McCain Campaign Manager's Alleged Russian Mob Ties
By Nicole Belle Friday Jun 13, 2008 7:30pm
Rick Davis' lobbyists ties certainly extend far beyond the telecom industry. ABC News:
John McCain's presidential campaign is blasting a New York Times report suggesting that the candidate may have known since 2005 that his campaign manager's firm worked for a Kremlin-backed politician.
The McCain campaign is strongly denying the paper's reporting that in 2005, a White House National Security Council staffer called John McCain's Senate office to complain that Rick Davis' lobbying firm was "undercutting American policy on Ukraine" by representing a Kremlin-backed politician.
The Bush White House -- and McCain opposed Yanukovich, whom the United States and others had accused of election fraud, and benefiting from violence and intimidation towards journalists.
McCain's campaign categorically denied that Davis was involved in his firm's work for the Ukranian politician did not prepare briefings for U.S. officials or lawmakers, did not schedule meetings involving Yanukovich, did not draft talking points, and did not make phone calls on Yanukovich's behalf.[..]
If the account of the NSC staffer's call is true, it suggests McCain should have known about the work by Davis' business -- but installed him as campaign manager anyway. McCain's campaign, which had earlier referred a New York Times reporter to McCain's Senate office, now disputes that such a phone call ever happened.[..]
The story also raises the possibility that Davis' firm may have violated the anti-espionage Foreign Agents Registration Act, by failing to register work for Yanukovich with the U.S. government.
According to Salon, this is not the only campaign personnel with Russian ties:
As president, McCain says he would back up his tough talk with equally aggressive policies. He wants to kick Russia out of the Group of 8, the organization of the world's leading industrial powers. McCain has also long been a proponent of quickly expanding NATO to include former Soviet allies like Georgia. Russia bristles at the notion of the Western military alliance encroaching on her border. "Rather than tolerate Russia's nuclear blackmail or cyber attacks," McCain said in a March speech, "Western nations should make clear that the solidarity of NATO, from the Baltic to the Black Sea, is indivisible."
This kind of talk -- in particular the call to oust Russia from the G-8 -- has given pause to seasoned experts on that part of the world, who tend to emphasize engagement with Russia. McCain's harsh rhetoric and tough proposals led Newsweek's Fareed Zakaria to write an April column titled "McCain's Radical Foreign Policy." If McCain were to pursue his Russia agenda as president, Zakaria wrote, it would be interpreted by much of the world as an "attempt by Washington to begin a new Cold War."
But the sound of sabers rattling is music to the ears of Randy Scheunemann, the McCain campaign's senior foreign policy and national security advisor. A long-term confidant of the candidate, Scheunemann also supports a very tough stance toward Russia. Unlike McCain, until very recently he was paid to support that stance. McCain, already under fire for the role of lobbyists in his campaign, is taking his foreign policy advice from someone who was a paid lobbyist for former Soviet Bloc countries that are wary of Russia, and seems to advocate those policies the countries and their former lobbyist want. Notably, McCain supports a quick expansion of NATO, and Scheunemann has already helped two former Soviet satellites gain admission to NATO and has worked on behalf of two others. Until early this year, Scheunemann was simultaneously working for the McCain campaign and as a lobbyist for a shifting menu of Eastern European and former Soviet Bloc countries with NATO aspirations.
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My friends...let me explain...
Cold War part two.......starring McBush
Sweet Jaysus in a speedo..how is the old fart gonna explain this one away? Frickin Corporate press will find a way to give him a pass.
Is C&L turning into the "let's hammer the fuck out of McCain channel"?
Pelosi has ties to "The Bush Crime Syndicate" by not impeaching the bastards, making her and most of the Dems "accessories after
the fact"!!!
Fucking go tell that on the mountain!!!!!!!!!
GOP = MOB. It's all the same.
It's no secret Russia is on Bush Co, McCain's, and the Idiot Cabal's revenge list for Putin kicking Western Oil out.
Despite it. . . The United States needs a strategy that 'creates more partners and fewer terrorists.'
Former US President Bill Clinton.
(pssst. I know where Rush can score some drugs http://www.236.com/news/2008/06/13/236_remembers_7140.php )
Oh! I get it.
This is what they mean when they say McC has 'experience'= ties with organized crime.
wow. so now it comes out mccain's got commie capitulators running his camp.
somebody up poor old maverick's meds, eh?
Hanoi John McBu$h: The Ukrainian Candidate
You know I sometimes wonder if McCain isn't the "designated loser" with this kind of crap.
Bush Co doesn't care if they win they've already looted the U.S. treasury and control most of the countries assets anyway now why should they care?
What? What? What?
Ties to the Russian *mob*?!
The Russians are mean mofos, they don't kid around. They assassinated a person on one country's soil, and God help this poor soul if he doesn't end up raking cash for this dog he's lying with.
Rove ‘talks fairly regularly’ with top McCain staffers.
