Rachel Maddow dug into one illegal aspect of the 2016 presidential campaign that isn’t as widely covered: The criminal coordination between the National Rifle Association and team Trump.
The MSNBC host pointed out not only the obvious fact that the NRA was helping elect Trump in 2016, but also the puzzling fact that the extremist gun organization tripled its spending and the source of that money was undisclosed.
“Put that apparent closeness between the Trump campaign and the NRA, this blatant illegal coordination … put that together with the NRA inexplicably tripling their spending in order to support Trump, and it does seem like there might be something going on there – especially given that their spending to support Trump was all out of a part of the NRA where they don’t have to say where the money came from,” Maddow said.
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Rachel Maddow connected more dots between Trump, Russia and the NRA. #ctl #p2 #maddow pic.twitter.com/byMFGOtqiM
— PoliticusUSA (@politicususa) December 11, 2018
Maddow said:
In a way, this is kind of the big round number of political scandal, right. Political campaigns and advocacy groups that aren’t supposed to be coordinating with each other, nevertheless, illegally coordinating and illegally working together. I know you feel like you’ve heard that a million times. It’s kind of the dog bites man story of federal campaign finance. But don’t just look at that in isolation. Put that apparent closeness between the Trump campaign and the NRA, this blatant illegal coordination, what appears to be blatant illegal coordination. Put that together with the NRA inexplicably tripling their spending in order to support Trump, and it does seem like there might be something going on there, especially given that their spending to support Trump was all part of the NRA where they don’t have to say where the money came from. I should also mention while I’m like being snarky about campaign finance violations, willfully violating campaign finance law is starting to become maybe perhaps a more consequential thing these days. You can ask Michael Cohen about that when he turns up in court on Wednesday for, among other things, pleading guilty to felonies involving campaign finance laws.
Yes, of course there is a Russia connection
Of course, there is more to the Trump-NRA scandal than campaign finance violations. There is also the Russia connection.
As PoliticusUSA has reported in the past, Russia essentially used the National Rifle Association to funnel money to the president’s campaign in 2016. In other words, it was just another aspect of their operation to help Trump beat Hillary Clinton.
With Russian spy Maria Butina preparing to plead guilty this week, these illegal ties between Trump, Russia and the NRA could be even further exposed.
When all is said and done, not only could Trump be going down under the weight of this major Russia scandal, but so could the gun lobby’s biggest and most influential organization.
Through this dark political time for the United States, that would be a much-needed victory.
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Sean Colarossi currently resides in Cleveland, Ohio. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and was an organizing fellow for both of President Obama’s presidential campaigns. He also worked with Planned Parenthood as an Affordable Care Act Outreach Organizer in 2014, helping northeast Ohio residents obtain health insurance coverage.
