We don’t know if the Russians funneled money to the NRA. Here’s a thread of what we do know.
1. Sheriff Clarke and NRA exec Pete Brownell flew to Moscow in December 2015 to meet Russian government leaders including Aleksander Torshin. This happened the exact same weekend that Flynn and Stein were at the RT dinner.
2. Torshin spoke with with Donald Trump Jr. at an NRA meeting in April 2016.
3. Torshin continued to attempt to set up a secret backdoor between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign.
4. Maria Butina - a Torshin deputy - has been cultivating relationships with NRA officials for years. In Feb 2016, she set up a mysterious company in South Dakota with prominent NRA member Paul Erickson sosenterprise.sd.gov/BusinessServic…
5. Butina was the person who paid for Clarke’s travel expenses to Russia.
So it is definitely premature to say that it’s a fact that Russians funneled money to the NRA. What we have is a series of contact points that show a quickly warming relationship.
