GOP Senate hopeful who said Dems 'emboldened Russia' linked to $415M in Russian assets

As a hedge fund manager, Pennsylvania Republican U.S. Senate candidate Dave McCormick's company held roughly $415 million in Russian sovereign bonds prior to Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine.

According to a Thursday report in the Guardian, McCormick — who is running against three-term incumbent Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA) — was found to have held the Russian debt through his firm, Bridgewater Associates, between 2017 and 2021. Sovereign debt is a major source of funding for countries to pay for operations and service debt, and has become increasingly subjected to sanctions since 2019.

McCormick has previously taken full ownership of Bridgewater's decisions during his tenure as CEO — a position he held until 2022, when he unsuccessfully ran in Pennsylvania's Republican Senate primary (he went on to lose to Mehmet Oz). In a 2023 speech to the American Enterprise Institute, McCormick told the audience: "Whatever we did I'm responsible for."

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The Guardian reported that U.S. Department of Labor 5500 forms show Bridgewater held $415.2 million in Russian sovereign bonds in 2017, $234.9 million in 2018, $36.5 million in 2019, $80.5 million in 2020 and $119.8 million in 2021. McCormick, who is a veteran of the first Gulf War, has positioned himself as a foreign policy hawk, accusing President Joe Biden of a "botched withdrawal from Afghanistan" and suggesting his foreign policy agenda was responsible for an "emboldened Russia waging war on Ukraine."

While the Republican Senate hopeful offloaded his firm's Russian debt prior to the Russian military's incursion across Ukrainian borders in 2022, he notably managed it for many years after the country’s illegal invasion of Crimea in 2014, which resulted in Russia getting booted from the G8 (now G7).

After his annexation of Crimea, Putin also encouraged pro-Russian separatists in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine — territory he has since illegally recognized as Russian.

Since Putin's invasion, the Congressional Research Service has also found that Russian sovereign bonds have been subjected to increasingly punishing sanctions by the U.S. government. The CRS published a report in 2023 acknowledging that those sanctions now "restrict dealings with 80% of Russian banking sector assets."

"The Biden administration expanded sanctions on Russian sovereign debt... including prohibiting U.S. financial institutions from processing debt payments from the Russian government to foreign investors," the CRS wrote. "As a result, Russia defaulted on its debt in June 2022."

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McCormick is currently polling within the margin of error of Casey, according to data compiled by FiveThirtyEight. Casey led by as much as 10 points in a late September poll, but a more recent Emerson College poll conducted in early October shows Casey's lead at just two percentage points.

In his first Senate run, McCormick was initially the Pennsylvania Republican Party's top choice among available candidates. However, a controversy involving a New Jersey residence and former President Donald Trump's endorsement of Mehmet Oz ultimately relegated McCormick to the sidelines. Oz later went on to lose to then-Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman in the general election.

Click here to read the Guardian's full report.