Is Russia colluding with US environmental groups to discredit fracking?

  All the talk in Washington these days is about Russia election collusion but despite Donald Trump Jr.’s damaging email release yesterday there is still no solid proof any collusion occurred. Do not get me wrong, I am not defending the President’s son because these emails showed he was willing to collude with Russia but because he was duped there is still no proof any collusion took place.

  The left, and many of the establishment Republicans are up in arms that Russia may have interfered in the election but the left has said nothing about the possibility that Russia was and is colluding with, and funding, leftist environmentalist groups in order to discredit natural gas fracking to benefit their nation’s energy exportation.

  Here is more on this burgeoning scandal:

The real action is in the European and U.S. energy markets, according to a letter from two Texas congressmen to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin that details what they call “a covert anti-fracking campaign” with “little or no paper trail.”

Smith and Weber quote sources saying the Russian government has been colluding with environmental groups to circulate “disinformation” and “propaganda” aimed at undermining hydraulic fracturing. Commonly called fracking, the process makes it possible to access natural gas deposits.

The sources include a former secretary-general of NATO, who is quoted by the GOP congressmen as saying:

Russia, as part of their sophisticated information and disinformation operations, engaged actively with so-called non-governmental organizations—environmental organizations working against shale gas—to maintain dependence on imported Russian gas.

And here is more:

This anti-fracking campaign seizes upon environmental issues and health concerns that could be used to constrain U.S. drilling and fracking exercises, the letter explains.

Gazprom, a large Russian oil company, stands to benefit if Russian-funded environmental activism results in reduced levels of fracking and natural gas production in the United States, Smith and Weber tell Mnuchin. They write:

It is easy to see the benefit to Russia and Gazprom that would result from a reduction in the U.S. level of drilling and fracking—a position advocated for by numerous environmental groups in the U.S.

  I cannot help but think back to the ridicule Mitt Romney took during the 2008 campaign for calling Russia America’s number one geo-political enemy because it now appears as if he knew what he was talking about all along.

  So here we have the left all up in arms because of Russia collusion while at the same time welcoming, if this story is true, Russia collusion on an agenda item near and dear to them. Hypocrisy much…

  With the way the left is throwing around the word “treason” everyday, if Russia is indeed colluding with these environmentalist groups to harm the United States and help Russia, and using their standard, is this not treason?

malo periculosam libertatem quam quietum servitium