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dontmeantobepoliticalbut · 2 months

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News of money previously given to House Speaker Mike Johnson's congressional campaign by Russian nationals has re-emerged after the Republican rejected a $95 billion foreign aid bill passed in the Senate.

In 2018, a group of Russians were able to donate to Johnson's bid for the Louisiana seat he eventually won as the money was funneled through the Texas-based American Ethane company.

While American Ethane was co-founded by American John Houghtaling, at the time it was 88% owned by three Russian nationals—Konstantin Nikolaev, Mikhail Yuriev, and Andrey Kunatbaev. Nikolaev is known to be a top ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

A spokesperson for Johnson previously assured in 2018 that the campaign returned the money that was given to them by American Ethane once it was "made aware of the situation." There was no indication that Johnson's campaign team willfully broke federal law, which makes it illegal for a campaign to knowingly accept donations from a foreign-owned corporation, a foreign national, or any company owned or controlled by foreign nationals.

A number of social media users have now brought up the campaign money amid Johnson's opposition to the long-debated foreign aid bill, which would send $60 billion to Ukraine as the country continues to fight off Russia's invasion.

In a press conference on February 14, Johnson said he would not bring the bill recently passed by the Senate back from a House vote and that the "Republican-led House will not be jammed or forced into passing" the foreign aid bill.

The same day, Ukraine-based blog Fake Off posted on X, formerly Twitter: "US Speaker of the House Mike Johnson received campaign contributions from American Ethane, a company 88% owned by three Russians. Now, do you understand why he was categorically against the aid to Ukraine?"

Another social media user added, while sharing a clip of Johnson's press conference: "Astonishing that the Speaker of the House for the United States Government accepts money from Russia. Konstantin Nikolaev, Mikhail Yuriev, and Andrey Kunatbaev own 88% of American Ethane."

Johnson's office has been contacted for comment via email.

WHO IS KONSTANTIN NIKOLAEV?

The 52-year-old is a billionaire who previously served as minister of transport for the Russian Federation.

Nikolaev and his two partners currently own a third of Globaltrans, Russia's biggest private rail transport operator, and he previously worked in railroad freight and port businesses.

He is also a part owner of Tula Cartridge Works, which has been supplying ammunition for Russian forces during its invasion of Ukraine.

In 2019, Forbes listed the oligarch's net worth at $1.2 billion.

Nikolaev is also known for being a financial backer of Maria Butina, a Russian citizen who was sentenced to 18 months in prison in 2019 after admitting to acting as an unregistered foreign agent to infiltrate conservative political groups and influence foreign policy to Russia's benefit before and after the 2016 election.

The money that Nikolaev and the other two Russian nationals managed to donate to Johnson's 2018 campaign was also brought up after the Republican was elected House Speaker last October.

"Putin pal Konstantin Nikolaev, who handled Russian spy Maria Butina, was also the principal stockholder in American Ethane Co. when they donated over $37,000 to Mike Johnson's election campaign. Does anyone else think that might be a problem?" posted X user @Davegreenidge57.

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agentfascinateur · 1 month

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Donors warn Biden

A group of more than 100 donors for the Democratic Party sent a letter this week to US President Joe Biden, warning him that his "unconditional support" for Israel's war on Gaza is increasing his odds of losing the upcoming presidential election.

Maybe this is what prompted the Tom Carper recognition of Palestine manoeuver letter...

*In fact, several Carper signatories will still be funding Biden's re-election via LCV endorsements: https://www.lcv.org/2023-2024-endorsements/

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virovizion · 6 months

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filosofablogger · 9 months

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Ramblings From The Bouncy Mind

I spend a good deal of time each day perusing the news, with a particular interest in the politics here in the U.S. More often than not, my daily reading sets my teeth on edge and brings more musings and questions than it provides answers. Yesterday was no exception, and left me with a bit of what I call ‘mind bounce’, whereby I cannot seem to focus on just one topic to sit down and write a…

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#Benjamin Netanyahu #campaign donations #Democrat vs Republican ideology #Robert F Kennedy Jr.#Ted Cruz #Vivek Ramaswamy

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djservo · 4 months

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[image transcription: We are raising funds through Pious Projects to distribute hygiene kits to vulnerable women in Gaza that are displaced by this latest violence. At $20 each, this kit will include - but is not limited to - sanitary pads, a hair brush, tooth brush, toothpaste, cotton swabs, wipes, tissues, and other hygienic items depending on availability. Distributions will take place in various areas accessible to on-ground teams such as camps in Rafah and UN Schools.]

