Ms Butina's attorney Robert Driscoll said in a statement released on Monday that his client was "not an agent" and instead just an international relations student "who is seeking to use her degree to pursue a career in business".<doc-sep>Mariia Butina, a self-described Russian gun rights activist with links to the National Rifle Association, has been arrested by the FBI on charges she was acting as a Russian agent in an orchestrated effort to infiltrate American political organizations. The Justice Department said in court filings that the 29-year-old woman worked to establish “back channel” lines of communication with U.S. politicians to “advance the agenda of the Russian Federation” from as early as 2015 and continuing through at least February 2017. Butina, who attended at least two Trump campaign events to ask the then-candidate Russia-related questions, worked at the direction of a high-level Kremlin official who was previously a member of the legislature of the Russian Federation and later became a top official at the Russian Central Bank, the documents said. Butina, who resided in the United States on a student visa, set up a series of dinners in Washington and New York between Russian nationals and Americans with influence with the U.S. political system, according to the filings. “She undertook her activities without officially disclosing the fact that she was acting as an agent of Russian government, as required by law,” the Justice Department said. The documents were made public Monday mere hours after President Donald Trump stood beside his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, after a joint summit in Helsinki. At the press conference afterward, Trump bashed the investigation led by Special Counsel Robert Mueller into Russian meddling and declined to criticize Putin for interfering in the election. Read More: Transcript of Trump-Putin Press Conference The charges also came after the Justice Department unveiled an indictment last week against 12 Russian military-intelligence officers for conspiring to hack the Democratic National Committee, Hillary Clinton’s campaign and state boards of election in 2016. Taken together, the documentation shows a sweeping campaign at multiple levels of the Russian government to influence the outcome of the 2016 elections to the candidates whom they favored. The documents against Butina, who also spells her first name Maria, were filed by the Justice Department, not the special counsel. The DOJ said she was arrested Saturday in Washington and made her initial appearance Monday before Magistrate Judge Deborah A. Robinson in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. She was ordered held pending a hearing set for Wednesday. According to the Justice Department’s complaint, federal investigators seized Butina’s electronic devices, including her laptop and iPhone, containing Twitter direct messages that showed coordination with an unnamed Russian official. Robert Driscoll, a Washington lawyer representing Butina, told TIME in an email that his client was innocent and had been cooperating with “various government agencies for months.” He added that Butina voluntarily appeared “months ago” before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and “testified for 8 hours and produced thousands of documents.” She offered to do the same for the special counsel but Mueller’s team declined, Driscoll said. “There is simply no indication of Butina seeking to influence or undermine any specific policy or law in the United States – only to promote a better relationship between the two nations,” he said, adding that over a dozen FBI agents executed a search warrant at her Washington apartment in April. On her LinkedIn page, Butina says she studied at American University for a master’s degree in International Service with “a concentration in cyber policy.” (An American University spokeswoman confirmed she graduated in May.) Butina became well-known around Washington because of her odd self-promotion as a Russian gun rights activist. She stuck out — not only because there is no substantive gun rights movement in Russia — but also because of her outreach to Republicans. At the time around the 2016 election cycle, it marked a dramatic shift in Russia’s attempts to influence U.S. domestic politics. During the Cold War, the Kremlin tried to forge links to the American left. But, as TIME reported in March 2017, dinners organized by Butina were becoming a subject of interest. One such gathering, described as “friendship & dialogue dinners,” by the Justice Department, on Feb. 1, 2017 a group that piled into Bistro Bis, a swanky French joint on Capitol Hill, a Washington institution that has hosted all sorts of political summits over the years. For four hours, current and former Russian officials dined with two Republican Congressmen, a conservative magazine publisher, a longtime GOP consultant and a close friend of top White House strategist Steve Bannon. “We have so many people who are trying to destroy the relationship between Russia and the United States,” Republican Rep. Dana Rohrabacher of California, who attended the dinner and has visited Russia at least a half-dozen times over the past five years, told TIME soon afterward. “I’m trying my best to expand the amount of personal contacts we have with people who are engaged in government in Russia.” Read More: Moscow Cozies Up to the Right One of the officials who attended the dinner was a deputy central banker and former Russian senator named Alexander Torshin, who appears to be the unnamed Russian official in the court documents. He has been part of a years-long campaign to build connections between Russia’s leaders and American conservatives. The crusade, which predates the