WASHINGTON: The Russian woman arrested earlier this week on charges of being a foreign agent had ties to Russian intelligence operatives and was in contact with them while in the United States, federal prosecutors said Wednesday.
Maria Butina, the gun-rights advocate, was ordered jailed in the US until her trial on charges she conspired to establish a back channel between Russians and American politicians, after prosecutors said Russian oligarchs could offer her safe harbour.
Butina’s bail hearing in Washington offered a surprise as well: Prosecutors said they’re conducting a fraud investigation of a US political operative who had lived with Butina and provided access to an extensive network of Americans in position to influence political activities in the country.
The 56-year-old American isn’t named by prosecutors but matches the description of Paul Erickson, a lawyer who’s been involved in several Republican presidential campaigns and has strong ties to the National Rifle Association. Erickson didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment left on his mobile phone.
Here are some of the questions and explanations about the latest
What is the latest in the ‘Russian agent’ case?
Butina, 29, appeared in federal court on Wednesday, wearing an orange jumpsuit over a white T-shirt. She pleaded not guilty to the conspiracy charge and operating as an unregistered agent of the Russian Federation in the US. She’s willing to help in the fraud investigation in South Dakota, her lawyer told the judge. But that wasn’t enough the persuade the magistrate to release Butina on bail.
Why didn’t Butina get a bail?
There are “no conditions or combination of conditions” that would ensure Butina’s return to court for her trial, Magistrate Judge Deborah Robinson said at the end of a two-hour hearing attended by at least two Russian consular officials. Prosecutors argued that Butina, if freed, could easily escape US custody by taking refuge in the Russian embassy or even leaping into an embassy vehicle.
Prosecutors said that when Butina was arrested, her apartment was full of moving boxes and she had transferred money to Russia in recent days. Butina was engaged in a “personal relationship” with an American Republican consultant only for business purposes and had offered sex to at least one other person “in exchange for a position within a special interest organisation.”
Is Butina a gun rights activist or a Russian agent?
The new allegations laid out Wednesday explicitly link Butina to Russia’s intelligence services for the first time, painting the portrait of a covert agent backed by powerful patrons who went to lengths to create a pretext for her presence in the US.
The details about her alleged activities injected even more drama into the case of the Russian gun rights activist, who in recent years cozied up to top US conservatives, including the leadership of the National Rifle Association. In a document that could have been ripped from the television show ‘The Americans’, prosecutors described her manipulating a South Dakota political operative as part of her scheme and meeting for a private lunch in March with a Russian diplomat suspected of being a Russian intelligence officer — all while FBI agents watched.
How did Butina end up in the US?
Butina, who came to the US on a student visa in August 2016 to study at American University, was arrested this week and charged with conspiring to act as an agent of a foreign government and failing to register as an agent of a foreign government. Prosecutors say she worked to infiltrate American conservative groups to advance the Kremlin’s interests. In advance of a scheduled detention hearing Wednesday afternoon, prosecutors argued strongly against her release, noting “her history of deceptive conduct.”
What does Butina and Russia say about the episode?
While the Russian national has not spoken out herself, Butina’s attorney has said she was not a Russian agent but a student interested in forming bonds with Americans. A spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry said Wednesday that her arrest was alarming and with an aim of undermining the outcomes of this week’s Russian-US summit in Helsinki.
“You get the sense that someone grabbed a watch and a calculator to determine when the decision on Maria Butina’s arrest should be adopted to maximally undermine the outcomes of the summit that took place between the Russian and US presidents. It was that deliberately timed,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said at a briefing in Moscow.
Why did US officials begin suspecting Butina?
Prosecutors revealed Wednesday that after executing a search warrant at her Washington home in April, they learnt Butina “was in contact with officials believed to be Russian intelligence operatives.” The memo written Assistant US Attorney Erik Kenerson states that Butina maintained contact information for employees of the Russian FSB, the successor to the Soviet Union’s KGB, and that was “likely in contact with the FSB throughout her stay in the United States.”
Did Butina ever meet President Trump?
