Thread by @NashvilleResist

Back in 2016 TN Sen. @MarshaBlackburn was selected as one of only 4 members of Congress to serve as co-chair of Trump's transition team along with the likes of Michael Flynn, Rebekah Mercer & Newt Gingrich.

[#MondayMotivation #MoscowMarsha Megathread]

politico.com/blogs/donald-t…

What did @MarshaBlackburn do to earn such close proximity to the President-elect?

Did Transition look the other way while its closely allied org, the Trump Inaugural Committee, took bribes from Russia-friendly Ukrainians?

https://twitter.com/kenvogel/status/1083523496851005440

This is important, of course, in light of the fact that Blackburn's 10+ year campaign org chair Kline Preston kept ties to close Putin ally Alexander Torshin as late as 2018. Preston also had ties to Ukraine starting in the 1990s.

thedailybeast.com/pro-confederat…

(You've heard us talk about Torshin a lot.)

https://twitter.com/NashvilleResist/status/1126856388662239232

In one of his many roles Torshin was the handler of Maria Butina, recently deported from the US for her role in a coordinated spying attempt against the government.

newsweek.com/national-rifle…

(We're not sure why @Tennessean allowed Preston to downplay his association to @MarshaBlackburn in this now infamous article.)

tennessean.com/story/news/201…

Documents compiled by @CJCMichel prove Kline Preston was the head of @MarshaBlackburn's campaign re-elect org for the 10+ year duration of her time in the House.

https://twitter.com/NashvilleResist/status/1198256030905442304

Are Preston's longtime ties to both Russia and Ukraine - in tandem with shady Ukraine donations to the Trump Inaugural Committee, with which @MarshaBlackburn's transition team closely worked - just a coincidence?

(Nashville @Tennessean, 19 Oct. '94, pg 1-E.)

Second part of the article, which says Preston is "connecting Nashvillians with Russian and Ukrainian investment opportunities."

We can just imagine what kind of opportunities. 🦗

Preston appears to have been considered a local expert on Russia & Ukraine by the @Tennessean for years.

These articles start over 25 years ago.

Preston's association with Torshin is chilling in light of Torshin's other work. Here Torshin is found by @TimKMak to have been in close contact with the Internet Research Agency, a Russian-government tied org that engineered 2016 #RussianHacking along with #CambridgeAnalytica.

(More on the @NRA angle in a second)

npr.org/2018/09/21/648…

(Here's @MarshaBlackburn associate Rebekah Mercer, also on the Trump Transition Team, in conjunction with #RussianHacking.)

demwritepress.com/2018/09/24/the…

Is it coincidence that one of the @Twitter handles tied to Internet Research Agency was called @TEN_GOP and purported to be located here in the Volunteer State?

cnn.com/2018/02/16/pol…

Is it coincidence that, during her 2018 race for Senate from TN, @MarshaBlackburn found access to internal @Google documents painting her in an unflattering light and used them in her campaign?

Who hacked those docs?

https://twitter.com/VoteMarsha/status/1047253140406292480

.@MarshaBlackburn won't confirm or deny having met with Alexander Torshin. But we can prove Kline Preston took him to a Williamson County polling location within walking distance of Blackburn's house back in 2012.

https://twitter.com/NashvilleResist/status/1084910780586385408

Here's a pic of Torshin & Preston w/@BillHaslam at the 2012 @TNGOP election night victory party, and a @Tennessean pic of @MarshaBlackburn at the same event.

Interestingly you can still view Torshin's poll pics at @torshin_ru, but the one with Haslam/Preston has been deleted.

Back to the @NRA and Russia. @MarshaBlackburn pushed hard for the @NRA convention to come to Nashville in 2015. Torshin and Butina both attended.

tennessean.com/story/opinion/…

Alexander Torshin and Maria Butina were also working at the time, of course, to co-opt @NRA leadership for use against the American government. (Makes you kind of wonder about today's #VirginiaRally, eh?)

Excellent reporting by @woodruffbets as always:

thedailybeast.com/kremlin-blesse…

Torshin & Butina worked under the direction of Putin himself. That's Torshin next to Putin in the middle of the photo accompanying the article, btw. (Another good one from @chrissmithnymag)

vanityfair.com/news/2018/06/t…

Guess who gave @MarshaBlackburn over $1.2 million in 2018? @NRA, unsurprisingly, which made her race among its top 5 expenditures that year. Was it laundered Russian cash? (h/t @teamtrace)

thetrace.org/2018/11/nra-20…

In 2008 @MarshaBlackburn and Kline Preston failed to disclose over $400,000 in contributions and expenditures, so accepting tainted cash would likely be нет проблем.

nytimes.com/2018/10/03/us/…

Is it a surprise why @MarshaBlackburn spends so much time defending Trump these days and trying to thwart the impeachment trial? You'd think she'd be interested in the affairs of Tennesseans, but she's doing a lot more talking about national events:

twitter.com/MarshaBlackburn

In our opinion it isn't a stretch to say @MarshaBlackburn may be trying to stay out of prison for many of the same reasons as Trump. Unfortunately for #MoscowMarsha, the truth has a way of coming out. We'll be doing our part to help make that happen. #Resist

(An old version of this thread incorrectly stated Blackburn was a co-chair of the Trump Inaugural Committee, which is a different organization than the Transition Team although the two worked closely together. We regret the error.)

Another piece of the puzzle: Who ran this "Tennesseans for a Better Tomorrow" PAC that spent $1 million on @MarshaBlackburn's race, then shut down?

opensecrets.org/news/2019/01/d…