Republican Strategist Convicted Of Funneling Russian Money To Trump Campaign

A Republican strategist that had previously been pardoned by then-President Trump has been convicted of illegally funneling money from a Russian oligarch to Donald Trump's 2016 campaign. Trump himself may not have "colluded" with the Russians, but it is crystal clear that Russia wanted him to be president. Farron Cousins discusses this.

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*This transcript was auto-generated. Please excuse any typos.

A Republican strategist that has worked for people such as Ron Paul and Mitch McConnell has now been convicted of illegally funneling $25,000 from a Russian businessman who was at the time running for the Russian Parliament to the 2016 Donald Trump campaign. The, uh, strategist by the name of Jesse Benton first got involved in politics working for Ron Paul. He then, of course, married Ron Paul's granddaughter, which of course makes him related to Rand Paul. And Rand Paul is the guy who actually secured a pardon for Benton on other crimes that he had committed. Uh, and he got that pardon from Donald Trump in 2020. But shortly after he got pardoned for those campaign finance violations, he was then hit with more indictments for funneling the money from the Russian oligarch to Donald Trump's campaign. So pretty interesting little story there, right? But to me, it's not just about how this guy is deeply involved with Republican politics to the point where he can ask his family members to go beg the president for a pardon.

What gets me is the Russian angle, right? Obviously, the Mueller investigation was unable to prove that Donald Trump colluded with Russia. Fair enough. Right. But I think at this point it's undeniable that Russia did 100% want Donald Trump to be president, and they engaged in a lot of very shady activities to make sure that that happened. And this is just the latest example of that, right? There is no question whatsoever that Russia interfered in the 2016 election. Even the Mueller report said like, yeah, the interference happened. Russia did what they could to make sure Trump won. And this is just the latest example of this, right? And this indictment originally came out two years after the Mueller report was even released. So yeah, I would say that's a pretty big deal. Even if it is just one guy funneling money for one guy who technically wasn't in the Russian government. It doesn't matter. Everybody with a little bit of power, which is pretty much Vladimir Putin, and the people that run the industries in Russia wanted Trump to be president. And there is a very good reason for that. The problem is we're not really clear on what those reasons are. You know, there's been some speculation. Maybe the US is gonna let Russia do some things. Maybe they're gonna get away with things, maybe we're gonna trade. But nothing really makes total sense even still today.

Right. And that's the part that really, really bugs me. What is it about Trump that made the Russians, yeah. Everybody from the, the president Putin to, to the oligarchs. Why were they so desperate to get Donald Trump in office? That's the part that we still need very clear answers to because we don't have those, right. The Mueller report did not give us those. I mean, technically that's not what they were looking into, but we know they interfered. We know they were pushing to get him in office. Why? Because they knew Trump was a coward, because they knew he was e easily uh, manipulated because they knew that he wouldn't ever hold them accountable for whatever. I think those are, you know, probably the reasons, but we, we do need to find out why, because Trump is running for president again. So I suspect we can probably get ready for even more Russian interference in the coming months and years.