Stars & Stripes Revolution 

Paul Weyrich’s Free Congress Foundation (FCF) co-sponsored the American University in Moscow, Russia House and World Russia Forum, founded by Edward Lozansky, a former Soviet physicist, with ties to the CNP and the ASC, and a man at the center of the numerous Russian connections swirling around Donald Trump.[1] In 2004, Lozansky wrote a book in Russian entitled Ethnic groups and lobbying in the United States. On the prospects of the Russian lobby in America. Lozansky’s publisher was the Russian Foreign Ministry’s company International Relations.[2] However, according to Lauren Goodrich, Director of Analysis for Stratfor, Americans believe Lozansky is part of a Putin-sponsored disinformation campaign while the Russians believe him to be part of a CIA conspiracy.[3]

In early March, 2016, two weeks before Trump announced his foreign policy advisors for the first time, Lozansky opined on Russian television about the value of who he deemed the Trump’s campaign most important members: disgraced General Michael Flynn and Dana Rohrabacher, known as “Putin’s favorite congressman.” Trump only revealed his list of foreign policy advisors to Washington Post on March 21, 2016. Lozansky called Trump’s anti-establishment campaign a “color revolution” against the United States, stating that he wished to patent the label “Stars and Stripes” revolution. Lozansky also said, “I think Clinton will win, unless the FBI stops her.”[4]

Among the “inner circles” Lozansky is rumored to be “owned” by Vladislav Surkov.[5] In September 2008, Lozansky joined Alexander Dugin for a conference with far-right figures such as Alain de Benoist, Avigdor Eskin and Israel Shamir, anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist who would later become the Russian emissary for Wikileaks. Within a few weeks, Dugin and Lozansky appeared together on the TV program “Three Corners” to discuss the merits of “soft power.”[6] Lozansky has a long and extensive relationship with Dugin, hosting him at influential conferences in 2004 and 2005, along with well-known philosopher and writer Aleksandr Prokhanov, Rodina leader Dmitri Rogozin—who is close to both Dugin and Eskin—and leaders of the Russian far-right.

Lozansky immigrated to the United States in 1976. Following a six-year campaign by Lozansky, the Sakharov International Committee, thirteen Nobel laureates and a hunger strike by his wife Tatiana, a high ranking Soviet General’s daughter, Lozansky and his family were reunited in Washington. Their reunion was facilitated after President Reagan set up a meeting between Lozansky and then Vice President George H.W. Bush on May 26, 1982. Lozansky rapidly cultivated very important connections in Washington, including Senators Bob Dole and Jack Kemp who would later run for president, and Billy Graham and Mark Levin.[7] Lozansky formed the Andrei Sakharov Institute in 1983, and Bob Dole and Jack Kemp were listed as members of the board. Robert Conquest and Reagan Administration neoconservative Richard Perle as members.[8] However, Lozansky had no personal connection to the physicist Dr. Sakharov until his wife arrived in the United States, nor did they know of his activities until 1986. Sakharov’s late wife Yelena Bonner believed Lozansky “was KGB” or affiliated with Russian intelligence, working both the left and right.[9]

The Sakharov Institute signed on to a petition from the ASC’s Committee for Peace Through Strength against the Anti Ballistic Missile treaty (ABM).[10] Lozansky joined the Committee for a Free Afghanistan in 1984 along with ASC affiliate and CNP member Jack Abramoff, who now represents Dmytro Firtash.[11] In 1985, Abramoff became perhaps the nation’s most notoriously corrupt lobbyist when he pleaded guilty in 2006 to conspiracy, fraud and tax evasion. In 1985, Abramoff also showed up on a list of people helping Oliver North to influence the upcoming aid to the Contras.[12] Abramoff's lobbying and the related scandals and investigation were the subject of two 2010 films: the documentary Casino Jack and the United States of Money, and the feature film Casino Jack, starring Kevin Spacey as Abramoff.

In 1981, Abramoff became chairman of the College Republicans (CR) where he made lifelong alliances with Grover Norquist, Ralph Reed, Paul Erickson, and Amy Ridenour, known to be lifelong Republican Strategists. During the Vietnam War, it was leftists who challenged power, Abramoff explained to reporters. But “now we’re the campus radicals.”[13] Abramoff joined in a plan developed by Norquist to transform the CR from “a resume-padding social club,” as one account puts it, into “an ideological, grassroots organization.”[14] Abramoff became famous for his declaration: “It is not our job to seek peaceful coexistence with the Left. Our job is to remove them from power permanently.”[15]

In 1983, Abramoff went to South Africa as chairman of the College Republican National Committee, a member of the Coalition for Peace Through Strength (CPTS) to begin an ongoing relationship with the extreme right National Student Federation (NSF).[16] Abramoff ran Citizens for America, a pro-Reagan group that helped Oliver North build support for the Nicaraguan Contras. Citizens for America staged an unprecedented meeting of anti-Communist rebel leaders known as the Democratic International in Jamba, Angola. This conference included leaders of the Mujahedeen from Afghanistan, UNITA from Angola, the Contras, and opposition groups from Laos. Out of this largely ceremonial conference came the International Freedom Foundation (IFF), in 1986. Abramoff helped to organize, and also attended the conference.

