EPTOn July 18 2018 22:49 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:
I wonder if this means that, so far covertly, the NRA is now under Federal investigation. Obvious way too get into the political arena is to go through the NRA, they are pretty much crazy and to get into the guise of having a NRA gun rights in Russia. But if the NRA knowingly funneled foreign money into a political campaign then holy...
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I wonder if this means that, so far covertly, the NRA is now under Federal investigation. Obvious way too get into the political arena is to go through the NRA, they are pretty much crazy and to get into the guise of having a NRA gun rights in Russia. But if the NRA knowingly funneled foreign money into a political campaign then holy...
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A federal grand jury indicted Mariia Butina on Tuesday on charges of conspiracy and acting as a foreign agent, adding a new charge against the Russian national, who was arrested over the weekend in Washington and accused of playing a part in a secret Russian attempt to influence U.S. politics.
Jessie Liu, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, signed off on the two-count indictment against Butina, 29, who is accused of working as an unregistered Kremlin agent from at least 2015 through the present day.
Butina had been charged Monday with conspiracy to act as an agent of a foreign government, an offense with a statutory maximum of five years in prison. On Tuesday, U.S. officials persuaded the grand jury to add the second offense of acting as the foreign agent, which has its own 10-year-maximum prison sentence.
Like the charging documents released Monday, the latest complaint against Butina says she was working under the direction of a high-level official in the Russian government and Russian central bank “to arrange introductions to U.S. persons having influence in American politics, including an organization promoting gun rights … for the purpose of advancing the interests of the Russian Federation.”
While the indictment doesn’t name the Russian official or the gun rights group, it appears to refer to Alexander Torshin, an associate of Russian President Vladimir Putin and a longtime supporter of the National Rifle Association who also reportedly has ties to both Russian security services and organized crime figures.
Robert Driscoll, an attorney for Butina, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the new indictment. On Monday, he issued a statement disputing the initial charge and said his client, a recent college graduate, was not “seeking to influence or undermine any specific policy or law of the United States — only at most to promote a better relationship between the two nations.”
Butina is scheduled to appear at a Wednesday afternoon hearing before Magistrate Judge Deborah Robinson at the federal courthouse in Washington.
Jessie Liu, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, signed off on the two-count indictment against Butina, 29, who is accused of working as an unregistered Kremlin agent from at least 2015 through the present day.
Butina had been charged Monday with conspiracy to act as an agent of a foreign government, an offense with a statutory maximum of five years in prison. On Tuesday, U.S. officials persuaded the grand jury to add the second offense of acting as the foreign agent, which has its own 10-year-maximum prison sentence.
Like the charging documents released Monday, the latest complaint against Butina says she was working under the direction of a high-level official in the Russian government and Russian central bank “to arrange introductions to U.S. persons having influence in American politics, including an organization promoting gun rights … for the purpose of advancing the interests of the Russian Federation.”
While the indictment doesn’t name the Russian official or the gun rights group, it appears to refer to Alexander Torshin, an associate of Russian President Vladimir Putin and a longtime supporter of the National Rifle Association who also reportedly has ties to both Russian security services and organized crime figures.
Robert Driscoll, an attorney for Butina, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the new indictment. On Monday, he issued a statement disputing the initial charge and said his client, a recent college graduate, was not “seeking to influence or undermine any specific policy or law of the United States — only at most to promote a better relationship between the two nations.”
Butina is scheduled to appear at a Wednesday afternoon hearing before Magistrate Judge Deborah Robinson at the federal courthouse in Washington.
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Butina began cultivating American contacts. In 2013, John Bolton, now Trump’s national security adviser, appeared in a Russian gun rights video that Right to Bear Arms used for pro-gun lobbying in Russia. Bolton was reportedly asked to appear in the video by David Keene, a recent president of the NRA, who had become acquainted with Torshin.
