Eleven GOP senators who broke with Trump over relaxing sanctions against oligarch

WASHINGTON - Eleven Senate Republicans defected from President Donald Trump on Wednesday, but the resolution to overturn the administration's move to lift sanctions against Russian companies controlled by an ally of Vladimir Putin still fell three votes short because it needed 60 senators to pass.

The coalition of GOP lawmakers who withstood pressure from the White House and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., to fall in line was eclectic and somewhat surprising. It included outspoken hawks like Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Marco Rubio of Florida, but not others such as Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Ted Cruz of Texas. Two freshmen who were just sworn in, Josh Hawley of Missouri and Martha McSally of Arizona, broke with party bosses, yet not Mitt Romney of Utah. Two of the usual suspects, Ben Sasse of Nebraska and Susan Collins of Maine, were among those who split with their conference, but they were joined by normally pro-Trump stalwarts such as Steve Daines of Montana, Jerry Moran of Kansas and John Boozman of Arkansas. Six of the 11 are up for reelection next year, including Cory Gardner of Colorado.

Under legislation that passed almost unanimously in 2017, and that Trump reluctantly signed to avoid a veto override, Congress gets 30 days to block the administration from easing sanctions on Russian targets. The Treasury Department notified Congress last month that it intends to lift sanctions against the holding company that includes the aluminum giant Rusal because Putin pal Oleg Deripaska has agreed to reduce his ownership stake from about 70 percent to 45 percent. The announcement on Dec. 19 said this divestment will protect the companies "from the controlling influence of a Kremlin insider."

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin insisted during a visit to the Capitol on Tuesday that this is not a favor to Putin. He also stressed that the billionaire oligarch will continue to face significant sanctions personally. After speaking to Republican senators over lunch, he also said the deal was negotiated by nonpolitical civil servants who have worked in the government for more than two decades.

"Under the Treasury plan to reduce Deripaska's ownership, Russia's state-owned VTB Bank or another Treasury-approved entity will take ownership of a block of Deripaska's shares . . . that had been pledged against a loan," explains business reporter Jeanne Whalen. "The Obama administration added VTB Bank to a sanctions list in 2014, as punishment for Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The Trump administration issued sanctions against VTB's chairman, Andrey Kostin, last year, as part of the actions against Deripaska and others."

Rubio thinks the idea that Deripaska will no longer control his own company is a joke. "Deripaska loses shares but not influence or effective control of Rusal," Rubio said. "Between his 35 percent of voting shares and those held by others close to him, including 7 percent by Putin's bank, his control over the company remains."

Cotton agrees. "The proposed deal doesn't fully account for the way that power and influence work within Vladimir Putin's corrupt inner circle," he said. "I don't believe Deripaska will be denied operational control of these companies and I therefore believe they should remain subject to sanctions."

Moran focused on the bigger picture. "I will not support the lifting of sanctions until President Putin and Russia changes its hostile behavior," the Kansan said. "There is no indication that Russian policy has changed, so now is not the time to lift sanctions."

Daines made a similar point. "This resolution helps keep pressure on the Kremlin for their aggressive actions towards Eastern Europe, the Middle East and around the world," said the Montanan.

Gardner, who has carved out a niche on foreign policy, said he will continue "to support maximum economic sanctions until Russia fundamentally changes its behavior." "Putin is a thug and we must keep up the pressure against the Kremlin and its enablers, including the oligarchs that finance Putin's outlaw regime," he said.

Collins, a member of the Intelligence Committee, also stressed that Deripaska would maintain too much control, especially "given his ties to Putin."

- The 57-42 vote also reflected the role reversals of the parties vis-a-vis national security in the Trump era. As the Republican standard-bearer in 2012, Romney described Russia as "our No. 1 geopolitical foe." Democrats mocked him relentlessly for this, but the Kremlin's interference in the 2016 election proved his warnings prescient. On Wednesday, though, Romney voted to support the administration's deal.

"Sen. Romney believes the U.S. should maintain strong sanctions on Russia for its bad behavior, including its interference in our elections," his spokeswoman Liz Johnson said in an email. "His vote was in line with longstanding U.S. policy and will help preserve our leverage to gain concessions from other bad actors. The Senator expects the Administration to reimpose sanctions if these companies don't comply."

Meanwhile, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., moved up the time of her first press availability as a presidential candidate to 9 a.m. yesterday so that she'd be able to fly back to Washington from Troy, New York, in time to join all her Democratic colleagues in voting to override Trump. The sense on Tuesday night was that the outcome might come down to one vote, and it would have been a PR disaster for Gillibrand's rollout if the measure had gone down because she was out on the hustings. That would have been especially true if the other 2020 contenders in the Senate had all been there.