According to David Teacher, the Cercle would was connected to four groups involving the Brian Crozier’s 6I’s American allies: Abramoff’s IFF, the Institut d'Etudes de la Désinformation (IED), the Center for Security Policy (CSP) and the Institute of World Politics (IWP). The IFF's purpose was to counteract pressure in the US for sanctions on South Africa by denigrating Nelson Mandela and the ANC as Soviet agents.[17] Over half the IFF’s funding was provided by the South African DMI, the Directorate of Military Intelligence.[18] Amongst the participants at the IFF conferences were Theodore Shackley, William Colby, ex-Director of the CIA and a Cercle guest, and Oleg Kalugin, former head of KGB Counter-Intelligence.[19]

Abramoff was Director National Security Caucus Foundation, headed by long-time ASC head John Fisher and various other leading ASC veterans on the board.[20] From 1999-2003, Abramoff was secretary/treasurer of the Maldon Institute, an MI6, CIA and ASC-linked ultra-right propaganda front.[21] Abramoff is particularly close to the extremist Religious Right in the United States. In 2002, he co-founded American Alliance of Christians and Jews (AACJ), with Religious Right extremists Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell.[22]

Lozansky was also affiliated with the Cato Institute, which in 1990 held a conference in Moscow titled “Transition to Freedom: The New Soviet Challenge.” The conference included Nobel laureate James Buchanan, Charles Murray, Charles Koch and numerous Russian scholars and members of parliament, as well as the Mayor of St. Petersburg, Anatoly Sobchak, who was Putin’s mentor. Lozansky introduced the Cato Institute’s founding Edward H. Crane to Yevgeny Primakov, then the chairman of the Council of the Union of the Supreme Soviet, who presented to him a bust of Friedrich Hayek.[23]

Primakov founded Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) from the KGB’s First Directorate, and was considered one of Vladimir Putin’s closest allies and advisors. His parents were Jewish and the family name was originally “Finkelstein,” but was later changed to “Primakov.” After the failed August 1991 putsch, Primakov was appointed First Deputy Chairman of the KGB and Director of the KGB First Chief Directorate responsible for foreign intelligence. After the formation of the Russian Federation, Primakov shepherded the transition of the KGB First Chief Directorate to the control of the Russian Federation government, under the new name Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR). Primakov, who made a very successful transition to the post-Soviet era in Russian politics, served as Prime Minister to President Boris Yeltsin in 1999 when he famously returned to Moscow when the Clinton Administration bombed Kosovo, changing the direction for Russian foreign policy only a couple of years after signing NATO’s first accord with the Federation only two years earlier. Called the “Primakov loop,” it marked a major shift in US-Russian relations and the beginning of the rejection of NATO’s expansion by the Kremlin, which only intensified under Putin.

Two months later, the Lozansky’s Russia House officially opened in Washington D.C. only blocks from Capitol Hill. Lozansky’s think tank, which was on the same floor as the Heritage Foundation, was established in 1990 by Lozansky and his supporters with the help of Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin. The launch was celebrated at the Russian embassy, and included Senators Claiborne Pell and Richard Lugar; a few ambassadors from neighboring countries, including Norway’s Kjeld Vibe; Allen Weinstein, president of Lozanksy’s Center for Democracy, as well as Moscow Mayor Gavril Popov, Weyrich and Robert Krieble.[24] Lozansky had told his story in a book, For Love of Tatiana, and used the proceeds from the book deal and movie rights to buy the Washington DC property a few blocks from the White House which he named, “Russia House.” The organization was launched in 1991 at an event with Weyrich and Robert Krieble, who served on the board of the Heritage Foundation from 1978 (becoming vice chairman in 1985) and on the board of the Free Congress Foundation (FCF). Officers of its included Popov and Paul Craig Roberts of CSIS.[25]

Lozansky’s Ethnic groups and lobbying in the United States included a much celebrated “Afterword” by a sitting Republican Congressman Curt Weldon, a Republican and former Pennsylvania congressman, who lost his reelection campaign more than a decade ago following an FBI probe into his ties to two Russian companies. Weldon had also been a member of the advisory board of Frank Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy (CSP).[26] Weldon has since attracted scrutiny from the Senate Judiciary Committee, in their investigations into whether President Donald Trump’s campaign colluded with the Russians to sway the 2016 presidential election.[27]

Lozansky’s World Russia Forum has hosted conferences and an annual event known as the World Russia Forum, and enjoyed a high profile in Washington, DC.[28] Some of the early World Russia Forums were co-sponsored by Resistance International, which received considerable funding from Congress.[29] Lozansky’s World Russia Forum, which invited people to Washington for decades, featuring speakers like Chuck Grassley, Jeff Sessions and Dana Rohrabacher.[30] At the World Russia Forum in 2009, Russian Ambassador Kislyak and convicted felon, ex-Reagan Administration NSA Robert “Bud” Macfarlane advocated for increased investments into Russia. Andranik Migranyan, Putin’s representative in New York, was also in attendance, as was the head of Russia Today, Margarita Simonyan.[31] The Russian Cultural Center (RCC), which is part of Rossotrudnichestvo, was one of the sponsors of Lozansky’s 2010 World Russia Forum.[32] Fusion GPS  told Congress that the FBI considers the RCC a front for Russia’s foreign intelligence service, the SVR, and has investigated them for spying activities.[33]

