dostoyevsky." WTF?
10) Pat Buchanan is probably the true ideological father of the pro-Putin, "America First" foreign policy employed by Trump, but Kissinger's role was to give it a patina of repsectability & intellectual rigor.
11) Kissinger's CFTNI backs Trump to the hilt in 2016 election, then begins to collect. Check out the career arc of former CFTNI senior fellow Alex Alden. Now at NSC under Trump. linkedin.com/in/alexander-a…
12) Keene has also advocated a pro-Russia, non-interventionist foreign policy, but I think his primary role in NRA-Russia was to help move the money. Down-on-his-luck Paul Erikcson was disposable fall guy Keene picked to do groundwork.
13) Both Keene & Erickson had left the American Conservative Union in disgrace. Keene embezzled $300K+ from donors there through his ex-wife. Erickson was removed from ACU board "for cause."
14) Keene joins NRA board in 2011 as ACU is kicking him out the door. He had lost significant credibility in conservative movement b/c of his scandals. Russian central bank head Alexander Torshin meets him in 2011 & certainly knew this background.
15) Did Dmitri Simes start working Keene when Keene joined CFTNI board in 2009? Maybe. Maybe he preps him for Torshin in 2011. Either way, the 2 men gain Keene's acquiescence in an illegal operation involving money laundering.
16) Does Henry Kissinger know about this illegal money laundering operation involving Keene, Simes, Torshin, Butina? My sense is he must have. He was helping move it forward with them!
17) Kissinger is the most teflon corrupt U.S. official in history. The only major figure to emerge from Watergate w/ reputation intact. We gave him benefit of doubt. Now he appears in our next great constitutional crisis.
18) Maybe we shouldn't give Kissinger the benefit of the doubt this time (and someone please ask Pat Buchanan if he knew about the Keene/Erickson/Butina/Torshin covert influence operation).
19) Don't forget about Alfa Bank in Russia, too. That's one location where Butina & Erickson were moving $. In July 2016, cyberexperts find Alfa Bank & Trump Org. computer servers were communicating. nymag.com/daily/intellig…
20) There is also a still-unnamed Washington law firm that got money (not Butina attorney Driscoll) from Maria Butina & Paul Erickson and a shell company started by Jack Abramoff's college grad son!
21) Question: Did American Conservative Union's involvement in Putin approchement cease after departure of Keene & Erickson from ACU in disgrace? It seems so, but someone needs to find out.
22) In recent years, primary hosts of the covert influence operation on U.S. side are NRA & CFTNI. Wash. Times opinion editor David Keene also publishes bits from/about Torshin, Erickson, others to make the case in conservative movement.
23) Bottom line, we are talking about what looks like a vast conspiracy among movement conservatives that goes well beyond NRA leaders (although they are central to it).