“Generally speaking, Rove’s advice is action-oriented and useful,” said another senior consultant to the McCain camp. “It’s always well received.” This McCain adviser noted that Rove talks periodically to Black and a few other top campaign aides on several key matters. “It can be policy ideas, messaging ideas, fundraising prospects, or people who need calls from someone in the campaign.” Rove is “part of the information network that the campaign has,” this adviser said, adding that Rove talks fairly regularly to such key people as Wayne Berman, a major fundraiser for McCain; Nicolle Wallace, a communications adviser; and Steve Schmidt, a senior aide.
Stone, who has previously reported that Rove is “up to his eyeballs” in the coordination of outside political groups supporting Republicans, also reports that Rove is paid “mid-six figures” to provide assistance to the conservative attack group Freedom’s Watch.
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/06/13/rove-talks-fairly-regularly-with-top...
Oh god sorry to go "kinda sorta off topic" for a minute but this is GOP hypocrisy at it's most hilarious coming from the McCain camp.
John McCain’s campaign immediately accused the Democratic candidate (Obama) of playing the politics of fear.
http://tinyurl.com/4ke2a2
L.A. Confidential @ 14:
Amazing isn't it how terrified these Chickenhawks get when someone get's in their face and one ups them for a change huh?
L.A. Confidential @ 15:
Fascist wannabes like them are always terrified. If they were a real fascist movement ala Hitler or Mussolini, they wouldn't accuse him of spreading the politics of fear, they'd smash his rallies apart with entire armies of stalwarts.
These people are a very, very good example of a cracker fascist wannabe.
Disclaimer-Southern white male Baptist, I know what I speak of.
i could see the mccain camp getting so desperate they try to give give flavor flav 2 million bucks to run w/ him on a "unity" ticket...
Jesus, first one quits for lobbying on behalf of the sadistic Generals of the Burma Junta, now for one of the most despicable post Soviet thug regimes in the Ukraine. And Jim Johnson happened to work for Countrywide. What's wrong with this picture?
L.A. Confidential @ 11:
And then in 2012, after four years of a Democratic President swamped in the disasters left behind by Bush, the GOP will BLAME the Democrats for the disaster and try to reclaim the White House.
It worked for Reagan after Carter. No doubt they plan to do it again.
MountainMan23 @ 19:
The US economy under Carter was more the fault of the Presidents who wasted lives in the Vietnam debacle than anything that turd in the White House did. An evangelical leftist like Carter does equally crappy as an evangelical rightist like Bush. Whether your politics are social justice or burn the heretics, putting Jesus (or Allah, or Amatesaru, or Brahman) as the guide of a country doesn't work well. We should have learned from Carter what would happen under Bush. Religion, whether Abrahamic, Dharmic, Taoic, or indigenous, has no business inserting itself in the state.
Why are the lobbyists all not in jail? Their only purpose is to bribe public officials, an impeachable offense. They are in the business of corrupting government. Aren't there laws against that?
This guy Davis should inform McStupid that Putin is Russian and not German.
.
But does the report discuss the Israelis mob, AIPAC/PNAC
.
Dusty @ 3:
Time for your local USA media blackout; it would be unpatriotic to put question to a war hero who isn't John Kerry.
Come one, cam all ye, to the Maverick McCain Campaign. We have Russian Mafia, we have the UBS Swiss Bank, Karl Rove, Charles Keating and King Bleedin' Kong - no, I mean King Sum Noon - we got the big tent with the most clowns -24/7!
Captain Obama’s Bitter Half Husein Kangaroo @ 22:
Or that you down beers, not veto them.
What's the big deal--A russian lobbist! What should be a big concern is Oil, Military and the worst--AIPAC lobbists.
FYI,Russia did not get us into the mess USi is in--Poverty--the most hated nation, Politicians all on the take.
How come no-one exposes McCain's habits of gambling in Casinos-- and lobbies for the Indian tribes for new Casinos and worse--ties to Scooter Libby--Gambling.
Time to make Russia a partner.But Israel hates them--a lost cause!
Paul @ 21:
Sadly, no. Since Sargon cursed the world with the dream of empire in Eurasia, and the Ghana and Olmec and (I believe) Chavin on other continents, corruption has been as instrumental to government as apple pie to America (which is funny cuz I hate apple pie, and I'm an American from a lineage here back in colonial days, on both sides, no less.) As to why Australia isn't included, for about 40,000 years it was ruled by hunter-gatherers. Probably in another 2-3,000 years the Torres Strait Islanders would have begun to found a state, but the Indigenous Australians were under a lot of handicaps, having been isolated from other human groups before the bow, (I know, the woomera, but bows are better) much less the gun.
America has been an empire since 1781.
McCain and his lobbyists are going to give us lots and lots of cannon fodder arent' they? As someone says above..its like he is the bimbo for the Repub this Presidential election..
General_Rennenkampf @ 26:
Oh - you're just sayin that 'cause it's true! And for everybody who didn't know - Howard Zinn's "People's History of the United States " makes for amazing reading....
Embittered-Max-Hussein-1 @ 23:
What? Israel can control the US? When did that happen? A bunch of Jews (Jews with nukes, admittedly, but still Jews) that are sooner or later going to bring about the Diaspora, Round 3 can control the United States?
I get that a large section of the country expects a Rapture, but then those people are Protestant versions of Haredim anywho, and just as faithful to the traditions of their elders, to boot. God, it was so much simpler when these types would have been monks, isolated from all the normal people. Hardly better, definitely worse for everybody, but simpler is not better.