All in the Family

On June 16, 2016, the day after the Washington Post broke the news that Russian government hackers had penetrated the computer network of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy and House Speaker Paul Ryan met in Washington with Ukrainian Prime Minister Vladimir Groysman, who had described a Kremlin tactic of financing populist politicians to undermine Eastern European democratic institutions. McCarthy, the current House of Representatives Majority Whip, in a subsequent recorded conversation with Ryan and Rep. Steve Scalise, reflected on how Russian meddling might impact the United States, and observed with a laugh, “I’ll guarantee you that’s what it is… The Russians hacked the DNC and got the opp [opposition] research that they had on Trump.”[34]

McCarthy then added, “There’s two people I think Putin pays: Rohrabacher and Trump,” drawing laughter, “Swear to God.”[35] “This is an off the record,” Ryan then said. “No leaks, all right?” Ryan said, adding: “This is how we know we’re a real family here.” Scalise said, “That’s how you know that we’re tight.” Ryan added, “What’s said in the family stays in the family.”[36] On June 14, 2017, Scalise and three other people were shot and wounded by James Hodgkinson, who opened fire with a rifle during a baseball practice of the Republican team for the annual Congressional Baseball Game.

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher is a Californian Republican Congressman who has come under scrutiny for his sympathetic views toward Moscow and Putin. Rohrabacher, who was a regular attendee of Lozansky’s Russian World Forums, has earned a reputation as “Putin’s favorite Congressman,” and the two men famously met over 20 years ago and arm-wrestled in a bar in St. Petersburg.[37] The New York Times reported that FBI Agents warned Rohrabacher in 2012, that Russian intelligence was trying to recruit him. Rohrabacher responded that he didn’t need the FBI’s warning because, “Russian intelligence has been after me since I was a teenager.”[38] Rohrabacher also worked with Jack Abramoff, and associated with Frank Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy, for whom he presented an award to Robert Krieble for his efforts in Russia.[39]

Less than a year after that FBI warning, Congressman Rohrabacher met with Paul Manafort, who very likely violated the Lobbying Disclosure Act (“LDA”) and the Foreign Agents Registration Act (“FARA”).[40] Charges by the Robert Mueller investigation conclusively show that Manafort, Weber and Rohrabacher discussed the situation in Ukraine on March 19, 2013. Robert Gates admitted that he and Manafort then lied to the FBI about the purpose of that meeting to conceal their purpose and involvement as agents representing the interests of Victor Yanukovych. When they were asked by the Department of Justice about their foreign lobbying efforts in November 2016 and February 2017, both Manafort and Gates provided a phony excuse for having destroyed evidence of their communications about the meeting with Rohrabacher.[41]

Rohrabacher has also met with Julian Assange in August 27, 2017, and said he planned to brief Trump on his discussion with Assange, who told him that the DNC leak published by WikiLeaks didn’t come from Russia.[42] The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) called for Rohrabacher to be removed as chairman of a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia and Emerging Threats. In 2017, Abramoff returned to Washington, DC, and became involved with lobbying Rohrabacher. [43]

Rohrabacher vs Magnistky

Dana Rohrabacher, who was working closely to try and repeal the Magnitsky Act, had also met with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya in April 2016, two months prior to the infamous Trump Tower meeting, which Bannon later called “treasonous.”[44] The Daily Beast reported that Veselnitskaya, Rinat Akhmetshin and Rohrabacher also attempted to stage a show trial of Browder on Capitol Hill.[45] When Rohrabacher and his staff director, Paul Behrends—a former Blackwater lobbyist—travelled to Moscow in April 2016, the day’s itinerary showed that Rohrabacher and Behrends also met with one of Putin’s closest confidants, Vladimir Yakunin. Rohrabacher said he had agreed to the meeting at the request of Sergey Kislyak. Viktor Grin, a top Chaika deputy in the Prosecutor General’s office and one of the 44 Russians under U.S. sanctions, who handed him handed a confidential document along with means of viewing the Russian propaganda movie that was critical of Bowder and the Magnistky Act.

Separate from the other members of the delegation Rohrabacher and Behrends then met meet with Konstantin Kosachev, chairman of Russia’s foreign affairs committee. Kosachev later attended to World Russia Forum for 2017. According to Lozansky, the goal of the forum was to address the growing tensions between the United States and Russia, resulting from revelations of Russian interference in the US election, and to “meet to generate ideas to reverse this dangerous trend.”[46] Also attending were Nikita Belykh, Chairman, Union of Right Forces (SPS); Ariel Cohen, Senior Fellow at the Heritage Foundation; Alexander Vassilenko, Lukoil; Thomas Graham, former director of the NSC’s Russian Desk, presently with Kissinger McLarty Associates; Representative Alcee Hastings (D-FL), Chairman, US-Helsinki Commission; Andrew Kuchins, Director of Russian Programs at CSIS (CSIS); Sergei Markov, Deputy Chairman of Public Chamber's Committee on International Relations; Thomas Pickering, Former US Ambassador to Moscow; Sergei Rogov, Director, Institute of USA and Canada, Russian Academy of Sciences; and Blair Ruble, Director, Kennan Institute for Russian Studies.[47]

A month after returning from Moscow with the Russian document, Rohrabacher had already delayed the Global Magnitsky Act. Next, Rohrabacher and Behrends, with the help of Akhmetshin, put together a subcommittee event with witnesses including Veselnitskaya and Nekrasov, the director of the movie. This was despite the fact that Rohrabacher had acknowledged to CNN that he suspected Akhmetshin might have links to the current Russian security service. Veselnitskaya was one of those handling the movie’s worldwide promotion. Rohrabacher scheduled a congressional hearing for mid-June 2016, during which he had planned to confront Browder with the film, as well as at least two witnesses including Veselnitskaya. However, the House Foreign Relations Committee rejected Rohrabacher’s amendment and his extensive arguments, approving the anti-corruption bill over his objection, and prohibited Rohrabacher from showing the film in Congress.[48]