#you can also donate $5 if $20 is too steep at the moment #haven't seen a post about this campaign yet so sry if there's already one going around #palestine #gaza

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americanyellowvest · 1 year

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FTX Uniparty Donations

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#campaign donations #FTX #Republican

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kp777 · 1 year

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#raphael warnock #herschel walker #campaign donations #2022 elections #georgia

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thatdiabolicalfeminist · 1 year

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A lot of nice liberals are just like, fundamentally apolitical.

They see their “side” as like, a club that proves they’re Nice, but they treat politics like a sports game - the stakes are just so low to them and they really think they can just shake hands with their opponents afterwards. Be friends “outside of” the game. They’ll have friends they “agree to disagree” with on like, basic human rights, sometimes for groups they’re a part of! or that their friends or relatives are a part of!!

Because they just don’t think “politics” are That Serious. Sure, some of em will get real mad about Trump, but it’s mostly because he’s not playing by the rules. Crickets when someone on “their team” does the same evil shit--crickets at BEST because they’ll also give like mealy mouthed excuses for why “their” guy Had To Do That Though. For a lot of them, now that Trump’s gone, they don’t need to think about “politics” at all anymore.

In the rise of international fascism and with human rights being stripped away at a rapid rate in so many places I hope some people like this will get a fucking wake up call that this is deadly fucking serious.

People are dying because of the “politics” that you “agree to disagree on”, that you politely shake your head at and then go home and do literally nothing about, or even make worse because you can’t stop yourself from giving money to the bigots trying to strip away human rights, can’t stop yourself from making your social circles actively hostile to marginalized people by constantly inviting bigots around, can’t stop yourself from making excuse after excuse for the violence more vulnerable people are facing.

This is why people actually doing the work talk disparagingly about liberals. Too many of you are totally fine with things being as horrifyingly bad as they were ten years ago, and are getting used to how horrifyingly bad things are now at such a rapid rate you might as well not care about that either.

Too many of you lead self centered lives where you treat oppression as basically entertainment like celebrity gossip or sports instead of something you could impact, something with horrifying consequences for people you SHOULD care about.

Things are getting worse, and only mass movements, with actual actions and planned campaigns, can save us. And if you’re a Nice Liberal who wants to actually be nice, I hope you’ll consider giving up the idea that the current system is suddenly somehow going to start keeping fascism in check, and join movements to protect vulnerable people.

#thatdiabolicalfeminist #like no I'm sorry I'm not gonna smile and nod while you explain why you HAVE to be friends with people doing evil things #why you can't from your privileged position actually do ANYTHING apart from sending $20 to planned parenthood every once in awhile #and donating to democrat election campaigns #YOU CAN'T EVEN BOYCOTT CHIK FIL A AND YOUR BEST FRIEND IS IN A SAME GENDER RELATIONSHIP #YOU CAN'T EVEN BOYCOTT HAIRY POTTER AND YOUR OTHER BEST FRIEND IS JEWISH

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determinate-negation · 1 month

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one of new yorks greatest malls, which is now also implicated in eric adams campaign fraud and got raided by the FBI a few weeks ago

#apparently the owners were asking employees to donate to adams campaign and promising to reimburse them #and donating anonymously which is illegal #great food court tho!#mine

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sharktistic · 3 months

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Loai needs help to evacuate his family from Gaza. Click here to donate. Please reblog and consider donating if you can/haven’t yet.

#free palestine #gaza genocide #gaza #gofundme #donations needed #donate if you can #fundraiser #palestine #gofundme campaign #sharktistic txt.

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dontmeantobepoliticalbut · 10 months

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When Kentucky Attorney General turned Republican gubernatorial candidate Daniel Cameron discovered that an elected state Judge had accepted a campaign contribution of $250 from an attorney in a case before him last month, Cameron cited the donation as a reason that the judge had to recuse.

“These facts, individually and together, could cause a reasonable observer to question the impartiality or bias of the presiding Judge,” Cameron said.

But previously unreported public records information obtained by The Daily Beast shows that Cameron was in the same position at the same time—he just never acknowledged it.

In March and April, Cameron accepted $6,900 from officials at an addiction recovery center tied to an ongoing state investigation. Despite the donations, Cameron did not recuse himself from that investigation before he attacked the Judge. Instead, he waited until an open records request threatened to reveal the existence of that investigation, personally withdrawing from the case two days after the request came in.