As part of Butina’s outreach to the NRA and other GOP groups, she once quizzed Donald Trump while he was a presidential candidate about his views on Russia and chatted briefly with the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., at an NRA meeting in May 2016. The Washington Post reported earlier this year that she was spotted at an inaugural ball when Trump was sworn into office last January, part of a group of Russians whose presence at Trump’s celebration drew the attention of the FBI.
What does her interaction with the Russians show?
On Monday, prosecutors said Butina sent a senior Russian government official a photo of herself near the US Capitol on Inauguration Day. “You’re a daredevil girl,” the official responded, according to the court filing. In addition to apparent ties to the Russian government, the court filing alleges that Butina had ties to “wealthy businessmen in the Russian oligarchy.”
Prosecutors state that her Twitter messages, chat logs and emails referred to a Russian businessman “with deep ties to the Russian Presidential Administration,” that this unnamed person often travels to the United States and has been referred to as her “funder” in Butina’s correspondence.
Who exactly is supposed to be Butina’s contact in Russia?
In 2014 Butina engaged in text messages with a different wealthy Russian businessman concerning budgets for her trip to America and meetings with her “funder,” Kenerson wrote. Those officials were not identified. Prosecutors have said Butina’s main Russian contact was a high level government official who matches the description of Alexander Torshin, a Russian central banker and former senator from Putin’s party.
In direct messages exchanged through Twitter, prosecutors said she and Torshin agreed that she could only operate in secret. “Only incognito!” she wrote in one message in October 2016. In a note in March 2017, Torshin wrote, “You have upstaged Anna Chapman,” a reference to a well-known Russian spy who had lived freely in the United State for years before her 2010 arrest.
Who could Butina manage to influence in the US?
She was assisted in her efforts to make contact with influential Americans by South Dakota political operative Paul Erickson, a political consultant from South Dakota who once helped run Pat Buchanan’s presidential campaign and whom Butina met after hosting him and other American gun enthusiasts in Russia in 2013. They formed a “personal relationship,” prosecutors said, but the 29-year-old expressed disdain” about having to live with 56-year-old Erickson.
Still, prosecutors said that Butina had plotted with Erickson how she should manage visas to remain in the United States. They also surveilled Butina and Erickson entering a Washington bank last week and sending a $3,500 wire transfer to Russia, and then on Saturday inquiring at a U-Haul facility about renting a truck and purchasing moving boxes. And they alleged that Erickson would help Butina “complete her academic assignments, by editing papers and answering exam questions.” They said her relationship with Erickson was “duplicitous” and her attendance at American University a mere “cover”.
— Washington Post
Profile
Gun lover, curious tourist or Siberian spy?
Born in Barnaul, in Siberia, in 1989 to an engineer mother and entrepreneur father, Maria Butina was interested in politics from an early age and studied political science at Altu State University.
Her father and grandfather were hunters, and she founded a group called The Right to Bear Arms in 2012 to promote gun ownership laws in Russia.
On graduating, she followed in her businessman father’s footsteps, launching and running a furniture store in Siberia. But in 2011 she sold the store to move to Moscow to pursue a career in politics, and maintain her gun rights activism.
She took up an unpaid role as a special assistant to a well-connected Russian senator, Aleksandr Torshin, and worked for him from 2011 to 2015 while he was serving on the Russian federal council as first vice-chairman. He shared her passion for guns, being declared a life member of the NRA and travelling to the US for conferences — until he was stopped by sanctions in April of this year.
By 2015 she was frequently in the US, and attended a Trump rally in Las Vegas a month after his candidacy was declared and asked him about his views on Vladimir Putin.
She travelled to gun shows and right-wing events from the Freedomfest in Las Vegas to a National Rifle Association meeting in Indianapolis. Along the way, she met the governor of Wisconsin, and gave speeches at a high school and university in South Dakota.
The following year she was studying for a Master’s in international relations at the American University’s Kogod School of Business, but her gun activism in Russia remained strong.
In February 2016, Butina set up a company in South Dakota with Republican veteran strategist Paul Erickson, with whom, according to The Washington Post, she was in a romantic relationship.
In November, after the election, she held a fancy dress party in Washington DC attended by Mr Erickson and Trump campaign aides.
She then attended Trump’s inauguration, with Erickson by her side.
— Telegraph Group Limited, London 2018
