Congress Should Pass a Navalny Act

[Rogue Valley]

Congress Should Pass a Navalny Act | The New York Times

The latest poisoning of a Russian critic requires expanded sanctions and accountability for Kremlin leadership.

In 2012 Congress passed the Magnitsky Act, named for Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who was left to die in a Moscow prison in 2009 for blowing the whistle on a $230 million scam perpetrated by government officials. In 2020, in the face of what would be likely resistance from the Trump administration, Congress has a chance to do something useful by passing a Navalny Act, named for the Russian opposition leader Aleksei Navalny, who now lies in a coma in a German hospital after being poisoned in Russia last month with the military grade nerve agent Novichok. To be clear, a “Navalny Act” doesn’t yet exist beyond this column. But it shouldn’t be hard to sketch the essentials of what ought to be necessary legislation. A Navalny Act would take the Magnitsky Act several steps further. When I proposed the idea to Bill Browder, the American-born investor who once employed Magnitsky and who’s been the prime mover of Magnitsky legislation in the United States and elsewhere, he jumped at the possibilities. Moral accountability is step one. Step two is factual accountability.

Among the reasons Navalny was so hated by the Kremlin was his tireless campaign to expose secret assets (allegedly including a pair of yachts and a vineyard in Italy) belonging to top leaders like the former prime minister Dmitri Medvedev. a properly written Navalny Act would formalize sanctions against companies from any country that does business with Nord Stream, prohibiting them from doing business in the United States — and barring their corporate officers, including Gerhard Schröder, the chairman of the Russian energy company Rosneft and a former German chancellor, from traveling to the United States. For now, Donald Trump says there is no proof who poisoned Navalny, while he boasts about trying to get along with Russia. If ever one needed another reminder of why he’s unfit to be president, this is it. A Navalny Act will have to await a Biden administration and a Democratic Senate — for which it should be the first order of foreign-policy business.

A Navalny Act is an excellent idea that will have to wait until Donald Trump is gone. Trump wouldn't do anything to hurt his good pal Vladimir.

And by the way ... GOP Senate Majority Leader "Moscow" Mitch McConnell has been sitting on a Senate bill (Defending American Security From Kremlin Aggression Act / DASKA) by Lindsey Graham that would require the US intelligence community to publicize what it knows about Vladimir Putin’s personal wealth. Why is McConnell sitting on this bill? Why is he protecting Putin? Good questions. The citizens of Kentucky should pin Mitch down about this before the November election.

 

[swing_voter]

Congress needs to issue 4 year work visas to Russians.


That's how Europe improved, all the working people left for America. And the rich Europeans were like, WTF, we can't do all this work ourselves, so they made conditions better for working people.