A fund for House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy’s re-election campaign receives $200,000 from Len Blavatnik, a man whose name shows up a lot for his huge donations and Kremlin affiliations.
This is the largest donation Blavatnik has ever made to a single candidate or political committee. The second largest is $101,700 to the Republican National Committee in April 2017. That changes in 2020 when he donates an additional $150,000 to the McCarthy Victory Fund.
In the following days and weeks, McCarthy strongly advocates against impeaching Donald Trump for using U.S. aid to bribe Ukraine.
Around the same time as his donation to McCarthy, Blavatnik makes headlines for a large donation to the Council on Foreign Relations, of which Jeffrey Epstein was a former member.
Blavatnik, a Ukrainian-born dual citizen of the U.S. and U.K., has donated record-breaking amounts to Republican politicians since 2015. His super-sized donations to Republicans are often discredited because he donates to Democrats and Democratic organizations, too.
His contributions are still worth mentioning on Trump File for two reasons. One, the source of his immense wealth (estimated at $19 billion) is a bit of a mystery, but much of it was made through investments in Russia. Two, he has had business relationships with Oleg Deripaska and Viktor Vekselberg. Both men have been involved in Russian election interference, and Deripaska is a known agent for Vladimir Putin.
In 2016, he poured over $6 million into Republican campaigns and organizations, followed by an additional $1 million into Trump’s inauguration fund.
During the 2015-2016 election season, Ukrainian-born billionaire Leonard “Len” Blavatnik contributed $6.35 million to leading Republican candidates and incumbent senators. Mitch McConnell was the top recipient of Blavatnik’s donations, collecting $2.5 million for his GOP Senate Leadership Fund under the names of two of Blavatnik’s holding companies, Access Industries and AI Altep Holdings, according to Federal Election Commission documents and OpenSecrets.org.
Marco Rubio’s Conservative Solutions PAC and his Florida First Project received $1.5 million through Blavatnik’s two holding companies. Other high dollar recipients of funding from Blavatnik were PACS representing Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker at $1.1 million, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham at $800,000, Ohio Governor John Kasich at $250,000 and Arizona Senator John McCain at $200,000.
Dallas Morning News
Sources
https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2019/10/21/u-s-politicians-cant-stop-taking-len-blavatniks-money/
https://docquery.fec.gov/cgi-bin/fecimg/?202010159294514142
https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2019/10/10/money-talks-len-blavatnik-and-the-council-on-foreign-relations/
Photo: Public Domain
