GOPe Hack Registers as Foreign Agent for Russian Government

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May 16, 2019

In what can only be described as a tale of epic and shameless hypocrisy, former John Kasich and John McCain operative John Weaver has registered as a foreign agent for a Russian state-owned nuclear energy company.

Weaver will be paid $350,000 by Rosatom to lobby the Trump administration and Congress against implementing any new sanctions that would affect Russia’s nuclear energy industry. He’s registered with the Justice Department as a foreign agent of the country he’s claimed for years was behind a nefarious plot to insert Donald Trump as a puppet figure at the head of the United States government.

Weaver’s hypocrisy couldn’t be any more transparent and self-serving. The operative has tweeted over the years slamming what he supposedly perceived as a weak approach to U.S-Russia relations by the Trump administration.

The political consultant appears to directly contradict himself in several statements on the topic of Russia sanctions. He’ll have a tough case to make against nuclear energy sanctions, considering he’s advocated for even more Russia sanctions for years.

The old-guard consultant, who became known in Republican politics for his work in 2008 for John McCain’s failed presidential campaign, attempted to rationalize in a Twitter thread what many of his liberal followers viewed as a double-crossing from an early purveyor of the now-debunked Trump-Russia conspiracy theory.

It’s unclear why exactly the American subsidiary of the Russian state-owned company Rosatom chose to hire Weaver as their point man to push their preferred policies within the federal government.

It’s possible the company is seeking to utilize Weaver’s connections among reactionary liberals freshly skeptical of all things Russian to smooth over a policy that exempts Russian uranium exports to the United States from the already stringent regime of sanctions upon Russian companies and individuals.

The hack will take his $350,000 and likely continue to accuse anyone critical of establishment liberal Republicans of being an agent of Putin.