BuzzFeed News reports that House Intelligence Committee Rep. Jackie Speier sent a letter to Mnuchin seeking information about a $25M Amero deal to sell his shares of RatPac-Dune Entertainment to Ukrainian billionaire Leonid Blavatnik, who is an associate of Oleg Deripaska’s; Paul Manafort, as you know, owes Deripaska big bunches of Ameros. What a small world!

The NYTimes reports that Deripaska might have gotten a deal from the Treasury:

Blavatnik, the letter notes, co-owns Sual Partners with another sanctioned oligarch, Viktor Vekselberg, and Sual “is a major shareholder” of Rusal, one of Deripaska’s sanctioned companies. It also notes that Blavatnik formerly served on Rusal’s board and that one of his companies donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund.”

Anyway, I've been trying to tiger-team all the players with index cards and yarn, and I think I've got the relationships charted (kinda? maybe?):

The arrows go from actor to object; double-headed arrows show some sort of mutual relationship.

So as far as I can tell as part of his confirmation to become Treasury Secretary, Mnunchin sold $25M Ameros of RatPac-Dune shares; but he sold them to Leonid Blavatnik, who is “owned” by Oleg Deripaska. Blavatnik co-owns Sual Partners with Viktor Vekselberg. Sual Partners is a major shareholder of Rusal, which is sanctioned by the United States. Oleg Deripaska is also a major shareholder of Rusal. In December, Mnunchin lifted sanctions on some of the companies owned by Deripaska, without having much explanation for why.

Which leads us to our “Is it irresponsible to speculate? It would be irresponsible not to.” moment. We can look at it as that Mnunchin sold something to Blavatnik, or we can see that Blavatnik paid him $25M Ameros. Blavatnik (and all the rest of ’em) are/were sanctioned, and now some of them are not.

Just for sheets and giggles, I cross referenced the movie roles of failed actress Louise Linton (Craven Moorehead, above) with RatPac-Dune Entertainment and found that she was in the 2016 RatPac-Dune Entertainment film Rules Don’t Apply in the pivotal role of “Betty.” One of her co-stars? Steve Mnunchin in the role of Merrill Lynch Executive (as Steve Mnuchin). Mike Pence performed their marriage ceremony in 2017.

And so it goes. Is there anyone in this maladministration who is not compromised or at least not a Russian double agent?

crossposted from Mock Paper Scissors