Claire’s compleat embarrassment

As Scott recounted here, Sen. Claire McCaskill stepped in it when, seeking to distinguish herself from Attorney General Sessions, she tweeted:

I’ve been on the Armed Services Com for 10 years. No call or meeting w/Russian ambassador. Ever. Ambassadors call members of Foreign Rel Com.

Sessions had said that his previously undisclosed encounters with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak took place as a part of his routine senatorial duties on the Armed Services Committee. McCaskill was trying to show that this was a lie.

However, the falsity of McCaskill’s claim was demonstrated by her prior tweets. In June 2013, she had tweeted:

Off to meeting w/Russian Ambassador. Upset about the arbitrary/cruel decision to end all US adoptions,even those in process.

And in August of the same year, she tweeted:

Today calls with British, Russian, and German Ambassadors re: Iran deal.

McCaskill’s embarrassment was compounded recently when it was revealed that she attended a black-tie dinner at the Russian ambassador’s residence in November 2015. Clearly, her relationship with the Russian ambassador was tighter than any relationship Sessions has been shown to have with the guy.

Now to make the embarrassment compleat, Brent Scher of the Washington Free Beacon reports that McCaskill paid to attend the dinner with the Russian ambassador, using funds from a personal foundation, the existence of which she concealed. According to Scher:

Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill (Mo.) used a personal foundation to pay for a dinner she attended at Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak’s Washington, D.C., residence. . .McCaskill’s attendance at the dinner was accompanied by an $873 payment to the American-Russian Cultural Cooperation Foundation, where Kislyak serves on [the] board of directors as honorary chairman. . .
.
The payment to Kislyak’s foundation was not made directly by McCaskill—it was made through a foundation, the Shepard Family Foundation, that she set up with her husband Jon Shepard in 2013 but failed to disclose in filings to the Senate ethics committee until three weeks ago. The sudden disclosure of McCaskill’s role in the foundation—which had to be inserted into disclosures covering 2014, 2015, and 2016 through amendments on June 6—came as part of an attempt to distance herself from investments in an opioid manufacturer.

So not only did McCaskill attend a black-tie dinner with the Russian ambassador, she paid to attend, with the money going to an outfit for which the Russkie serves as a board member and honorary chairman. Moreover, she paid with funds from a family foundation and did not disclose the existence of that foundation for several years.

To top it off, the family foundation invests in an opioid manufacturer. Apparently, McCaskill finally came clean about the foundation to avoid having to keep listing that manufacturer as one of her personal holdings.

McCaskill has hit for the cycle. False statements in an attempt to tar a former colleague, a Russia connection, concealment, and an opioid manufacturing angle. At least there’s no human trafficking in the picture.

Let’s hope that next year, Missouri voters will compleat the job they were prepared to perform in 2012 until McCaskill’s opponent, Todd Akin whom she worked to pick, made a fool of himself.

Notice: All comments are subject to moderation. Our comments are intended to be a forum for civil discourse bearing on the subject under discussion. Commenters who stray beyond the bounds of civility or employ what we deem gratuitous vulgarity in a comment — including, but not limited to, “s***,” “f***,” “a*******,” or one of their many variants — will be banned without further notice in the sole discretion of the site moderator.

Responses