Las Vegas Sun

March 18, 2024

Sun editorial:

Republicans have sold out their nation in service of political power

They may be oligarchs, dictators, kleptocrats, sleazy foreign business operatives or common crooks, but they have one thing in common.

Increasingly, they’re being given a seat at the table in national Republican Party politics.

With the arrests last week of Rudy Giuliani’s associates Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, it’s become clear that GOP influence is for sale to virtually any buyer who would help the Republicans by handing over cash or digging up dirt on the party’s opponents — or worse, inventing dirt on opponents.

The message from GOP leaders: To hell with any moral or ethical standards, just show us the money or the goods.

Parnas and Fruman are the latest examples of this. The Soviet-born Florida businessmen are as sketchy as they come.

When they began donating heavily to the GOP in 2018, the two were already plagued by a long trail of financial problems and accusations of stiffing their creditors. Now they’re charged with conspiracy, falsifying records and making false statements to the Federal Election Commission in connection with shadowy activities to boost Republicans. One alleged scheme involved funneling money from a Russian oligarch while using a legal-marijuana business as a front, while another involved making illegal straw-donor contributions to former Rep. Pete Sessions of Texas.

Such is the new face of the Republican Party’s inner circle. Parnas and Fruman were photographed with Donald Trump and Donald Trump Jr., and are practically joined at the hip with Giuliani. Not only did Giuliani have lunch with them just hours before they were arrested while trying to leave the country on one-way airline flights — how suspicious is that? — but Giuliani was recorded eating lunch with them at Trump’s Washington hotel in 2018.

Remember Trump’s promise to bring on board the “best people?” How is that working out, GOP? Under Trump, the thugs from the swamp have consumed Washington completely.

There’s also a Nevada connection, as Parnas and Fruman donated to GOP candidates Adam Laxalt (governor) and Wes Duncan (attorney general) in 2018. Both candidates, who lost their races, claim they had no idea the donors were involved in illegal activity when they accepted the donations.

According to published reports, Laxalt and Duncan were among at least 14 Republican candidates and groups that Parnas and Fruman funded to the tune of $675,000. Six of their donations involved “either a shell company used to hide the men’s identities or foreign money meant to curry favor with U.S. politicians,” according to federal prosecutors. Among those who received contributions was House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, in 2018.

But make no mistake, Parnas and Fruman were all about buying influence, nothing more, and that makes any recipient of their money deserving of extra scrutiny. Parnas and Fruman clearly expected a return on their investment. When the story broke, Duncan announced he had refunded his donation and Laxalt’s camp said he planned to do the same.

Trump, of course, would like Americans to believe he didn’t know Parnas and Fruman. Time will tell, as investigators start tracing leads.

But whatever the case, the arrests spoke volumes about the state of the GOP leadership’s standards of scrupulous behavior. Which is to say there aren’t any. One feels sorry for principled Republicans helplessly confronting the venality of their leaders. Their only hope is to abandon the GOP leadership.

This is a party that has climbed into bed with the likes of election riggers — foreign and domestic — and accepted untold amounts of dark money from other shady sources. And let’s be clear that while progressives also have taken dark money, conservative candidates and groups have outspent them $763.2 million to $235.8 million in those funds over the past decade, according to the latest figures available.

Then there’s Trump’s embrace of Vladimir Putin and other authoritarians, which has been met with a wall of silence from GOP leadership.

As a result of all of this, corrupting influences are fully aware that Republicans are happy to be bought.

If it’s not stopped, the ramifications of the situation are enormous. Already, hostile nations are gaining an increasingly strong hold on the strings of power, interfering in elections and driving political polarization in the U.S. through dissemination of false information. With the GOP giving them more influence, those problems will only intensify.

Trump’s withdrawal from Syria, and the associated massacre of the Kurds, has effectively handed the Middle East to Vladimir Putin and pleased a Turkish dictator who holds sway over Trump Towers in Istanbul. This moral outrage is just a taste of what’s to come — who will Trump abandon next at the urging of his master, Putin?

That being the case, responsible Republicans must put their foot down to rein in the Trump administration, clean up their own party and join the Democrats who are calling for reforms in dark money contributions.

Meanwhile, the 2020 election can’t come soon enough. It’s a chance for voters to remind Republicans that in picking their friends, their top consideration should be whether those individuals are also friends of America.