Russian Maria Butina was living the life in the United States. The Putin-connected gun advocate was tasked with embedding herself in American conservative circles and as a former boss of mine was fond of saying, she dug herself in deeper than an Alabama tick. From hosting former NRA president David Keene and decorated dummy former Sheriff Davide Clarke in Moscow to being the first person to publicly get Donald Trump on the record saying he wanted to lift Russian sanctions, Butina and her Kremlin bosses likely never imagined they’d be so successful at infiltrating Republican circles.
But Butina’s world came crashing down in July when a grand jury indicted her on charges of conspiracy to act and failing to register as an agent of a foreign government. Despite Russian cries for her release, she’s been sitting in a federal prison ever since and now, she’s ready to make a deal to escape a possible 15-year prison sentence. From The Washington Post:
Attorneys for Butina and federal prosecutors jointly requested in court documents Monday that U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan set a time for Butina to withdraw her previous plea of “not guilty.” They said they could be available for her to enter her plea as early as Tuesday.
Focus on her boyfriend and partner-in-crime, American Republican operative Paul Erickson, appears to be intensifying. And for good reason:
Erickson sent an infamous email to a top Trump campaign official in May 2016 slugged “Kremlin Connection,” seeking to use the setting of the 2016 NRA annual convention to establish “first contact” between Trump and Butina’s alleged handler, the Russian Central Banker and NRA life member Alexander Torshin.
In fact, that “first contact” between Kremlin-connected Russian banker Torshin, Maria Butina, and a “top Trump official” did happen when Donald Trump Jr. attended a private dinner with the Russian spies. In fact, Torshin and Butina so completely infiltrated the NRA, Torshin was using Twitter to brag about the fact that he and Maria Butina were the only Russians to ever be awarded “lifetime member” status with the NRA.
But, that May 2016 NRA-sponsored dinner was not the first contact with someone from the Trump campaign. All the way back in July 2015, Donald Trump was speaking at FreedomFest, a conservative conference, and he called on a young woman in the audience. That woman was Maria Butina and she conveniently got Donald Trump on the record saying he was in favor of lifting Russian sanctions. It appears to be the first time anyone got Donald Trump on the record about his relationship with Putin and his desire to lift Russian sanctions. What a coincidence, no? Here’s that extraordinary moment.
Adding to the intrigue surrounding Torshin, Butina, Erickson, the NRA, and the Trump crime organization is the fact the special counsel investigation is also probing whether Russians were able to funnel money into and influence the American electoral process by using the NRA as a front. There is also clear evidence the NRA and the Trump campaign violated federal election laws by illegally coordinating together throughout the 2016 election and continued to illegally coordinate with Republican candidates during the 2018 midterm election.
Did Butina offer important information to these investigations as part of her plea deal with federal prosecutors? If she did, she may be taking a significant number of NRA and Trump-linked operatives down with her. And Putin is sitting back in Moscow, laughing hysterically at how easy it was to turn American politics upside down and install himself as the most powerful politician in the world.
via GIPHY