Peace Plan

According to a dossier published by Stormy Daniels’ lawyer Michael Avenatti, on May 8, 2018, “Vekselberg and his cousin Mr. Andrew Intrater routed eight payments to Michael Cohen through a company named Columbus Nova LLC beginning in January 2017 and continuing until at least August 2017.”[49] According to a source interviewed by McClatchy, who allegedly spoke to Lozansky’s associate, Congressman Curt Weldon, Weldon referenced Columbus Nova as being involved in the funding of his and Ukranian politician Andrey Artemenko’s “peace plan” supported by Vekselberg which he delivered to Felix Sater at Michael Cohen’s New York City hotel on January 2017, shortly after Trump’s inauguration.[50]

Weldon, who has known Artemenko for more than a decade, drafted the plan in February 2016 at a Pennsylvania college with New York real estate mogul Alexander Rovt, who was linked to Paul Manafort, shortly before Roger Stone and Tom Barrack recommended him to Trump. Rovt made his fortune initially in the fertilizer business, with some operations in Russia, but sold most of his foreign fertilizer assets in 2007 to another Ukrainian, oligarch Dmitry Firtash.[51]

Artemenko said Weldon “introduced me to high society in the U.S.,” including other lawmakers such as Rohrabacher.[52] Artemenko also said he met in Russia in 2016 with two members of the Russian Duma to brief them on the plan and that they “responded positively to the ideas.”[53] According to a source reported by McClatchy, Weldon “said [he and Artemenko] had already secured funding for the promotion of the plan from Viktor Vekselberg’s fund in New York City.”[54] The New York Times has reported that Cohen and Vekselberg met eleven days before Trump’s inauguration, and discussed U.S.–Russia relations.[55] When Artemenko pitched the peace plan to Sater, which involved lifting sanctions on Russia in exchange for Russia’s retreat from eastern Ukraine, Cohen said he would deliver it to then–National-Security adviser Michael Flynn, according to The New York Times.[56]

Intrater was also a donor to the Republican National Committee, where Cohen served as a deputy finance chairman. In June 2017, Intrater donated $35,000 to a joint fundraising committee for the RNC and Trump’s reelection campaign. He also gave a quarter-million dollars to Trump’s inaugural committee. Vekselberg was sanctioned by the U.S. government in April. And according to The New York Times, he was recently questioned by federal agents working with Special Counsel Robert Mueller.[57] CNN reported that those queries involved the oligarch’s payments to Cohen.[58] The Wall Street Journal reported that Vekselberg’s business partner Len Blavatnik is part of a number of rich donors to the Republican Party account that Trump is using to fund his legal battles in the Russia Probe. During the 2015-2016 election season, Blavatnik contributed a total of $6.35 million to Trump and the political action committees for Mitch McConnell, Marco Rubio, Scott Walker, Lindsey Graham, John Kasich and John McCain. Blavatnik donated another $1 million to Trump’s Inaugural Committee.[59]

Avenatti also revealed that Suspicious Activity Reports filed by Cohen’s bank to the US Treasury showed he had received money from “Ukrainian interests.”[60] The BBC reported that Cohen received a secret payment of at least $400,000 to arrange talks between President Trump and the Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko, who was seeking to establish a back channel to Trump, according to sources in Kiev close to those involved. Cohen was discovered as a go-between to Trump by Ukrainian officials who used personal contacts who also attended Chabad of Port Washington. The payment was arranged by intermediaries acting for Poroshenko, though Cohen was not registered as a representative of Ukraine as required by US law.[61]

Right to Bare Arms 

On Inauguration Day, Veselnitskaya and Rinat Akhmetshin both attended a party at the Library of Congress that was sponsored Rohrabacher’s campaign committee. At least four other politically influential Russians attended Trump’s Inauguration Day celebrations, including Viktor Vekselberg. Also in attendance was Russian presidential candidate Boris Titov. Though Titov is running as a liberal-leaning competitor to Putin in the country’s 2018 presidential race, he is part of the Kremlin establishment and is friends with Putin, according to The Moscow Times.[62]

The inauguration party also featured several top Trump campaign advisers and National Rifle Association (NRA) activist and Republican strategist Paul Erickson, who reportedly told attendees that Maria Butina was on the Trump transition team. The FBI claimed previously that Butina was trying to establish relationships with a “gun rights organization,” which NBC News has reported is the NRA. On July 15, 2018, Butina was arrested in Washington, D.C. and charged with conspiracy that she violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act and acted as an unregistered Russian agent within the United States. According to the Department of Justice’s application for a criminal complaint, Butina worked to “arrange introductions to U.S. persons having influence in American politics, including an organization promoting gun rights” and sought to “infiltrate those groups.”[63]

According to emails and Twitter DMs reviewed by The Daily Beast, Dimitri Simes, president of the Center for the National Interest (CFTNI) looked to use his connections with Butina and her associate, Russian Central Bank official Alexandr Torshin, to advance the business interests of one of the CFTNI’s most generous donors.[64] Simes also paired Butina up with Jacob Heilbrunn, the editor-in-chief of the CFTNI’s magazine, The National Interest. Butina wrote an article for the magazine in July 2015, a month after Trump announced his candidacy, titled “The Bear and the Elephant,” arguing that electing a Republican could be key to improved relations between the U.S. and Russia.[65]

