https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/article214075459.html

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.

Prosecutors’ requests to federal magistrates or judges for access to tax information are usually made “entirely in the background, with no notice to the subject of the investigation,” said David Axelrod, a Columbus, Ohio lawyer who previously prosecuted cases for the Justice Department’s Tax Division.

The main focus of Mueller’s inquiry, as McClatchy reported in January, has been whether Alexander Torshin, deputy governor of Russia’s central bank and a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, arranged for Russian money to flow through the gun rights group to aid Trump, people familiar with the inquiry say.

Steve Hall, a former chief of the CIA’s Russia operations, suspects that NRA board members and current and former officers may have been duped over several years into playing a role in a Kremlin-directed intelligence operation that eventually offered the potential for both a communication line to Trump's team and a way to put money behind his campaign.

He said he suspects that current and former NRA leaders failed to recognize that the Kremlin saw their group as a tool for its “dangerous propaganda machine. … That’s the most innocent explanation: The NRA got snookered.”

Still, said Hall, who retired from the agency in 2015, the NRA-Russian connection bears close examination by Mueller.

“It’s just so insidious, and it sort of ticks all the boxes: connections to the current administration, major backer of then-candidate Trump, the Russians wanting to get in and manipulate our own political system.”

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. Both sources spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter.

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. In light of all of the revelations about Torshin, the NRA reevaluated its relationship with him. His NRA membership is now “frozen,” spokesman Arulanandam said.

Hall, who worked earlier as the CIA’s Moscow station chief, believes that Torshin’s involvement with the NRA was no accident. Nor were meetings between NRA representatives and Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin and even Sergei Rudov, manager of a far-right Russian religious foundation, he said.

It looks like the Kremlin was pulling the strings at every turn, in a country where that happens “to a degree that cannot even be dreamed of here,” Hall said. “Everybody knows the consequences of not doing what the Kremlin wants you to do.”

John Aquilino, a former NRA spokesman, also is baffled by the NRA’s outreach to Torshin and Moscow.

"The NRA has fallen into a public relations trap, and the Russians knew damn well what they were doing," Aquilino said in a phone interview. “The NRA was naive and got hoodwinked."

"The NRA and the gun control issue is a perfect example of an issue that would fire up the populace and sow discord,” Aquilino said. He pointed to the fact that a Russian troll farm bought dozens of Facebook ads on gun rights as part of a 2016 social media blitz aimed at dividing Americans and helping Trump.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4015904&forum_id=2#36349340)

“The Committee has obtained a number of documents that suggest the Kremlin used the National Rifle Association as a means of accessing and assisting Mr. Trump and his campaign. Two individuals involved in this effort appear to be Russian nationals Alexander Torshin and Maria Butina. Mr. Torshin is a Putin ally and the Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Russia, and Ms. Butina served as his assistant. She also founded Right to Bear Arms, the Russian equivalent of the NRA, and started a business with former Trump supporter and adviser Paul Erickson. Both Mr. Torshin and Ms. Butina have longstanding ties to ex-NRA president, David Keene, and in 2013, hosted him in Russia for a pro-gun conference.

“During the campaign, Mr. Torshin, Ms. Butina, and their intermediaries repeatedly offered the campaign back channels to Russia and relayed requests from President Putin to meet with Mr. Trump. The Kremlin may also have used the NRA to secretly fund Mr. Trump’s campaign. The extent of Russia’s use of the NRA as an avenue for connecting with and potentially supporting the Trump campaign needs examination. Requests for documents and staff interviews have been sent to Ms. Butina, Mr. Erickson, and Mr. Keene, but they have refused to cooperate.”

Russia’s alleged use of the NRA as a kind of front group raises serious questions, according to Russia experts.

“We’ve focused a lot on the Russian outreach on social media, but we’ve missed the entirety of Russian influence efforts,” says former FBI special agent Clinton Watts.

“Active Measures seek to engage on three levels, state-to-state, state-to-people (social media) and state-to-party. The NRA outreach represents their ground game where they seek to engage sympathetic parties and organizations in the target audience by aligning along common interests.” He reminds us, “During [the] Cold War, this was via communist parties and socialist groups, now with Russian Active Measures it’s through groups like the NRA or religious connections.”

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4015904&forum_id=2#36385042)

The gun-rights group claims in the lawsuit that the state engaged in a “political and discriminatory campaign” against the NRA that resulted in the loss of businesses relationships “necessary to the survival of the NRA as a charitable organization.”

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4015904&forum_id=2#36552169)