McClatchy DC, which has been covering the ties between Russia, the National Rifle Association, and the Trump campaign, reports Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigators likely have obtained the gun lobby's tax returns from the IRS.
On the returns, the group was required to identify its so-called “dark money” donors -- companies and wealthy individuals who financed $21 million of the group’s publicly disclosed pro-Trump spending, as well as its multimillion-dollar efforts to heighten voter turnout. The NRA’s nonprofit status allows it to shield those donors’ names from the public, but not the IRS.
A central question for Mueller’s office is whether any of the confidential donors’ names hold clues that could enable investigators to trace a donation camouflaged to hide its Russian origins – such as a shell company that might be the end point in a chain of offshore transactions.
It is illegal for foreign funds to be spent to influence U.S. elections.
McClatchy says prosecutors can get tax information without the subject of the investigation knowing.
“Investigators must follow the money wherever it leads to understand the full story of Russia’s attack on our democracy,” said [Senator Ron] Wyden (D-OR), a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee that is examining Russia’s election interference.
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The NRA’s general counsel, John Frazer, said in a flurry of letters with Wyden earlier this year that the group’s donations from Russia during the 2016 election cycle totaled $2,500, but did not reveal the extent to which the group traces the true origins of its $350 million in annual funding.
Alexander Torshin, "deputy governor of Russia’s central bank and a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin," has been a central figure in the NRA-related probe.
Torshin has drawn scrutiny in part because Spanish prosecutors accused him of money-laundering and also because he cultivated relationships with the NRA that nearly earned him a meeting with Trump.
He befriended then-NRA President David Keene beginning in 2011, became a lifetime member of the group and attended a string of NRA national conventions in the ensuing years. That led to Moscow visits by Keene and other NRA heavyweights in 2013 and 2015 to meet with a Russian gun rights group that Torshin was instrumental in forming and later with a deputy prime minister.
The Spanish prosecutors, who have cooperated with the FBI for years, say Torshin has a dark side. They have accused him of laundering money for the Russian mob, an allegation Torshin has denied.
Last month during a visit to Washington, chief Spanish prosecutor Jose Grinda spent several hours meeting with FBI officials, according to two people familiar with his itinerary.
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Grinda also met with journalists at the Hudson Institute, where he revealed that a few months ago he provided the FBI with 33 audio recordings of Torshin, including one in which a since-convicted Russian money launderer called him “godfather,” according to Yahoo News.
On April 6, the Treasury Department included Torshin on a list of Russians sanctioned in response to the Kremlin-ordered invasion of Eastern Ukraine, Moscow’s meddling in the 2016 elections and other aggressive actions.
The NRA says Torshin's membership currently is "frozen."
McClatchy has more on how federal investigators follow the money.
Where potential financial crimes are involved, neither the NRA nor any other group can protect the identities of large dark-money donors from investigators, even if the fortress-like IRS holds the records. Investigators need only show “a reasonable cause to believe” that the information sought is relevant to a federal crime – a lower threshold than that required for a search warrant.
FBI and IRS agents collaborating on follow-the-money investigations commonly use “secret subpoenas, tax orders and other investigative techniques to collect an extraordinary amount of financial information without their target even knowing that the investigation exists,” said one former senior federal prosecutor, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to sensitive relationships with investigators.
Full story: Russia investigators likely got access to NRA's tax filings, secret donors (McClatchy DC)