You're making Christian Zionism into a Leftist (if you're not a RW troll in disguise) John Bircher phenomenon. I'm away from the Right because that mindset predominates. But on Crooks and Liars reading something directly out of the John Birch Society?!!!!
Sorry, but talking of Israel like that seems a direct leftist rendition of "I have a list of 200 names of people in the state department associated with the Communist Party." A bunch of Jews about to push the Muslims and Christians both in the Mideast a wee bit too far and scatter themselves worse than Bar-Kokhba did, control the US. Jesus, I thought people like this were Stormfronters.
intercepted conversation between russkies and mccain camp:
"we make caspian pipeline together, bring many milkshake, da, comrade maverick?"
"where you keepin' the perestroika trollops?"
Mickxotic @ 29:
It's not just true, but blatantly obvious. Even acknowledging the horrors the 1492 plagues and even more death caused by rampaging Spaniards and Frenchmen, the US expansion through North America is like a white Pakachuti irruption, and just as implausible. We were an empire long before we even took the Southwest and California by force of arms in the 1840s.
General_Rennenkampf @ 20:
Precisely the point - the current turd in the White House has done precisely what the Presidents who wasted lives in the Vietnam debacle did - waste lives in an unnecessary foreign war & dig one enormous economic hole for their successor.
General_Rennenkampf @ 20:
Yes the economy was very fucked up before Carter became President. It was very fucked up before Ford. Nixon had the economy as screwed up as it had every been. Does anybody remember price controls? The problem was that by the end of Carter's term people were so pissed off they would have even voted for Reagan..... Oh, they did vote for Reagan. But biggest reason Reagan won was because of one line. "Do you feel better off than you were four years ago?" That one line won the election for Reagan.
Scheunemann?..... wasn't there a Gestapo agent by that name?
Captain Obama’s Bitter Half Husein Kangaroo @ 33:
Nixon literally had no choice on the price controls. Endless warfare in Vietnam on a scale that makes Iraq seem small by comparison was leading directly to stagflation. If he hadn't done it, it wouldn't have been the USSR alone that would have been in danger of implosion by the 1980s...
When Dwight Eisenhower started the first involvements in 'Nam (it can't be traced to Kennedy, or LBJ), he started a great drain on our economy. And Carter's being a Leftist Bush in terms of religion (he was our first evangelical turd in the Oval Office) didn't help matters. Jesus politics in an industrialized environment sucks badly. A tradition that has no real way to update itself (at least Orthodoxy and Catholicism update with the times to a real degree) and is in fact a reaction to the sort of updating eventually done by Catholics and Orthodox doesn't survive well in a world of unethical choices in terms of international relations.
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The only thing that the Kremlin and "Russian mob" have in common is that they are in Russia. The Kremlin is the reason the Russian mob got "mostly" run out of that country. I'm no fan of either of them, but you should not confuse the two.
Am I wrong in thinking that this nitpicking seems to be going overboard as a reason to hammer either campaign? Supposedly the man worked for a company whether others did something but he wasn't involved and yet the cries go out for his head and his removal. If someone were to investigate the dealings of the law firm where Obama worked, and they did something wrong but Obama wasn't involved, would it follow naturally that others could then claim that Obama should not run or be removed from running for office? Are you now responsible for what others do at the same company but actions you weren't involved in? When are we going to hear more of the issues etc. of each campaign rather than all the complaints about those who are working for them?
General_Rennenkampf @ 26:
Ah. Well, in that case, we need to stop being that right away. Then hang all the lobbyists.
The Kremlin is not the mob, it is a government. Nicole, you, and I may not like Putin and his clique, but one of the things Putin accomplished was to take back government and business from the mob, unlike Yeltsin, our man in the Kremlin. More to the point, " according to Salon, this is not the only campaign personnel with Russian ties"—refers us to a Salon article about Scheunemann's ANTI Kremlin, anti Russian "ties."
Am I missing something? [deleted - disagree with our site writers if you like, but refrain from insults or you'll end up banned. - site monitor]
Paul @ 40:
6,000 years of corruption in nation-state organization are hardly going to vanish overnight. Then, you have to solve the overcompensation issues the species has for those 6.5 million years of being eaten.
martha @ 41:
The Kremlin is not the mob? They just use that muscle to get rid of inconvenient people like journalists and political opponents. How are they different?
Paul @ 40:
I hope not. I rather like the ACLU.
i just want to know why the msm isnt pounding him for lying about his campaign being run by lobbiests
The Russian mob is more honest than McSame, the GOP, and the bu$h administration, so it may be an improvement.
McKraine.
this reminds of GTA4 for some reason. LOL
seriously, his campaign is being run by underground comic book characters.
My friends... I'm a war hero.
go McCainski ! ! !
бомбите бомбу бомбы, бомба бомбят Иран. я хочу быть президентом, потому что я думаю, что я выгляжу хорошим в костюме. пожалуйста голосуйте за меня, даже при том, что я действительно действительно стар.
At least it's not the German mafia--Putin might get upset.
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