If you know Bill Browder's story already, you surely won’t mind hearing it again. It’s extraordinary. If you haven’t heard it before, get ready.
Bill Browder very well may be Vladimir Putin’s public enemy No. 1. Why? Remember that “Hillary dirt” Russia meeting that Don Jr., Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort had with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya in June 2016 – the one the White House said was about Russian adoptions?
As you’ll hear, “Russian adoptions” is code for the Magnitsky Act – legislation passed in 2012 that now blocks more than 40 Russian government officials and businesspeople from entering the U.S., froze their U.S. bank assets and banned them from accessing U.S. banking systems. Bill Browder is the force behind the Magnitsky Act.
Everything about Browder’s story is made for a movie – His upbringing, professional career, and especially his life since an early-morning November 2009 phone call informed him that his lawyer, Sergei Magnitzky had been beaten to death by guards on a Russian prison floor.
And as we know from the recent UK poisoning of that Russian ex-spy and his daughter – as well as various journalist killings – sitting in Putin’s crosshairs is, to put it mildly, an uncomfortable place. Just this week – after our conversation occurred, so we didn’t discuss it – Browder was briefly arrested in Spain on a Russian arrest warrant. Turned out the warrant had expired, and Browder was released. But the threat is always there.
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Maureen Dowd: "This is Pure Madness"
Robert Costa: Reporting on a 'Wild and Weird' Election
Stuart Stevens: A Neutron Bomb Has Gone Off in the Republican Party
Jim Lehrer: There's Never Been One Like This
Taegan Goddard: Is This Clinton's Election to Lose?
John Dickerson: Have We Really Never Seen a Presidential Election Like This One?
Van Jones: When the Temperature Gets Too Hot
Josh King: An Advance Man’s Look at the 2016 Campaign
Charlie Cook: This Has Been the Wildest Year
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Mark Blumenthal: What Do Americans Really Think About Politics?
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Former Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore
David King, Harvard Kennedy School
Larry Sabato, Center for Politics at the University of Virginia
Charlie Cook, The Cook Political Report
Stan Greenberg, Democratic pollster
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