The full timeline of events raises questions about Cameron’s conflict of interest, what he knew, and when. It will also almost certainly add fuel to bipartisan accusations that the outspoken, politically polarizing, Trump-supporting Republican has abused the power of his office during his tenure.

The company in question is Edgewater Recovery Center, a Kentucky-based addiction resource provider. According to the open records correspondence obtained by The Daily Beast, Edgewater is currently party to an investigation run by Kentucky’s Office of Medicaid Fraud and Abuse, a division of the Office of Attorney General. The Cameron donors include Edgewater’s owner, its general counsel, and directors for the recovery center’s medical, human resources, and clinical practices.

No Edgewater employee has given to Cameron previously, Kentucky campaign finance records show. And the donations appear to have come in the late stages of the investigation, which was opened sometime in 2022, according to a public records response obtained by The Daily Beast.

The donations all came in March and April, per state campaign finance records. But Cameron only recused himself from the investigation on May 19—those two days after his office received a May 17 request for a list of his recusals, and one week after his conflict-of-interest broadside against the Judge. It then took another week for Cameron’s office to answer the request, which included a copy of Cameron’s notice of recusal, dated May 19. To explain the recusal, Cameron’s office cited “an abundance of caution.”

But the recusal came three days after Cameron won the GOP primary, which the donations were designated to support, according to state campaign finance filings. (The Judge he’d attacked earlier that month was eventually removed, but not for the political donation—he had also “liked” a political post on Facebook in support of Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear.)

Additionally, records reviewed by The Daily Beast show that while Cameron recused himself from other cases in the time after receiving the Edgewater donations, he didn’t recuse from that case until the public records inquiry.

The campaign eventually returned the money from Edgewater donors on June 14, campaign finance filings show—nearly a full month after winning the primary election that the donations helped fund. But those refunds came five days after Cameron’s office received a follow-up request for more details about the probe. The OAG didn’t reply to that June 9 request until June 16—two days after the Cameron campaign issued the refunds.

According to the public records information, the Edgewater donations appear to have come late in the probe, after the OAG had already completed extensive investigative work and was contemplating punitive action.

In its response to the records request, the office claimed that the case file was exempt from public disclosure because the release might “harm an ongoing criminal investigation.” The reply also cited “information to be used in a prospective law enforcement action or administrative adjudication” and “documents prepared for or in anticipation of [criminal] litigation or a trial.”

The OAG noted that the withheld information includes witness interviews, subpoenas, correspondence with Medicare Managed Entities, financial information, and documents still under court seal.

The case number indicates that Cameron’s office opened the probe sometime in 2022. It is not immediately clear whether any Edgewater officials are targets. Edgewater did not immediately reply to an emailed request for comment. Neither Cameron’s office nor his campaign replied either.

This wouldn’t be the first ethical quandary Cameron has faced while running Kentucky’s law enforcement operations. Cameron first drew national attention—and condemnation—after he defended the “no-knock” police shooting death of Breonna Taylor in 2020, calling the killing “justified.”

But the Edgewater investigation wouldn’t even be the first ethics dilemma tied to Cameron's campaign contributions this year.

In April, Cameron’s campaign and office defended a combined $100,000 in political donations from a gaming company that is currently suing the state, with Cameron named as one defendant.

The money came from gaming company Pace-O-Matic and two of its executives, and it went to a PAC backing Cameron’s campaign, called “Bluegrass Freedom Action,” the Louisville Courier-Journal reported at the time. Pace-O-Matic had just spent months throwing cash at lobbyists, seemingly in a failed attempt to ply the Kentucky legislature to block a bill that would have restricted its gambling activity in the state.

When the bill passed, Pace-O-Matic sued the state. The $100,000 gift to the pro-Cameron PAC came in the weeks after the bill was blocked and before the company filed the lawsuit. Additionally, Pace-O-Matic executives and their family members—16 people in all—also gave nearly $30,000 directly to Cameron’s campaign, according to the Courier-Journal. All 16 contributions came on March 27—the day before the company filed its lawsuit.

The donations prompted a lawyer and donor to Cameron’s primary opponent, Kelly Craft, to file an ethics complaint. But Pace-O-Matic, the Attorney General’s office, and Cameron all rejected suggestions of impropriety.

“In this specific instance, the Attorney General’s office has already been defending the legislation passed by the General Assembly. No matter who asks, he does the same thing, which is that he will stand up for what’s right and defend the laws of Kentucky,” Cameron's gubernatorial campaign manager Gus Herbert said in a statement at the time.

