A group of Russian nationals were able to donate to newly elected House Speaker Mike Johnson’s campaign in 2018 by funneling the money through a U.S. company.
The Texas-based American Ethane company previously donated tens of thousands of dollars to the campaigns of Louisiana Republicans including Johnson, who was voted by the House to replace Rep. Kevin McCarthy as Speaker on Wednesday following three weeks of GOP chaos in the lower chamber.
While American Ethane was run in 2018 by American John Houghtaling, 88 percent of the firm was owned by three Russian nationals—Konstantin Nikolaev, Mikhail Yuriev, and Andrey Kunatbaev.
I suspect, with zero evidence, that the press was more focused on covering the shit show that was the vacancy. To dive deep into all of the candidates was going to be a challenge, especially given that the candidates kept changing day to day.
So once the speaker was elected, the press could then coalesce around the one person.
The overarching shitshow (Shitshow Influenced Corrupt Organization, or SICO) serves to overwhelm the ability of the press to effectively cover everything. The effect of this is that while, yes, the press does cover some very important sub-shitshows, and those shitshows get blunted by public reaction, many more sub-shitshows go unnoticed and plow forward as shittily as intended.