Republican Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy believed that Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) was being financed by the Russians, along with Trump.

House Speaker Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) reaction — to demand silence from the “family” of assembled GOP lawmakers and staff — was a chilling reminder of the political secrets kept at the highest level of our government.

The secret that Republicans believed their own candidate for president was cheating, and didn’t breathe a word of their knowledge to the public almost a year since the secret recording of their conversation was made.

Rep. Rohrabacher also raised eyebrows recently when he openly admitted to Politico that working with disgraced former Republican super lobbyist, Jack Abramoff.

Then, the New York Times reported that FBI Agents warned Representative Rohrabacher in 2012, that Russian intelligence was trying to recruit him, but as some point out, it’s doubtful the strongly pro-Putin Republican would even know if he was turned.

The California lawmaker respsonded that he didn’t need the FBI’s warning because, “Russian intelligence has been after me since I was a teenager.”

Less than a year after that FBI warning, Congressman Rohrabacher met with Republican operative Paul Manafort — under FBI investigation for his time as Trump’s campaign manager, and shady real estate deals — who had been employed for a long time by Ukraine’s opposition party, the Party of Regions.

Unusually, Manafort didn’t file a lobbying registration or register as a foreign agent.

Massachusetts lawyer J. Whitfield Larrabee filed a criminal complaint with the Clerk of the House of Representatives over the meeting Manafort wanted to keep secret, and he submitted his documentation (embedded below) to Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller as well.

He says that it’s not just a criminal offense by Manafort, but it’s indicative of a secret deal:

In lobbying Congressman Rohrabacher in March of 2013, Manafort very likely violated the Lobbying Disclosure Act (“LDA”) and the Foreign Agents Registration Act (“FARA”). FARA requires that detailed disclosures be filed with the Department of Justice. Although he promised to file the required documents, Manafort has failed to do so. The LDA requires that lobbying reports be filed with the Clerk of the House of Representatives. Ex-Congressman Vin Weber, who lobbied Rohrabacher with Manafort, filed a lobbying report. Yet, Manafort, who knows of his filing obligations, has failed to file any lobbying reports in relation to his meeting with Rohrabacher. Manafort knows of his filing obligations, but has continued to violate the law. Perhaps he has made a deal to cooperate with the Department of Justice. It seems likely that the day of reckoning for Manafort cannot be far off.

Who Wants To Be Putin’s Favorite Congressman?

Rep. Rohrabacher has earned his public reputation as Putin’s favorite Congressman, and the two men famously met over 20 years ago and arm-wrestled in a St. Petersburg bar. Politico wrote:

Rohrabacher’s transformation from Cold Warrior to Kremlin champion has puzzled colleagues. In Rohrabacher’s telling, Americans have gratuitously antagonized Russia instead of seeking common ground against greater threats from China and Islamic terrorism. That worldview has made him a fixture in Russian state media. “ ‘Stupidity hurts us all’: US decision makers ignorant about Russia — Congressman Rohrabacher,” blared a headline in RT, the state-controlled news outlet. “Rohrabacher, who comes from this Reganite background, has totally been turned around,” Anders Aslund, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, a non-partisan think tank, said. “Rohrabacher has been on this soapbox for many years and it’s considered outside the norm.”

Rep. Rohrabacher met with sanctioned Russian officials last year, while escorting pro-Russia lobbyists around Capitol Hill in opposition to the Magnitsky Act, the global anti-corruption law.

Just this month, the Russian tax fraud case that claimed Hermitage Capital’s money and Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky’s life, was settled in a Manhattan federal court, with the plaintiffs winning triple damages in the amount of $5.9 million dollars.

Hermitage Capital’s new Russian counsel fell four stories — nearly to his death — just before he could testify earlier this year.

Dismissed US Attorney Preet Bharara had been prosecuting the case, but now that it won’t go to trial, the trail of official corruption won’t be exposed publicly.

Magnitsky’s killers didn’t admit guilt in the settlement.

Rohrabacher has associated with Reagan Administration extremists for decades, such as the vehemently anti-muslim activist Frank Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy, for whom the California Republican presented an award to conservative mega-donor Robert Krieble f0r his efforts in Russia.

When the Los Angeles Times asked him about Russian influence in this year’s election, Rohrabacher deployed the Soviet propaganda device whataboutism — a logically fallacious call to hypocrisy — to evade confronting the fact that his friends helped the Republican Party cheat in this year’s elections:

“Did they try to influence our election? We have tried to influence their elections, and everybody’s elections. The American people are being fed information that would lead them to believe that we need to be in a war-like stance when it comes to Russia.”

Jack Abramoff Returns: He’s The Ghost Of Republican Scandals Past

Russian propagandist Dr. Lozansky made prescient remarks — claiming that Rep. Rohrabacher would be involved in Trump’s campaign with with other Reagan supporters — predating Politico’s report in February by almost a year, and hinting at disgraced ex-lobbyist Jack Abramoff’s return.

The GOP super lobbyist is back to representing foreign powers after spending 3 1/2 years in federal prison after causing a massive Republican party-wide scandal by laundering money for political purposes

Naturally, Congressman Rohrabacher confirmed that he’s been working with Jack Abramoff and his mysterious “European” backers on a project purportedly in Africa.

