How ‘Citizens United’ Decision Paved Way for Giuliani's Clients Parnas and Fruman to Buy influence in America

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/10/11/how-citizens-united-decision-paved-way-giulianis-clients-parnas-and-fruman-buy
"As I pointed out last week, the most powerful intervention in US politics allowing foreign influence in US elections, which contributed to Trump’s victory in 2016, was the Supreme Court’s Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010) decision. Like Michaelangelo’s God creating Adam with a pointing finger, SCOTUS created out of thin air a doctrine the corporations are persons. They added to this ridiculous conclusion their previous creatio ex nihilo, the terminally stupid argument that money is speech and so money in politics can’t be regulated. The result is that corporations can now donate on their own to Super-Pacs. Since corporations are often opaque as to ownership and since foreigners can be prominent on their boards, SCOTUS has allowed foreigners to donate to and influence US elections Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman associates of Rudy Giuliani, were arrested attempting to leave the US with one-way tickets to Austria, after they had been subpoenaed to testify before the House. One of the charges on which they were arrested was that they set up a dummy corporation, represented as a gas and oil enterprise but which did not actually exist, calling it Global Energy Producers. GEP then made a donation of $325,000 to America First Action, a pro-Trump political action committee, in May of 2018, They donated big sums to other PACs via their corporate personhood, funneling money from the Ukraine and $1 million from one Russian businessman alone. Citizens United allowed them to operate anonymously and to give as much as they liked (or as their foreign patrons liked). They also used GEF to influence Republican congressman Pete Sessions to write a letter to secretary of state Mike Pompeo, demanding that he fire the US ambassador to the Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch. They also did illegal fundraisers for Florida governor Ron DeSantis, helping him win the governorship."