Butina served as an assistant to and for Putin-allied Russian banker and politician Alexander Torshin, who has been accused in the past of money laundering and ties to the Russian mob. Torshin was listed as a member of the “supreme council” of the International Eurasian Movement founded by Dugin in 2003.[66] Torshin first met with Lozansky in 2009 to formalize Torshin’s role co-organizing the 2010 World Russia Forum. Before he attended the forum, Torshin visited the 2010 National Prayer Breakfast in Washington DC.[67]

Torshin, a lifetime member of the NRA, had ties with Christian conservatives through an annual prayer breakfast he helped host in Moscow. The NRA, according to the report, said it spent a record $55 million on the election, most of which came from a sector of the organization that isn’t required to disclose its donors. Ned Price, a former CIA analyst who served as Senior Director of the National Security Council under President Obama, said “This team courted and potentially colluded with the Russians since day one without any apparent shame. I would've been surprised had prominent Russians NOT attended the inauguration. It was Moscow’s victory, after all.”[68] Adam Schiff, Democrat of California and ranking member of the intelligence committee, told the New York Times: “The issue of whether there was an effort to either create a back channel through the NRA, or provide funding through the NRA, has been an issue of concern for the committee, and something we’ve endeavoured to look into with the limited resources we have.”[69]

Butina, Torshin, and Paul Erickson have been subjects of an investigation by the Senate Intelligence Committee into Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. Erickson, a friend of Andrew Breitbart, is a South Dakota-based Republican operative who was well known to Republican insiders.[70] At Yale, Erickson served as the national treasurer of the College Republicans, whose staffers included Grover Norquist, Ralph Reed, and Jack Abramoff. “To every college Republican who contacted the national office,” Abramoff wrote in his autobiography, Capitol Punishment, “Paul Erickson was by far the most impressive person they had ever encountered in politics.”[71] “We were some of the biggest cold warriors ever,” explained Erickson, “but then the Wall fell. We won. There is a huge school within the conservative movement and the Republican Party that says you can’t look at these people through the same lens of the Cold War.”[72]

Erickson told the Rapid City Journal that he used to spend his summers helping freedom fighters. In 1982, he traveled to Israel while leading college students on a summer tour. While there, he witnessed the beginning of the 1982 Lebanon War. In 1983, he acquired provisions for insurgents fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan, including tents, medical kits, camels and mules. He said he had recently been helping Marshall Plan Charities with redeveloping Afghan villages. In 1990, he returned to Nicaragua to observe U.S.-backed Contra rebels stop fighting after the Soviet-supported President agreed to honor a popular election’s results.[73]

Erickson executive-produced the 1989 anti-communist action movie Red Scorpion, which was the brainchild of Abramoff and starred Dolph Lundgren of Rocky IV fame. The movie was financed by South African military.[74] Lundgren plays the role of a Soviet Spetsnaz operative is sent to an African country where Soviet, Czechoslovakian and Cuban forces are helping the government fight an anti-communist rebel movement. In 1992, at the age of 30, Erickson joined Buchanan’s campaign as its national political director. In the words of conservative commentator Ralph Benko, Erickson built a reputation as “a sort of ‘secret master of the political universe’ known almost exclusively to the cognoscenti.”[75]

Erickson matches a description of “Person 1,” an American described in court filings as a political operative who helped introduce Butina to influential American political figures “for the purpose of advancing the agenda of the Russian Federation.” In court papers, prosecutors said her only tie to the US was a “personal relationship” with an unidentified man whose description matches that of Republican operative Paul Erickson, according to the Washington Post. Butina reportedly had a romantic relationship with Erickson, and also offered others sex in exchange for a position within a special interest organization.[76] The government’s memo also said that Butina maintained contact information for “individuals identified as employees of the Russian FSB,” and recently had dinner with a Russian diplomat suspected of being a Russian intelligence officer.[77]

David Keene, opinion Editor of The Washington Times, President of the NRA and chairman of the American Conservative Union (ACU), and board member of the CFTNI was introduced to Torshin by G. Kline Preston IV, a conservative Nashville lawyer who had done business in Russia for years, whose office features a white porcelain bust of Putin. “The value system of Southern Christians and the value system of Russians are very much in line,” Preston said. “The so-called conflict between our two nations is a tragedy because we’re very similar people, in a lot of our values, our interests and that sort of thing.”[78]

Butina traveled to the United States in April 2015 with Torshin, and they took part in separate meetings arranged by Simes with two senior U.S. officials, Stanley Fischer, then Federal Reserve vice chairman, and Nathan Sheets, then Treasury undersecretary for international affairs, to discuss U.S.-Russian economic relations during Democratic former President Barack Obama’s administration. Paul Saunders, CFTNI’s executive director, in December 2016, urged then President-elect Donald Trump to ease tensions with Russia.[79]

In April 2015, Butina, Torshin and Keene attended the kickoff political rally in Wisconsin for Gov. Scott Walker, then viewed as a leading contender for the GOP nomination. Len Blavatnik’s Access Industries was the second largest donor to Walker tax-exempt political organization, Our American Revival. One of Walker’s presidential PACs also collected $1.1 million dollars from Access Industries, most of which was refunded when he quit the presidential race after only a three month campaign.[80]

