Last May, President Joe Biden waived Trump-era sanctions against a major company building the Nord Stream 2 pipeline — as well as its CEO, Matthias Warnig, a former Stasi agent and a Putin “associate.” Last November, as Russian troops were already massing on the Ukrainian border, Biden officials convinced congressional Democrats to drop the sanctions from the defense-spending bill. Last month, Biden sent two administration officials to Capitol Hill to lobby the Senate to kill Ted Cruz’s bill that would have reinstated the sanctions.