There isn’t much that anti-Trump and pro-Trump Republicans agree on.
But if there’s one principle that should find common favor, it’s the rejection of Kremlin money. Russia might be a great nation with a heroic people, but under Vladimir Putin, the Russian Federation is a capable and devoted American adversary. For Americans to take money from the Russian government or its hydralike offshoots should thus be beyond the pale.
I note this in light of the ongoing furor surrounding the Justice Department’s decision to drop charges against Michael Flynn. This has enraged Democrats and some anti-Trump Republicans such as John Weaver. Leading the Lincoln Project effort to unseat Trump in November, Weaver has spent the past few days retweeting criticisms of the Flynn decision.
First, whatever you think of the criminal charges issue, Flynn made a terrible error accepting $45,000 of Kremlin money to be a puppet for Putin. Flynn served that role when he attended a December 2015 gala dinner for RT (the linchpin of Russia’s Western-focused disinformation apparatus). Putin sat next to Flynn at that dinner — not to honor the general but to maximize Flynn’s utility as a propaganda tool and to aggravate the U.S. national security establishment.
That said, Weaver is far from a saint when it comes to his own Russia-related affairs.
As the Washington Examiner’s Jerry Dunleavy observed Sunday and reported last May, Weaver previously accepted a contract to lobby for Russia’s state-owned nuclear industry in the United States. Dunleavy points out that Weaver’s contract, worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, was in part incumbent on no new U.S. sanctions being introduced on Russian interests. When confronted with these facts, Weaver claimed he had “learned a stable [Russian energy] market is in line with US national security interests, keeps supplies stable for American energy producers, and keeps nuclear proliferation at bay.”
While he eventually abandoned the contract after recognizing the damage it was doing to his reputation, Weaver’s argument was always crazy.
For one, under Putin’s direct orders, the Russian state has long been engaged in a covert war against the American energy industry. This is why Putin is so favorable to Democratic Party policy positions on fracking, for example.
So why was Weaver’s contract directly tied to avoiding new U.S. sanctions on Russia? Simple. In order to protect Putin’s inner circle of corrupt oligarchs such as Alisher Usmanov from being added to U.S. sanctions lists. Pressure on them, after all, is pressure on Putin’s base of power.
The simple point here is that all everyone should avoid serving Putin. It doesn’t matter what excuse is offered, to take Putin’s corrupt blood money is to act against America.