The same week, Butina attended a town hall for candidates in Las Vegas where candidates Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Trump were speaking. Trump called on her—apparently at random—after which she asked him whether he would end the U.S. government’s “damaging” sanctions on Russia. “I know Putin, and I’ll tell you what, we’ll get along with Putin,” he responded. “I don’t think you’d need the sanctions.”[81] According to Michael Isikoff and David Corn’s book, Russian Roulette, Steve Bannon and Reince Priebus worried about this exchange, thinking it add that Trump had a fully developed answer. “It was odd, Bannon thought, that Trump had a fully developed answer. Priebus agreed there was something strange about Butina. Whenever there were events held by conservative groups, she was always around, he told Bannon.”[82] Butina also helped arrange a meeting in August 2015 for Torshin in St. Petersburg with Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, who was visiting with a congressional delegation on a trip cited in court filings.[83]

In December 2015, Erickson had gone to Russia as part of an NRA delegation to attend Butina’s annual gun conference. Among them were David Keene; gun manufacturer and NRA first vice president Pete Brownell; and Milwaukee County sheriff David Clarke, a Trump supporter who was a sensation among the conservative grassroots. One of their hosts was Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, a member of the “Izborsk club” who worked closely with Dugin and Avigdor Eskin.[84] In 2000, Rogozin was a keynote speaker at the World Russia Forum, organized by an official Russian Government Media Outlet. The forum was and attended by Jeff Sessions, also made several trips to Russia in the 1980s as part of a Church Group. The other keynote speaker was Curt Weldon. In 2002, Curt Weldon was advocating for a better relationship between the two nations and Lozansky continuously praised him. Weldon was investigated for his ties to Russia in 2004 and lost re-election in 2006.[85]

On March 17, 2014, the day after the Crimean status referendum, Rogozin became one of the first seven people who were put under executive sanctions by Obama. In 2008, Rogozin had became Russia’s ambassador to NATO. In 2011, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev appointed Rogozin as the Special Representative on anti-missile defense, where he negotiated with NATO countries on the issue. In 2011, Rogozin was appointed as Deputy Prime Minister, in charge of the defense and space industries, where he led the creation of the Russian Foundation for Advanced Research Projects in the Defense Industry. In 2018, he became the head of the Russian state space corporation Roscosmos.

In May 2016, in an email to Rick Dearborn, an adviser to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, with the subject “Kremlin Connection,” Erickson wrote that Russia was “quietly but actively seeking a dialogue with the U.S.” and planned to use the NRA’s annual convention in Louisville, that month to make “first contact” with the Trump camp, when Donald Trump Jr. met with Torshin.[86] McClatchy reported in January, 2018, that the FBI is looking into whether Torshin illegally funneled money to the NRA, probably the most influential conservative group in the United States, to help sway the race in Trump’s favor.

As reported by Alex Altman and Elizabeth Dias in Time magazine, “Conservative Christianity has been one common touchstone” to Russia’s outreach to the American right.[87] Doug Burleigh, a key figure in the Family who has taken over organizing the National Prayer Breakfast since the death of his father-in-law, Doug Coe, has links with organisers and spoken at the Russian prayer breakfast beside Torshin. On February 1, 2017, as part of the festivities surrounding the National Prayer Breakfast, conservative activist and Rockefeller scion George O’Neill Jr., hosted a dinner at the George Hotel attended by Butina, Torshin, Rohrabacher, Erickson as well as a conservative magazine publisher, a longtime GOP consultant and a close friend of Steve Bannon. The following day, Torshin assembled the delegation of Russians who attended the National Prayer Breakfast. Over 50 Russians attended the Prayer Breakfast, including leading members of Putin's government. The group of 16 included Kremlin advisers, university presidents and the mayor of a city in eastern Russia. Torshin was supposed to meet with Trump ahead of the breakfast, until an aide realized Torshin “had been named by Spanish police as a suspected “godfather” of an organized crime and money-laundering ring,” according to Yahoo News.[88] In April 2018, Alexander Torshin was placed on the US Treasury’s sanctions list in for his role in Putin’s attack on America’s last presidential election.[89] During the Prayer Breakfast, Burleigh declared “a breakthrough in relations between Russia and the US is about occur.” He added, “I believe that Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump will yet become friends.”[90]

[1] Grant Stern. “How One Man Influenced The Republican Party’s Transformation Into The Grand Old Putin Party.” Medium (March 25, 2017). Retrieved from https://thesternfacts.com/how-one-man-influenced-the-republican-partys-transformation-into-the-grand-old-putin-party-141589792320

[2] Ibid.

[3] The GiFiles. Wikileaks. Retrieved at https://wikileaks.org/gifiles/docs/54/5416149_re-edward-lozansky-.html

[4] Grant Stern. “Putin’s Propagandist Eerily Predicted Trump’s Relationship With General Flynn and Dana Rohrabacher Last Year.” Medium (May 25, 2017). Retrieved from https://thesternfacts.com/last-year-putins-propagandist-eerily-predicted-trump-s-relationship-with-general-flynn-and-dana-82a712ade359

[5] Ibid.

[6] Alexander Reid Ross. “The Internet Research Agency: behind the shadowy network that meddled in the 2016 Elections.” SPLC (February 21, 2018). Retrieved from http://www.thecoursecorrection.com/the-internet-research-agency-behind-the-shadowy-network-that-meddled-in-the-2016-elections/

[7] Patrick Simpson. “The GOP’s Favorite Russian Professor Spent Decades Building Conservative Ties To Moscow.” Medium (March 25, 2017).

