From Russia with love
Report: FBI investigating if Russian banker illegally funneled money to NRA
FBI counterintelligence investigators are looking into whether Alexander Torshin, the deputy governor of Russia's central bank, illegally funneled funds to the National Rifle Association in order to help candidate Donald Trump win the election, two people familiar with the matter told McClatchy.
Torshin is close to Russian President Vladimir Putin and also a lifetime member of the NRA, and during the organization's 2016 gala in Kentucky, he met with Donald Trump Jr. Spanish authorities believe Torshin helped mobsters launder money through Spanish properties and banks, Bloomberg News reported in 2016, and had he not been tipped off by a Russian prosecutor, he would have been arrested while in Spain for a friend's birthday party.
The NRA said it spent a record $55 million on the 2016 elections, with $30 million going to help Trump, triple the amount the NRA used to back Mitt Romney in 2012. Torshin has hosted the NRA's top leaders in Moscow, and in 2016, he tried and failed to broker a meeting between Putin and Trump, The New York Times reported. Neither the NRA nor Torshin responded to McClatchy's requests for comment.