Michigan’s Democrat Senate candidate, Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), remained silent as President Joe Biden declined to impose sanctions in 2021 on Nord Stream 2 AG, the company behind the Russian gas pipeline to Germany, which a donor to one of Slotkin’s Congressional campaigns lobbied for.
In May 2021, Biden waived sanctions on Nord Stream 2 AG’s pipeline despite the State Department concluding the company, owned by a consortium of shareholders including Russian energy company Gazprom, was complicit in sanctionable activity and criticism that the pipeline would hand Russia a “major geopolitical prize,” as the BBC put it.
However, it appears Slotkin did not publicly comment on the Biden administration’s move. Breitbart News reached out to her campaign for comment about her silence but did not receive a response.
A review of Federal Election Commission (FEC) records shows that Vincent Roberti, the owner of a lobbying firm that represented Nord Stream 2 AG until the day Russia invaded Ukraine, as Politico noted, donated to Slotkin’s Congressional Campaign in 2018.
The record shows that on March 31, 2018, Roberti provided “Elissa Slotkin for Congress” with $2,700.
Politico reported in February 2022 that Roberti’s lobbying firm, Roberti Global, had represented Nord Stream 2 “for nearly five years,” indicating his donation to Slotkin’s campaign less than four years earlier came while Nord Stream 2 AG was one of Roberti Global’s clients. Moreover, Roberti has links to Biden, serving as an unofficial adviser on his failed 2008 presidential campaign, per Politico.
“A quick look through Slotkin’s financial reports shows nothing but foreign influence and compromised positions,” Chris Gustafson, communications director for Republican Mike Rogers’ campaign, told Breitbart News in a statement. “It’s clear Slotkin will support whatever her donors ask, even if it benefits the Kremlin and Beijing.”
Open Secrets, a government transparency organization, reported on May 20, 2021–a day after Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced there would be no sanction on the company–that Nord Stream 2 “spent $600,000 to dispatch” Roberti for lobbying purposes in the first Quarter of 2021.
“Roberti reported lobbying on ‘issues related to the U.S. position toward the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, including potential financial sanctions affecting the project,'” per Open Secrets.
Slotkin’s Senate campaign also neglected to respond to a request for comment about Roberti’s donation to her congressional campaign.
The pipeline’s construction was completed by September 2021, though gas has yet to flow from Russia to Germany more than three years later, Reuters notes. Germany notably froze the project as Russia prepared to invade Ukraine.
On February 23, 2022, as Russia had troops stationed on Ukraine’s border, Biden finally imposed sanctions on Nord Stream 2 AG. The following day, Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine, and Roberti dropped Nord Stream 2 AG as a client.
On February 21, 2022, just days before Biden imposed the sanctions, Slotkin tweeted that the pipeline must be stopped after being silent about Biden’s decision to forgo sanctions on Nord Stream 2 AG some nine months earlier.
“The economic consequences for Putin should therefore be steep, and not just for him or the Russian economy, but for the oligarchs, their wives and mistresses, and their assets that they shelter abroad,” Slotkin wrote in part in a thread on X.
She added Germany must stop “Nord Stream 2 Dead in its tracks,” which it did days later.
“The chickens have come home to roost when it comes to Germany’s dependence on Russian gas & they must not let it compromise a European response to Putin,” Slotkin said.