[8] Ibid.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Taras Kuzio. “Beyond Manafort: Both parties deal with pro-Russian Ukrainians.” The Hill (April 24, 2017); Patrick Simpson. “The Republicans favorite lobbyist made the Trump Russia scandal possible.” Medium (December 29, 2017).

[12] Thomas Frank. “The Wrecking Crew.” Harpers (August 2008).

[13] Ibid.

[14] Ibid.

[15] Ibid.

[16] Bellant. Old Nazis, the New Right and the Republican Party, p. 82.

[17] Teacher. Rogue Agents, pp. 2401-241.

[18] Susan Schmidt and James V. Grimaldi. “The Fast Rise and Steep Fall of Jack Abramoff.” The Washington Post (Dec 29, 2005).

[19] Teacher. Rogue Agents, pp. 240-241.

[20] Joël van der Reijden. “The American Security Council: Cold War Join CIA-FBI-Pentagon Front Involved in Illegal Operations.” ISGP (November 25, 2012). Retrieved from https://isgp-studies.com/american-security-council

[21] Ibid.

[22] Ibid.

[23] David Boaz. “That Time We Presented a Bust of Hayek to Yevgeny Primakov in the Kremlin.” Cato Institute (June 27, 2015). Retrieved from https://www.cato.org/blog/time-we-presented-bust-hayek-yevgeny-primakov-kremlin

[24] Sarah Booth Conroy. “Russia House, Trading in its name.” The Washington Post October 27, 1991).

[25] Ibid.

[26] Janine R. Wedel. Shadow Elite: How the World’s New Power Brokers Undermine Democracy, Government, and the Free Market (Basic Books, 2009).

[27] Natasha Bertrand. “Senate Investigators May Have Found a Missing Piece in the Russia Probe.” The Atlantic (June 7, 2018).

[28] Paul Weyrich. “The FBI: Slamming The Door On Important Russian Friends.” CBS News (May 6, 2003).

[29] Patrick Simpson. “The GOP’s Favorite Russian Professor Spent Decades Building Conservative Ties To Moscow.” Medium (March 25, 2017).

[30] Isaac Arnsdorf. “Putin’s favorite congressman.” Politico (November 23, 2016).

[31] Patrick Simpson. “From Orange Revolution To “Stars And Stripes Revolution”” Medium (March 25, 2017). Retrieved from https://thesternfacts.com/from-orange-revolution-to-stars-and-stripes-revolution-9ae9d690cbe8

[32] Grant Stern. “Mueller just singled out a Republican congressman in unsealed Trump-Russia indictment.” Washington Press (February 23, 2018).

[33] Grant Stern. “A GOP Kremlin-insider connected Alexander Torshin to Congressmen. Then he joined the NRA.” Medium (March 25, 2017).

[34] Adam Entous. “House majority leader to colleagues in 2016: ‘I think Putin pays’ Trump.” Washington Post (May 17, 2017).

[35] Ibid.

[36] Ibid.

[37] Isaac Arnsdorf, Benjamin Oerskes. “Putin’s favorite congressman.” Politico (November 23, 2016).

[38] Ibid.

[39] Ibid.

[40] Ibid.

[41] Grant Stern. “Mueller just singled out a Republican congressman in unsealed Trump-Russia indictment.” Washington Press (February 23, 2018).

[42] John Solomon. “Assange meets US congressman, vows to prove Russia did not leak him documents.” The Hill (August 16, 2017).

[43] Stern. “Mueller just singled out a Republican congressman in unsealed Trump-Russia indictment.”

[44] Maegan Vazquez. “Bannon: 2016 Trump Tower meeting was 'treasonous’” CNN (January 4, 2018).

[45] Nico Hines. “GOP Lawmaker Got Direction From Moscow, Took It Back to D.C.” The Daily Beast (July 19, 2017).

[46] “The 26th World Russian Forum.” (n.d.). Eurasia Center. Retrieved from https://eurasiacenter.org/about-us/picture-gallery/world_russian_forum_2007.htm

[47] Ibid.

[48] Nico Hines. “GOP Lawmaker Got Direction From Moscow, Took It Back to D.C.” The Daily Beast (July 19, 2017).

[49] Noah Schachtman & Kate Briquelet. “Michael Cohen Took Cash From Russian Oligarch After Election.” The Daily Beast (May 8, 2018).

[50] William K. Rashbaum, Ben Protess and Mike McIntire. “At Trump Tower, Michael Cohen and Oligarch Discussed Russian Relations.” New York Times (May 25, 2018).

[51] Peter Stone. “Inside the Ukraine peace plan in Mueller probe: More authors, earlier drafting than believed.” McClatchy (June 22, 2018).

[52] Ibid.

[53] Stone. “Inside the Ukraine peace plan in Mueller probe: More authors, earlier drafting than believed.”

[54] Natasha Bertrand. “Senate Investigators May Have Found a Missing Piece in the Russia Probe.” The Atlantic (June 7, 2018).

[55] William K. Rashbaum, Ben Protess & Mike McIntire. “At Trump Tower, Michael Cohen and Oligarch Discussed Russian Relations.” New York Times (May 25, 2018).