In April 2014, Butina flew to Indianapolis for the NRA convention. She posted photographs to the Russian social network VK showing that she mixed with Wayne LaPierre, the NRA’s pugnacious vice-president, along with heavyweight Republicans including Bobby Jindal, then governor of Louisiana, and Rick Santorum, a former US senator and presidential candidate.
That September, Butina invited Paul Erickson, a conservative political operative and veteran NRA member based in South Dakota, to address her gun rights group in Moscow. Six months later, according to US officials, she emailed an American political operative who appears to be Erickson to set out what she called project “Diplomacy”. Erickson did not respond to messages this week.
The subject line of Butina’s email, sent on 24 March 2015, appeared to liken her to a notorious KGB propagandist during the cold war. In the text, she declared that the Republican party, in the prosecutors’ words, “would likely obtain control over the US government after the 2016 elections”.
The disclosure this week raised an obvious question: what, at a time when most national opinion polling indicated an advantage for Hillary Clinton over her potential Republican rivals, had convinced Butina that the GOP would be triumphant in an election still 20 months away?
Saying that she wanted to build more constructive relations with the traditionally hawkish Republicans, Butina noted the NRA’s “central place and influence” in the party. She said she needed a $125,000 budget to fund her participation in GOP conferences. The American political operative provided her with a list of “important contacts” to meet.
A few weeks later, Butina was back in the US for the NRA’s 2015 convention. Held in Nashville, Tennessee, it again gave her access to the most in-demand figures in the conservative movement. She and Torshin chatted with Scott Walker, the governor of Wisconsin, who posed for a photograph with her and spoke a few phrases in Russian. In July, Butina attended the launch of Walker’s presidential campaign.
The Kremlin seems to have been interested. Court filings said Butina wrote Torshin a memo about a political campaign event that detailed her “private meeting” with the same candidate at the NRA convention. Walker was not identified by name. Then came Butina’s encounter with Trump at the Freedom Fest event in Las Vegas.
In April 2014, Butina flew to Indianapolis for the NRA convention. She posted photographs to the Russian social network VK showing that she mixed with Wayne LaPierre, the NRA’s pugnacious vice-president, along with heavyweight Republicans including Bobby Jindal, then governor of Louisiana, and Rick Santorum, a former US senator and presidential candidate.
That September, Butina invited Paul Erickson, a conservative political operative and veteran NRA member based in South Dakota, to address her gun rights group in Moscow. Six months later, according to US officials, she emailed an American political operative who appears to be Erickson to set out what she called project “Diplomacy”. Erickson did not respond to messages this week.
The subject line of Butina’s email, sent on 24 March 2015, appeared to liken her to a notorious KGB propagandist during the cold war. In the text, she declared that the Republican party, in the prosecutors’ words, “would likely obtain control over the US government after the 2016 elections”.
The disclosure this week raised an obvious question: what, at a time when most national opinion polling indicated an advantage for Hillary Clinton over her potential Republican rivals, had convinced Butina that the GOP would be triumphant in an election still 20 months away?
Saying that she wanted to build more constructive relations with the traditionally hawkish Republicans, Butina noted the NRA’s “central place and influence” in the party. She said she needed a $125,000 budget to fund her participation in GOP conferences. The American political operative provided her with a list of “important contacts” to meet.
A few weeks later, Butina was back in the US for the NRA’s 2015 convention. Held in Nashville, Tennessee, it again gave her access to the most in-demand figures in the conservative movement. She and Torshin chatted with Scott Walker, the governor of Wisconsin, who posed for a photograph with her and spoke a few phrases in Russian. In July, Butina attended the launch of Walker’s presidential campaign.
The Kremlin seems to have been interested. Court filings said Butina wrote Torshin a memo about a political campaign event that detailed her “private meeting” with the same candidate at the NRA convention. Walker was not identified by name. Then came Butina’s encounter with Trump at the Freedom Fest event in Las Vegas.
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It was revealed back in January that the FBI has been investigating Alexander Torshin for using the NRA as a way to funnel money to the Trump campaign.
