{"id":158,"date":"2023-01-24T10:40:01","date_gmt":"2023-01-24T15:40:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/liberal-elite.org\/?p=158"},"modified":"2023-01-24T18:57:49","modified_gmt":"2023-01-24T23:57:49","slug":"whats-behind-santos-of-ny-russian-influence-peddling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/liberal-elite.org\/?p=158","title":{"rendered":"What&#8217;s Behind Santos of NY? Russian Influence Peddling"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>If [Victor] Vekselberg\u2019s name sounds familiar, it may be because of his connection to former President Donald Trump. Back in 2017, the Daily Beast reported, Vekselberg\u2019s cousin and money manager, Andrew Intrater, funneled money to Trump\u2019s erstwhile personal lawyer, Michael Cohen \u2014 eight payments in eight months through his company, Columbus Nova. Columbus Nova, meanwhile, appears to have been a client of serial fabulist George Santos\u2019 back when he was working at Harbor City Capital, the investment firm later accused of running a Ponzi scheme.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>According to the&nbsp;<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/politics\/2023\/01\/16\/george-santos-andrew-intrater-columbus-nova\/\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Washington Post<\/em><\/a>, Harbor City accepted a \u201c$625,000 deposit from a company registered in Mississippi that identifies Intrater as its lone officer\u201d in 2020. Intrater and his wife went on to become&nbsp;<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.thedailybeast.com\/republican-george-devolder-santos-got-cash-from-andrew-intrater-cousin-of-russian-oligarch-viktor-vekselberg?ref=scroll\" target=\"_blank\">major backers of Santos<\/a>\u2019 bid for Congress in \u201822, giving $56,100 to committees backing the embattled NY representative. Santos, meanwhile, went on to distinguish himself as an outspoken critic of&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/t\/ukraine\/\">Ukraine<\/a>, which he called \u201ctotalitarian regime\u201d in an interview at CPAC last year.<\/p>\n<cite>From <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/bit.ly\/3XQPQmH\" target=\"_blank\">Rolling Stone &#8211; How Do You Hide a 255-Foot Superyacht? Poorly<\/a><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Russian money buys condemnation of Ukraine from corrupt US House member.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":159,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-158","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-corruption"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/liberal-elite.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/santos.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/liberal-elite.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/liberal-elite.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/liberal-elite.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/liberal-elite.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/liberal-elite.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=158"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/liberal-elite.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":162,"href":"https:\/\/liberal-elite.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158\/revisions\/162"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/liberal-elite.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/liberal-elite.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/liberal-elite.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/liberal-elite.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}