[56] Megan Twohey & Scott Shane. “A Back-Channel Plan for Ukraine and Russia, Courtesy of Trump Associates.” New York Times (February 19, 2017).

[57] Adam Goldman, Ben Protess and William K. Rashbaum. “Viktor Vekselberg, Russian Billionaire, Was Questioned by Mueller’s Investigators.” New York Times (May 4, 2018).

[58] Noah Schachtman & Kate Briquelet. “Michael Cohen Took Cash From Russian Oligarch After Election.” The Daily Beast (May 8, 2018).

[59] Ruth May. “GOP campaigns took $7.35 million from oligarch linked to Russia.” Dallas News (August 3, 2017).

[60] Paul Wood. “Trump lawyer ‘paid by Ukraine’ to arrange White House talks.” BBC News (May 23, 2018).

[61] Ibid.

[62] Sonar Sheth. “‘It was Moscow's victory, after all’: At least 6 Putin-allied Russians reportedly attended Trump's inaugural celebrations.” Business Insider (January 20, 2018).

[63] Clarrie Feinstein. ““Putin’s congressman” and the Russian bombshell: Maria Butina case looks bad for Dana Rohrabacher.” Politico (July 19, 2018).

[64] Betsy Woodruff. “Maria Butina: Private Messages Reveal Accused Russian Spy’s True Ties to D.C. Wise Man.” The Daily Beast (August 29, 2018).

[65] Caleb Melby, David Kocieniewski & Gerry Smith. “Kushner’s Ties to Russia-Linked Group Began With Kissinger Lunch.” Bloomberg (August 13, 2018). Retrieved from https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-13/kushner-s-ties-to-russia-linked-group-began-with-kissinger-lunch

[66] Jardar Østbø. The New Third Rome: Readings of a Russian Nationalist Myth (Columbia University Press, May 3, 2016).

[67] Grant Stern. “A GOP Kremlin-insider connected Alexander Torshin to Congressmen. Then he joined the NRA.” Medium (March 25, 2017).

[68] Sonar Sheth. “‘It was Moscow’s victory, after all’: At least 6 Putin-allied Russians reportedly attended Trump’s inaugural celebrations.” Business Insider (January 20, 2018).

[69] Michelle Goldberg. “Is This the Collusion We Were Waiting For?” New York Times (January 19, 2018).

[70] Tim Mak. “The Kremlin and GOP Have a New Friend—and Boy, Does She Love Guns.” The Daily Beast (February 23, 2017).

[71] Seth Tupper. “Trump, Putin… and Erickson? Russia probe just another chapter in South Dakotan’s unusual life.” Rapid City Journal (February 11, 2018).

[72] Alex Altman & Elizabeth Dias. “Moscow Cozies Up to the Right.” Time (March 10, 2017).

[73] Tupper. “Trump, Putin… and Erickson?”

[74] Teacher. Rogue Agents, p. 546.

[75] Tupper. “Trump, Putin… and Erickson?”

[76] Tracy Connor, Tom Winter & Pete Williams. “Accused Russian agent Mariia Butina tried to trade sex for influence, say prosecutors.” NBC News (July 18, 2018).

[77] Ibid.

[78] Rosalind S. Helderman & Tom Hamburger. “Guns and religion: How American conservatives grew closer to Putin’s Russia.” The Washington Post (April 30, 2017).

[79] Sarah N. Lynch. “Exclusive: Alleged Russian agent Butina met with U.S. Treasury, Fed officials.” Reuters (July 22, 2018).

[80] Stern. “A GOP Kremlin-insider connected Alexander Torshin to Congressmen. Then he joined the NRA.”

[81] Eric Lach. “Mariia Butina and the Open Secrets of the Russia Scandal.” The New Yorker (July 17, 2018).

[82] Ibid.

[83] Rosalind S. Helderman, Tom Hamburger, Shane Harris and Carol D. Leonnig. “‘She was like a novelty’: How alleged Russian agent Maria Butina gained access to elite conservative circles.” The Washington Post (July 17, 2018).

[84] Nicholas Fancos. “Operative Offered Trump Campaign ‘Kremlin Connection’ Using N.R.A. Ties.” New York Times (December 3, 2017).

[85] Patrick Simpson. “Jeff Sessions forgot to disclose the time he went to the World Russia Forum.” Medium (July 20, 2017).

[86] Sonar Sheth. “‘It was Moscow's victory, after all’: At least 6 Putin-allied Russians reportedly attended Trump’s inaugural celebrations.” Business Insider (January 20, 2018).

[87] Alex Altman & Elizabeth Dias. “Moscow Cozies Up to the Right.” Time (March 10, 2017).

[88] Mythili Sampathkumar. “Donald Trump 'almost met with Russian gangster linked to Putin’.” Independent (April 3, 2017).

[89] Stern. “A GOP Kremlin-insider connected Alexander Torshin to Congressmen. Then he joined the NRA.”

[90] Jeff Sharlet. “Why the Christian Right has embraced Putin.” New York Post (July 21, 2018).

Volume Six

1. Culture Wars

2. Red Mafia

3. From Russia With Love

4. #MeToo

5. Conservative Media

6. Atl-Reich

7. Multipolar World Order

8. Katehon

9. Collusion

10. Russia House

11. Techno-Libertarianism

12. Military-Digital Complex

13. Fake News

14. Memetic Warfare

15. Big Data

16. Make America White Again!

17. In Trump We Trust

18. Israel First