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This story, at first glance, makes you wonder not “What were they thinking”, but rather “WERE they thinking?” I”m not sure any of the people involved in this were<\/em> thinking. This is both comically dumb, and disturbingly stupid. Definitely not planned, but some sort of fly-by-wire operation.<\/p>\n From The Hill: http:\/\/thehill.com\/blogs\/blog-briefing-room\/404786-wife-of-ex-nra-head-tapped-accused-russian-agent-to-secure-jet-fuel<\/a><\/p>\n The wife\u00a0of\u00a0David Keene, a former president of the National Rifle Association (NRA),\u00a0tapped accused Russian agent Maria Butina to secure a jet fuel deal with Russia,\u00a0according to hundreds of emails obtained by The New York Times<\/a>.<\/p>\n Donna Keene, a Washington lobbyist, asked Butina and her boyfriend at the time, GOP operative Paul Erickson, to secure five million barrels of jet fuel in exchange for $1 million, the Times reported.\u00a0Keene reportedly connected Butina and Erickson with prospective buyers, including\u00a0Israeli-American salesman\u00a0Yoni Wiss.<\/p>\n Butina is currently in a\u00a0Virginia\u00a0jail awaiting trial. \u00a0The 29-year-old\u00a0allegedly told unnamed people in the U.S. that she\u00a0targeted the NRA because they have a\u00a0“central place and influence” in the U.S. and that they are the \u201clargest sponsor of the elections to the U.S. Congress.”<\/p>\n That\u2019s a brief version. The real lowdown is at the NYT site here: https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2018\/09\/02\/us\/politics\/maria-butina-russian-spy.html<\/a><\/p>\n From the NYT:<\/p>\n Federal prosecutors have depicted her (Butina) as a character out of \u201cRed Sparrow,\u201d the spy thriller about a Russian femme fatale. Ms. Butina, supported by Russian intelligence, managed\u00a0to infiltrate conservative groups<\/a>\u00a0and advance Moscow\u2019s interests in the United States, prosecutors say.<\/p>\n In their telling,\u00a0she used gun rights<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 Ms. Butina had started a pro-gun group in Russia \u2014 to gain a toehold in American conservative circles, and then\u00a0struck up a romance with a far older Republican operative<\/a>\u00a0to open doors further. She has denied the allegations.<\/p>\n Fair warning: the NYT will probably want \u00a0money from you, so you might want to just go to their site and read the full article there.<\/p>\n I admit to some curiosity on\u00a0 my part: the alleged volume of jet fuel, per the article is far more than Russia\u2019s refineries can export in one month. In addition, the NYT article indicates that there is no port anywhere that could handle the amount of oil this group intended to obtain. I’m impressed with their consistent use of “trigger” words: inflitrate, gun rights, pro-gun, gain a toehold, open doors further.<\/p>\n It’s meant to stir your curiosity. Oooh! Is this a spy novel??? No. Sorry.<\/p>\n To add to the curious nature of this, Ms. Butina aligned herself with a Russian coffee bean trader and a public relations consultant with rather sketchy ties to Vlad Putin’s political party, for no visible reason, other than “Russian”.<\/p>\n Apparently, this rather oddly comic adventure began when Ms. Butina ran into the Keenes and they all met with someone as yet unnamed who wanted to import 5 million barrels of Russian oil, for a finder\u2019s fee of $1,000,000, in addition to Yoni Wiss who indicates that not one of these people had the faintest idea what they were doing, such as how to find a market for this product, which is where you start. \u00a0If you sell the products without researching the market, that’s kind of like being stuck with Amway’s things. \u00a0And besides, isn’t Libyan oil still being stolen and sold? That’s a much higher profit margin, y0u know.<\/p>\n Gee whiz, people, if you\u2019re going to try to pull off some kind of Spy vs. Spy stuff, which this is nearly imitating, at least read Follet and Ludlum novels first about the spy business. Or watch Walter Matthau in \u2018Hop Scotch\u2019. You might learn something.<\/p>\n I\u2019m just glad that nobody got hurt, no splinters in the fingers, and no broken nails out of this. Ms Butina, as is indicated, is sitting in a jail cell awaiting a hearing.<\/p>\n Is this “investigation” into tomfoolery kind of a hint that the Demos are scrambling to find a way to prove, once and for, all that the Russians ran our elections in the fall of 2016? It does look that way to me. But they didn’t, so….?<\/p>\n In retrospect, this NYT pile of “evidence” about a bird-brained attempt at making big sales in the USA commodities market with neither the experience to do it, nor the faintest idea how trading commodities works, is simply a tempest in a teapot. The real story is this nitwitted attempt to break into “something big” without the right training or tools to do the job. If Ms. Butina, who had a somewhat inflated view of her place in things, had bothered to check the financial and commodities markets, she might have seen seen that she was completely out of her depth. She had no connections with Gazprom, Russia’s oil contractor, and no real connections to Vlad, who may be snorting with laughter over this dustup. And she had not researched her proposed market ahead of time, in order to make the deal work.<\/p>\n Note that on the sidebar in the “Hill” article, there is a link to something that says the Democrats will “bring sparks to the Kavanaugh hearing”. Is this connected to this oil business nonsense? Yes, in a vague way, because that will somehow sneak into the hearings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"