What a sordid affair this Trump/Russia scandal is turning out to be.
Slate has a new article which provides detail on how Mariia Butina gained influence in the Republican party and the NRA. At the behest of her handler, Butina offered her body as payment for access to republican power circles:
On Wednesday, prosecutors filed a motion arguing that Butina, who has been arrested, should be detained while awaiting trial.That motion includes two new pieces of information that add significantly to what had previously been a fairly thin public case that Butina was engaged in particularly sinister activity: first, that she has contacts with Russia’s FSB intelligence agency, and second, that she manipulated her main Republican ally by sleeping with him while also attempting to trade sex for influence with another individual at an unnamed special-interest group.
Butina was engaged in a romantic relationship with Paul Erickson, 56, a republican operative and former national director of Pat Buchanan’s 1992 presidential campaign. Erickson helped Butina establish a relationship with the NRA and the GOP. According to the motion that prosecutors filed in court, Butina treated the sexual relationship with Erickson as a “necessary aspect of her activities.” Butina is said to have expressed disdain for Erickson. The motion goes on to state that Butina offered sex to a second individual and was given a position in a special interest organization as payment. This is some straight up KGB shit!
Erickson and Butina met when she and her handler, Alexander Torshin, hosted an NRA conference in Moscow in 2013. Torshin met with Donald Trump Junior at an NRA convention in Kentucky in 2016. In another filing, Erickson is said to have bragged that he’d been involved in obtaining a private line of communication between the Kremlin and Republicans through the NRA.
There is still much that has to be discovered about Butina’s espionage work for Torshin. I will be paying rapt attention. This has the feel of a spy novel, and the potential ramifications are almost incomprehensible. Trump/Russia is the biggest political scandal in the history of the republic.
slate.com/...