Interestingly, though, Bernie Sanders was the only senator who missed the vote. His office said it was because he was meeting with women who sent him a letter about alleged sexism and sexual harassment during his 2016 campaign.

- Hawley was perhaps the most startling name on the list of "yes" votes. He toppled Democratic incumbent Claire McCaskill in Missouri this fall by campaigning as someone who couldn't think of any issues where he disagreed with Trump. "Deripaska is a bad guy who still appears to be working in conjunction with Putin," Hawley said last night. "Until we know for certain that Deripaska no longer has control over these entities, we need to maintain the pressure."

- McSally, the other freshman who defected, was less surprising. She lost in the November general election, but she was appointed to fill the seat previously held by John McCain. He was as strong on Russia as anyone in the Senate, and it might have been a bad look to break so sharply with his legacy. She also needs to stand for election to a full term again next year in Arizona. Furthermore, McSally, as a retired Air Force colonel, holds the distinction of being the first female fighter pilot to fly in combat. So she understands what Ronald Reagan meant when he talked about "peace through strength." As she put it last year, America needs to deal with Putin "from a position of strength."

-- For his part, McConnell warned that overturning the "highly-technical" deal "would overrule career civil servants at the Treasury Department and fire from the hip on one of the top foreign policy concerns of the United States." Speaking on the Senate floor, the majority leader criticized Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., for saying the Senate shouldn't take up any business until the government reopens but making an exception to challenge Trump on Russia. The leader, who is up for reelection next year in Kentucky, where Trump is more popular than him, suggested that Democrats mainly opposed the deal because Trump made it. "This is the key to understanding this unusual moment in the Congress," he said. "This is the central principle. Democrats have made a marketing decision to obstruct President Trump at all costs."

- Schumer replied that he had no choice because the law gives Congress only 30 days to override the deal. The New York Democrat called it disgraceful that 42 Republican senators voted to ease the pressure on someone who Trump's own Treasury Department said last year has ties to organized crime, has been investigated for money laundering and has even been accused of threatening the lives of business rivals. Deripaska and his spokespeople have vigorously denied all those allegations but did not respond to Jeanne's requests for comment. "Forty-two Republican senators chose today to stand with Vladimir Putin rather than the American people," Schumer said, adding that the vote "sends an unfortunate signal to Putin that he can continue to mess" with the U.S. "I'm extremely disappointed that many of my Republican colleagues are too afraid of breaking with Trump to stand up to a thug."

- Deripaska has also been ensnared in special counsel Bob Mueller's investigation. He helped fund consulting work that former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort did for the pro-Putin Ukrainian political party, invested in a Manafort investment fund and lent Manafort millions of dollars, according to court records.

- One prominent former Trump critic who backed up the president used some whataboutism to defend his vote for sanctions relief. Cruz, even though he just got reelected to a six-year term, released a 400-word statement Wednesday night that attacked Barack Obama for being too soft on Russia. He argued that the agreement weakens Deripaska in a "meaningful" way and emphasized that it was endorsed by the European Union. "For eight years, President (Barack) Obama - with the active support of Senate Democrats - demonstrated weakness and appeasement towards Russia, which only encouraged Russian aggression," Cruz wrote. "The Obama administration refused to hold Putin accountable."

- Others made economic arguments. The implementation of the sanctions has led to a rise in aluminum prices, which hurt U.S. manufacturers and annoyed some European allies. An aide to Sen. Rob Portman said the Ohio Republican voted to support the deal with Deripaska because these sanctions have "inadvertently had a significant adverse impact on the global aluminum market and employers in Ohio." The aide added in an email: "The goal of sanctions is to change behavior-and in this specific case the sanctions have done so. . . . Treasury can ensure these behavioral changes remain in place while also helping employers that use aluminum."

- Former Republican senator David Vitter, who is now a registered foreign agent and a lobbyist for Mercury Public Affairs, quarterbacked the influence campaign in the Capitol on behalf of the aluminum conglomerate. That makes it notable, then, that the man who replaced Vitter when he gave up his seat to wage an unsuccessful bid for governor in Louisiana, Sen. John Kennedy, R, was one of the 11 Republican holdouts. Kennedy said he still has "grave concerns" about Deripaska and told CNN that "you don't have to own the majority of the stock to have influence over the people of the company."