Last year, Kentucky Democrats alleged that Cameron violated state ethics rules when he announced his gubernatorial campaign while his office investigated sitting Democratic Gov. Andy Beshears. An ethics complaint at the time cited rulings that prohibit the Attorney General from investigating a sitting Governor. (In January, Cameron’s office ruled that Beshears had violated open records laws by withholding information related to school closures during the COVID pandemic.)

But Cameron, who denied wrongdoing in that matter, has also cried foul when it comes to investigations against Republicans. This month, he attacked the federal indictment against ally Donald Trump, saying that “Kentuckians continue to be concerned about the political weaponization of government power.”

Other ethics concerns linger among Democrats. This Thursday, the Cameron campaign lashed out at a political ad attacking him for his connections to efforts to score controversial pardons from former GOP Gov. Matt Bevin, who in his final months in office issued pardons to people convicted of grisly crimes, including murder and rape.

While Cameron initially vowed to investigate the pardon scandal, he handed it off to the FBI. He later hired two top officials who advocated for controversial pardons while working in Bevin’s office.

Cameron also has donor ties to another major player in Kentucky GOP politics who pushed Bevin to pardon a friend of his. That megadonor—Kentucky financial and nursing home magnate Terry Forcht, a longtime ally of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell—contributed to Bevin while advocating for the pardon of the son of a Forcht family friend.

But the Forcht family also donated to Cameron himself—in 2019, according to state filings.

Earlier this month, Cameron was photographed meeting personally with the Republican financier at Forcht’s office.

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the-nation-of-today · 25 days

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DONATE BLOOD (THREAT)

#black veil brides #bvb #andy biersack #andy bvb #guy of all time 🖤#maeve.png #bleeders #okay but the blood donation campaign is a really good cause #I just think the fact that they used THIS PHOTO is hilarious

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timdoubleyou · 10 months

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14 anniversary stream was a blast but now a question to haunt us…

who put down $2,000 to make troy get the tattoo.

#context for those unaware #stream was helping raise money for slender for gender #a slenderverse charity campaign where the proceeds went to trans lifeline #to help reach the 13k goal #troy posted on the grampo discord that he’d get a MH tattoo if the goal was met #and well. thanks to this donation (and more) we got it #marble hornets #had fun hanging out :) see u guys next year!#over and out

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lizardthirty · 3 months

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i think i would take the people complaining about ofmd fundraising a lot more seriously if they had ever at any point given me the impression that they could accomplish anything even close to what ofmd fans have. like im sorry that you got shown up by a bunch of fucking dweebs but i feel like the solution to this problem is getting organized and buying your own billboard or something instead of just Posting.

#its starting to feel like a skill issue actually #ofmd #our flag means death #to be clear- i did not donate any money to any of the ofmd fundraising campaigns.#i liked the show i thought it was cute but if it doesn't get renewed i'll move on with my life like a normal person #its just that a group of cringe pirate fans are better organized than the tumblr left and its. pathetic actually #maybe take this opportunity to do some introspection. donate some real money to real charities.

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yakourinka · 4 months

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#I want to donate a little bit of money.#not much. I am unemployed and the exchange rate is terrible #but I want to donate a bit to palestine right #the issue is there's so much conflicting reports about whether the aid ever reaches them or not #mersal foundation is running a charity campaign for feminine hygiene and medical products with red crescent palestine #and I want to donate to that #but are they getting the aid. and if it's red crescent I might as well #donate to my own country's red crescent #and if I'm doing THAT I might as well just buy dinner for the president #that's the issue with ME charities. no offense to anyone but if you know you know. and I know #charity tracker doesn't seem to have much info on mersal either #I can also just donate to palestine legal US or palestine action UK #the former is a legal fund for people who lose their jobs and shit to new wave mccarthyism and the other one is #the lads protesting in the UK apparently #but like. I want to donate to palestine #and it's really a small amount too hgjkfgnkds seriously there's no need to go this far for 20 dollaroos #but that's like 1/5ths of my rent right #do you understand #anyway does anyone have any suggestions

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njori · 3 months

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hey i dont usually do stuff like this but my friends cat has a urinary blockage and needs medical attention asap

here's his gofundme, anything helps c:

thank you for reading ❤

#gofundme #vet bills #donations #cat donations #gofundme campaign #hes only 1 and a half :(#i love this poor cat so much

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