The Dept. of Justice has just announced it has filed charges against a Russian citizen for infiltrating U.S. organizations on behalf of the Russian government.
“Mariia Butina, 29, a Russian citizen residing in Washington D.C., was arrested on July 15,” and charged “with conspiracy to act as an agent of the Russian Federation within the United States.”
Butina is charged with “developing relationships with U.S. persons and infiltrating organizations having influence in American politics, for the purpose of advancing the interests of the Russian Federation.
The DOJ also states in its complaint that “from as early as 2015 and continuing through at least February 2017, Butina worked at the direction of a high-level official in the Russian government who was previously a member of the legislature of the Russian Federation and later became a top official at the Russian Central Bank. This Russian official was sanctioned by the U.S. Department of the Treasury, Office of Foreign Assets Control in April 2018.”
Butina, whose first name at times has also been written as “Maria,” has been tied to Alexander Torshin, a Russian lawmaker who is rumored to have ties to the Russian Mafia.
“Torshin and his protégé Maria Butina also share an extraordinary status with America’s largest gun lobbying group,” Mother Jones reported earlier this year, noting that “according to Torshin: ‘Today in NRA (USA) I know only 2 people from the Russian Federation with the status of ‘Life Member’: Maria Butina and I,’ he tweeted the day after Donald Trump was elected president.”
Butina also “asked him [Trump] directly at a campaign event about the future of ‘damaging’ sanctions against Russia.”
UPDATE I: 3:24 PM ET –
FYI, interesting language from the DOJ that counters Trump’s claims earlier today:
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