Oleg Deripaska (Flickr/Remy Steinegger)
Republicans in the Senate offered a rare rebuke of the Trump administration Tuesday when some voted with Democrats to block the lifting of sanctions on a Kremlin-linked Russian oligarch's businesses.
Bloomberg News' Laura Litvan tweeted that 11 Republicans joined Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) in blocking the Treasury Department from lifting sanctions on "three firms with ties to Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska."
Deripaska entered the public consciousness due to his relationship to former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort. Ast early as April 2016, the oligarch's ties to Manafort -- who was later revealed to be in Deripaska's debt -- drew suspicion about the Trump campaign's ties to the Kremlin.
In December 2018, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin announced that the department was lifting sanctions on businesses tied to Deripaska -- a move that drew bipartisan outcry.
Mnuchin took to the Senate to shore up opposition to Schumer's bill blocking the sanctions, to no avail.
On January 10, NBC News reported that Deripaska is suing Manafort and his former deputy Rick Gates, who along with his old boss has been indicted by special counsel Robert Mueller, for over $25 million in damages from a failed business venture.
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