BETTE’S SUNDAY LETTERS: ‘Mike Johnson Exposed Him$elf’ — Martin Sheil Follows the Money in His Latest Letter to the Editor
The title comes from Greg Olear, the intel from Martin Sheil — retired IRS criminal investigator — who tracks the top oligarchs tied to Johnson 2018 campaign donors
In response to my thread summary yesterday about Speaker Mike Johnson’s ties to Russian oligarchs — one of whom operates a munitions business supplying Russians in their genocidal war of aggression against Ukraine — I received a note from our brilliant friend Greg Olear, who said: “There’s a ‘Mike Johnson exposed himself’ joke in there somewhere.”
Well, I can never resist a good double entendre so when retired IRS criminal investigator Martin Sheil sent me this note deepening the investigation into Johnson’s 2018 funders, I simply couldn’t resist.
First, please read my thread revealing the oligarchs that seeded GOP campaigns. On a tip off from Marty at Bette’s Happy Hour earlier this week, I followed the money all the way to Speaker Johnson and the guns and ammo being supplied to the Russian military. Seems our federal authorities should have a look, yes? In light of Johnson forcing Ukrainian soldiers to suffer losses on the battlefield by withholding aid, while he enjoys photos ops at Mar-a-Lago while on vacation — a federal investigation is necessary.
In the meantime, Marty deepens our initial probe with some observations derived largely from Luke Harding’s excellent work in The Guardian in 2018, which first revealed a Putin advisor had a secret investment in the energy firm that funneled money into Johnson’s campaign and others — including Lindsey Graham.
Here is a Sunday Letter to Bette/Op-Ed offering more information:
Dear Heidi,
I only read your thread and did not go into your research, but I am hoping that you not only talked about Nikolaev and his munitions manufacturing company as well as his fellow Russian investors Kunatbaev and Yuriev that we discussed during Bette’s Happy Hour, but I am making sure your readers have an opportunity to follow the money a bit further.
American Ethane is an American company in name only. It's CEO is/was John Houghtaling a rich New Orleans attorney/political contributor with a Russian wife, but as you likely noted, it is a company mostly owned by Russians.
We talked about Nikolaev and Kunatbaev and Yuriev a bit but we neglected to talk about the original investors.
That would be Roman Abramovich, who might be the richest of all Russian oligarchs — I think you are familiar with him.
But the guy who always seems to float under the radar with regard to American Ethane is a Russian by the name of Voloshin who was Yeltsin's Chief of Staff and who also worked closely with Putin in Putin's early days 2000-2003.
The way the story goes - Houghtaling was looking for seed money for American Ethane. Yuriev approached Abramovich who was intrigued. Houghtaling invited Abramovich to New Orleans to seal the deal. Abramovich's jet was so big Houghtaling had to arrange with airport authorities to bring in a special ladder stairs for Abramovich to descend. Houghtaling entertained Abramovich at his New Orleans mansion - one of the largest most reknown in New Orleans and the result was Abramovich agreed to invest $50M start up money into American Ethane. He also agreed to loan $21M to Houghtaling through Millhouse Investments company which later became the basis of a suit between the two. American Ethane and Abramovich split in 2017.
But I wanted to focus on Voloshin here.
Voloshin was somewhat of a secret investor early on. He put up $1.25M and got a 2.5% share plus a seat on the board as an independent Director.
Voloshin allegedly borrowed the $1.25M from Nikolaev, who transferred the money via a shell company in Seychelles.
In 2014 Voloshin transferred the $1.25M from his account in Moscow to the U.S. via Deutsche Bank Officially, Voloshin's involvement was kept secret because he was viewed as a PEP - politically exposed person.
But a special vehicle AV SPV was set up to hold his stake. (Marty speculative question here - was Voloshin fronting for Putin? The numbers are about right. The small original investment is now worth hundreds of millions. A special deal with China significantly boosted the value. Trump was witnessed applauding vigorously when the deal went down).
Anyway, the above is certainly a tangled web and it is important to focus on Nikolaev's involvement, but I think it’s equally worthy to shed a little more light on the roles of Abramovich and Voloshin who really propped up Houghtaling and converted him into a potential Russian bagman to prominent Louisiana politicians.
Please do encourage your readers to revisit the work of Luke Harding in 2018. He was the source for much of our understanding of this tangle web.
Also, I know you are a Disinformation specialist and referenced that one of the Russian stockholders in American Ethane - Kunatbaev - founded TV3 Russia in 1994. It is important to note that he grew it into the 5th largest TV station in Russia before divesting in 2007. So we can say about Mr. Kunatbaev that purveying Propaganda was most profitable.
Couple of additional items: I wanted to relay the curious factoid that when Abramovich loaned money to Houghtaling his legal representation was Alex van der Zwaan, the first person convicted by Robert Mueller.
In addition, you mention Tony Perkins in your thread. As you noted, he was on the board of Mike Johnson’s Freedom Guard and was the past President of such notable conservative religious organizations as the Family Research Council (FRC), and the shadowy dark money umbrella group, Council for National Policy (CNP).
It’s worth noting he was, as point of fact, a member of the Louisiana Legislature back in the day when Steve Scalise, Mike Johnson, Senator Kennedy and the rest of the Louisiana Congressional Putin Faction (LCPF) were just getting their ChristoFascist groove on and happily taking political contributions from the aforementioned Houghtaling.
In regards to your questions about who funded Johnson’s non-profit Freedom Guard and how can Robert Mercer put $600,000 in a political PAC that then turns around and pays his defunct data mining company Cambridge Analytica $480,000 without flagging federal watchdogs, it’s important to understand they call them Dark Money Pacs for a reason.
SCOTUS defanged the FEC with their Citizens United ruling and Congress failed to provide sufficient funding to enable them to do any real deep dives resulting in a system where moneyed interests can fund whatever extreme agenda they want in the name of freedom of speech while all the little people can do is observe their financial power plays and Yelp!
Here’s to making some noise.
To be continued,
Marty
PS: Putin idi nakhui (Fuck Putin)
or
Putin pozor (shame on you Putin)
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