Eleven Republicans Side With Democrats on Russian Sanctions

The Obama Administration placed economic sanctions on Russian Oligarch and Putin pal Oleg Derispaska in December as a retaliation for Russian meddling in the 2016 Presidential election. Shortly before Christmas last month, the Trump Administration announced those sanctions would be lifted. There has been no public acknowledge of the Administration getting any quid pro quo for this

A quirk of the 2017 sanctions bill allows the Minority Leader of the Senate to bring bills to floor to overturn executive decisions on sanctions and so the Democrats brought up a procedural vote today to reverse the decision. Eleven Republicans joined with a unified Democratic caucus to vote against removing sanctions. Mitch McConnell voted in favor of removing sanctions.

This is three Republicans short of the sixty votes needed to actually reverse the decision – vote to come probably later this week.

Does that make these 11 Republican Senators RINOS? Or did our current House Minority Leader have it wrong last year when he said only two Republicans were on the Russian payroll. (Dana Rohrbacher lost his seat in the house; the other one McCarthy mentioned just lifted the sanctions on Oleg Derispaska.

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They don’t want to talk about this.

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No kidding. Five hours, two replies. Hitting some nerves.