Abramoff agreed to act as a liaison between his European friends whom he declined to name, the president of the Republic of Congo, and Rohrabacher to try to establish a coalition of African states to defeat the terrorist group Boko Haram. Abramoff’s friends — who Abramoff said he believes have financial investments in Congo — were in talks with the country’s controversial president, Denis Sassou Nguesso, to try to enlist the United States to support the coalition.

Jack Abramoff is now a registered lobbyist for Ukrainian oligarch Dmytro Firtash — who got sued for doing business in Manhattan with Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort — and the ex-felon travelled overseas seeking to keep him from being extradited to the US.

Firtash is currently wanted by the FBI and awaiting extradition in Austria, and because of his participation in Paul Manafort’s US shady real estate schemes.

Firtash is considered by many to be the missing link between Putin and Trump.

Republican Super Lobbyist Abramoff Went to Russia, And Brought Back The Oil Money

In 1997, Jack Abramoff — a protégé of Paul Weyrich and Robert Krieble — went to work for Russian interests.

NaftaSib — the Russian oil company who paid Jack Abramoff and others — may have been part of Gazprom due to the shareholder equity.

Sen. John McCain (R-Az.) worked hard to bury the story of Russian oil money flowing into Republican coffers, while everyone focused Jack Abramoff’s role in Indian Casino gambling, and his fraudulent purchase of a fleet of 11 casino boats from Miami Subs restaurant chain founder Gus Boulis. The last convictions in the SunCruz case were handed down in a Florida criminal court in 2015, because the Republican super lobbyist’s partner, Adam Kidan, hired a mafia hitman that murdered Boulis.

The Washington Post reported in 2005 that NaftaSib “has business ties with Russian security institutions.”

The Washington Post’s report in 2005 on Russian oil company NaftaSib’s funding for Republican causes

NaftaSib set up an offshore shell company in the Bahamas, Chelsea Commercial.

Then Chelsea Commercial used Russian oil money to hire lobbyists Jack Abramoff and current Trump administration team member Patrick Pizzella, a conservative who’s worked out of the Council for National Policy offices recently.

Abramoff and disgraced former House Majority leader Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Tx.) then had Ed Buckham set up the US Family Network as a cover operation to receive the payments.

Then, NaftaSib paid British firm James and Sarch to pay the US Family Network, which would in turn funnel the cash into Jack Abramoff and Tom DeLay’s bank accounts.

The US Family Network would also pay the National Center for Public Policy Research with dirty money to fly people to and from Moscow in the late 90s.

In January 1998, Abramoff’s American Security Council lobbyists organized a meeting between Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin and NaftaSib.

Russia went on to default on their international debts in June 1998, which led to a series of bridge loans from the Washington, D.C. based International Monetary Fund, which House Republicans opposed.

(Incidentally, this the very same crisis which led to Yeltsin hiring Putin as the head of the FSB — Russia’s internal security intelligence service — and a few months installing his mentor Yevgeny Primakov as Prime Minister.)

That’s when NaftaSib wired a million dollar payment to Rep. DeLay.

The Washington Post reports Rep. DeLay was first offered in cash.

Barrister David Sarch of the British law firm James & Sarch — who handled arrangements for the payment — died suddenly aged 57, about a month before the single, million dollar check was disbursed.

Without much delay, Rep. DeLay was calling on the IMF to fund the loan.

And he switched positions.

Voted for the IMF loan.

Russia got its money.

In early November 1998, Center for Liberal Conservative Politics founder Arkady Murashev spoke at Lozansky’s Russia House in Washington about his plans to create a political party in other to continue the Krieble legacy.

Later that month, Abramoff flew recently deposed Russian Prime Minister Sergei Kiriyenko out from Russia for a series of high level meetings, for which this itinerary was found in the National Security Caucus Foundations.

Jack Abramoff hosted a luncheon at Russia House for Kiriyenko.

He also met with the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Sen. Jesse Helms (R-NC), and then with Clinton’s Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright revealed Strobe Talbott’s key role in US-Russia diplomacy in her eulogy for Yevgeny Primakov — where she recalled the “termites” meeting story — which ultimately led to a Russia-NATO agreement.

Sen. Helms accused Talbott of spying for Russia the following year.

Abramoff would go on to lobby for NaftaSib under a different-dutch shell company called Voor Huisen, until he was caught and sentenced to a 4-year prison term on corruption charges related to his lobbying for conservative causes and fundraising with GOP congressmen.

Sergei Kiriyenko would then go on to become the leader of the political party Murashev was talking about, called the Union of Right Forces, and starting in 2005 he spent 11 years atop Rosatom — the Russian version of the Department of Energy, which oversees civilian power generation, as well as technology exports in the sector.

In October 2016, Vladimir Putin surprisingly appointed Sergey Kiriyenko as his First Deputy Chief of Staff, a powerful position in the Kremlin in charge of domestic policy. Kremlin watchers named Kiriyenko public relations prowess as the reason for his appointment, though they lamented his construction of a culture of absolute secrecy at Rosatom, which they believe could be used to cover up a Chernobyl-style disaster, at a time when 2/3rd’s of Russia’s aging nuclear reactors need refurbishment or retirement.

Congressman Rohrabacher would go on to become one of the more eccentric members of Congress for decades.