further reporting to test the credibility of that claim. as far as i can tell, the company that is partnering with this russian aluminum company to build the firm, they also say that they were not talking to mitch mcconnell about that. they re saying they don t think there was any link between the sanctions vote and the decision to build this. but, on the other hand, you line up you line up the time line here. the former u.s. ambassador to russia in your piece tells you this appears to have been a blatantly transactional thing. mcconnell arranged for the sanctions to be lifted, in effect, and his state got a $200 million investment. is it rubbing people the wrong way in kentucky? are there concerns about this in his home state? rachel, you can see in kentucky as in washington a sort of strange bipartisan agreement on both sides of this question. we did quote in our story, state
right? he might have worried about those crippling sanctions that the u.s. government put on him at least for a while after 2016. mcconnell made sure those were gone, but maybe he d worry that if he did more in 2020, he would get those sanctions back or he d be further sanctioned in his business activities. he might have had to worry about that before mitch mcconnell did what he did. but now oleg deripaska s business activities, the health of his business empire, that s part and parcel of the economy in one of kentucky s neediest counties. this is one of the biggest aluminum plants in the u.s. ever. 40% owned by this kremlin-connected oligarch. you re not going to be able to sanction him no matter what he does to our 2020 election or whatever else he does at all. it would strangle kentucky in the process. there would be hundreds, if not thousands of american jobs riding on anything you did to that russian guy s company. or frankly anything you did to bother him. he now holds all of tho
united states. but deripaska is doing very well in russia. he s also the head of a huge russian aluminum conglomerate. when it came time to sanction deripaska for his role in russia s attack on our 2016 election, it made sense the sanctions wouldn t just apply to him personally. they d also apply to his business, to his firm. seems exactly the way you might want to use sanctions if you really wanted them to have an impact on the country you were targeting and the people you most wanted to pinch. but again, if you were going to really go after them where it hurt, you d want be to trust that your own country s leadership was going to stand behind it. you d want the leader of the u.s. federal government to have, i mean, forgive me, like some stones on the issue, right? i mean, if you re going to take that route. this is a guy who is very close to putin and to the kremlin, linked to supposedly to
sold a u.s. steel business to russian oligarchs. but in january he was over in switzerland meeting with a guy from oleg deripaska s russian aluminum company. and the problem, of course, was at that moment that russian aluminum company was under u.s. sanctions. even though the trump administration had decided to drop those sanctions, they were under u.s. sanctions at that time. it was, therefore, illegal for any american to do any business with them whatsoever. as first reported in time magazine and the washington post today, we now know that the day after that dinner in switzerland is when mitch mcconnell killed the bill in the senate that would have maintained the sanctions on oleg deripaska and his firm. there was bipartisan support for keeping those sanctions in place. there was a good reason to keep those sanctions in place given what deripaska did, right? the trump administration said they wanted to drop those sanction, there was a bipartisan revolt in congress. congress stood up
oligarch immediately after mcconnell personally stepped in to make sure that sanctions on that oligarch were dropped, despite his role in what happened to our election in 2016 and despite bipartisan support even from his own party for those sanctions. but don t just look back at this. look forward, right? i mean, the fbi says russia is going to do to our election in 2020 what they did in 2016. they re saying it s happening right now. no reason to expect 2020 is going to be any different. if oleg deripaska is still one of the oligarchs putin looks to to do his work around the world and given we know what he did in 2016, should we expect that deripaska is going to be involved in russia s 2020 election operations as well? you have to say the odds of that are better now than before mitch mcconnell sold off his corner of the state in this vote. after all, before mcconnell did what he did, oleg deripaska might have felt a little worried about participating in any russian attack on us in 2020