McCARTHYISM:

Three years later, down to the same month, the Justice Department on Oct. 10 unsealed an indictment of Parnas for using a straw donor and laundering foreign money into U.S. elections. Federal prosecutors claim he and his Fraud Guarantee co-owner, Igor Fruman, used the shell company Global Energy Producers to funnel $325,000 in foreign cash into America First Action, a Trump super-PAC.

Federal records show that the total donations from Parnas, Fruman, Global Energy Producers and an alter ego identified by prosecutors exceeded $620,000.

Representative Kevin McCarthy, the Republican minority leader of the Democrat-controlled House, would later redirect to charity the $2,700 campaign contribution he received from Parnas, as well as a $2,173 contribution from Fruman to Majority Committee PAC, McCarthy's leadership political action committee.  [...]

Now that Parnas is sharing information with the House Intelligence Committee, top Republicans financially tied to the indicted Giuliani allies have been pulled back into a scandal that erupted with their arrests in October.

Donald Sherman, deputy director at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, explained why politicians are quick to dispose of foreign money.

"Accepting foreign donations is obviously a crime, and that is the threshold problem," said Sherman, whose group is often abbreviated as CREW.

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