One of the many side alleys of the mainstream Russia Hoax was the idea that Russia was funneling cash into the NRA so the NRA could support Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign. This was a baldfaced attempt to bootstrap the hoax aimed at removing President Trump from office into a way of neutering the influence of the nation’s major gun rights organization.

This leftwing fantasy began as a McClatchy article published on January 18, 2018. The article was by Greg Gordon and Peter Stone who have a rather sordid record of being in the middle of a lot of the controversial reporting on the Russia Hoax. They reported that Michael Cohen’s cell phone had been detected in Prague (false) and that the FBI was looking into how Breitbart and InfoWars were helping the Russians help Trump (also false).

One of the battalion of liberal “watchdog” groups, American Democracy Legal Fund, filed an FEC complaint on Jan. 31, 2018 citing this article as its only proof.

A lot of water has passed under the bridge since then. Most notably the Mueller report found nothing at all about this nonsense and the woman at Ground Zero, Maria Butina, pleaded guilty to failure to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. All in all, this was a transparent smear. One that seems to have been hatched by Glenn Simpson’s merry band of cretins at Fusion GPS because Simpson pushed the story to his go-to guy in Justice, Bruce Ohr. In fact, those allegations kicked off an investigation of the NRA by the FBI.

On May 28 of this year, the career lawyers in the FEC’s office of legal counsel recommended dismissing the case because it was vague, based on a single newspaper article, and provided zero details of the alleged offense.

On July 9, the FEC voted to drop the investigation. The FEC chairwoman, an anti-Trump Democrat named Ellen Weintruab, went ballistic.

Some allegations are too serious to ignore. Too serious to simply take Respondents’ denials at face value. Too serious to play games with. Yet in this matter, my colleagues ran their
usual evidence-blocking play and the Commission’s attorneys placed too much faith in the few facts Respondents put before us.

As a result, this agency barely lifted a finger to find out the truth behind one of the most blockbuster campaign finance allegations in recent memory.
…
In this matter, the complaint credibly alleged that a significant violation of the Act may have occurred. It was based upon a news report from a reputable news source that led with this
striking paragraph:

The FBI is investigating whether a top Russian banker with ties to the Kremlin illegally funneled money to the National Rifle Association to help Donald Trump win the presidency, two sources familiar with the matter have told McClatchy.

You can read the whole screed here.

Bottom line, this high performing imbecile or low rent Democrat apparatchik (those Venn diagrams are largely the same, but, for the sake of fairness you can choose which description you think best describes Weintraub) demanded that the FEC launch an investigation based on a single article by a couple of McClatchy writers who have a tendency to grossly misrepresent the facts. And by misrepresent I mean “totally make up.”

The mischief this sort of policy would create should be obvious to anyone. It means that a single article by virtually anyone would meet the threshold for kicking off an FEC investigation even thought the career staff thought it was bogus.

What makes Weintraub’s panty wetting episode all the more egregious is that everything she wishes to investigate has already been investigated and nothing was found. Not a huge surprise as at the time of the alleged influx of Russian cash, the NRA was expecting, like the rest of us, a Hillary Clinton presidency and a highly politicized Justice Department climbing up their butt. Her play here was simply an attempt to create another corrupt investigation to replace Mueller’s, but one without any supervision by anyone. And when that failed, she’s trying to dirty up her Republican colleagues as stooges hiding Russian influence.

So shameful. So typically Democrat.

But, at least Rachel Maddow now has a reason to live

"…this agency barely lifted a finger to find out the truth behind one of the most blockbuster campaign finance allegations in recent memory." -FEC Chair Ellen Weintraub pic.twitter.com/VQrND1IXqV

— Maddow Blog (@MaddowBlog) August 17, 2019

https://twitter.com/77lsquared/status/1163160364219084802

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