rise of Trump, has achieved significant success, sparking new alliances with leading U.S. evangelicals, lawmakers and powerful interest groups like the NRA. In 2015, a collection of NRA officials flew over to Russia to attend Butina’s annual gun conference, the Right to Bear Arms, details of which were included in a report from Democrats on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence made public on March 26. Among them was Paul Erickson, a veteran Republican activist and longtime NRA member who attended the Feb. 1 dinner; former NRA and ACU chief David Keene; gun manufacturer and NRA first vice president Pete Brownell; and then-Milwaukee County sheriff David Clarke, a Trump supporter now at America First Action, a pro-Trump super PAC. One of their hosts was Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, who was sanctioned by the White House in 2014 in connection with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. According to a disclosure filed by Clarke, Butina’s group shelled out $6,000 for the sheriff’s meals, lodging, transportation and other excursions on the trip. The NRA did not respond to a request for comment. In April 2015, Butina and Torshin traveled to Tennessee to attend a fundraiser for a political group backing the presidential campaign of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, then viewed as a leading contender for the GOP nomination. In July, she attended Walker’s campaign kickoff in Wisconsin. The same week, Butina flew to Las Vegas for one of Trump’s first campaign events. She stood up and asked Trump whether he would end the “damaging” U.S. government sanctions on Russia. “I know Putin, and I’ll tell you what, we’ll get along with Putin,” he responded. “I don’t think you’d need the sanctions.” She asked him a similar question about U.S.-Russia relations during an event in North Dakota: “I don’t think you’d need the sanctions,” he said. “I think we would get along very, very well.” In February 2017, Butina helped assemble the delegation of Russians who attended the National Prayer Breakfast. The group of 16 included Kremlin advisers, university presidents and the mayor of an eastern Russia city. In the summer of 2015, Butina wrote an article in the National Interest, a magazine published by the Center for the National Interest, about her hopes for a thaw in the two nations’ relationship, proclaiming: “It may take the election of a Republican to the White House in 2016 to improve relations between the Russian Federation and the United States.” Get our Politics Newsletter. The headlines out of Washington never seem to slow. Subscribe to The D.C. Brief to make sense of what matters most. Please enter a valid email address. * The request timed out and you did not successfully sign up. Please attempt to sign up again. Sign Up Now An unexpected error has occurred with your sign up. Please try again later. Check the box if you do not wish to receive promotional offers via email from TIME. You can unsubscribe at any time.<doc-sep>Just hours after President Trump’s press conference with Vladimir Putin, the Justice Department announced the arrest of a Russian national — Maria Butina — for secretly trying to influence US politics at Russia’s behest. An affidavit filed by an FBI agent asserts that Butina tried to cozy up to a gun rights organization so she could influence a major political party, all the while working for a top Russian central bank official and trying to advance the interests of the Russian state — and not registering as a foreign agent. Though the affidavit does not name many of the people and groups involved, previous reporting and context clues make it clear that the gun rights group is the National Rifle Association, the party is the Republican Party, and the Russian official is Alexander Torshin. The Butina case is not part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe — she was investigated by the FBI’s Washington field office and will be prosecuted by the US Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia. Butina was arrested on Sunday (before Trump and Putin met). The connections between Butina and the NRA are no secret — indeed, she’s been known and lauded in conservative activist circles for years. Back in 2014, TownHall’s Katie Pavlich profiled her as “the woman working with the NRA and fighting for gun rights in Russia.” And Butina and Torshin have long been figures of intrigue in reports on Russia and the 2016 campaign. For instance, Butina showed up at a July 2015 event in Las Vegas and asked Trump what his policy toward Russia sanctions would be, if elected. Torshin, meanwhile, met Donald Trump Jr. at an NRA event in May 2016. Butina even hosted a costume party for her birthday four days after Trump won — according to the Daily Beast, some Trump campaign aides attended and Butina openly bragged that she helped Trump’s campaign communicate with Russia. Those events aren’t mentioned in the charging documents. What the affidavit does reveal, though, are private communications in which Butina makes clear she’s cozying up to the NRA and the GOP as part of a deliberate strategy to advance Russia’s interests. What Maria Butina is alleged to have done The affidavit claims that on or around March 24, 2015, Butina emailed a proposal for a project called “Diplomacy.” In it, she stated that a major US political party (clearly the Republicans) would likely win the 2016 election. The problem, she wrote, was that the GOP is “traditionally associated with negative and aggressive foreign policy, particularly with regards to Russia.” Butina wanted to change that, and had an idea for doing so. She wrote that within the GOP, a gun rights organization (obviously the NRA) has a “central place and influence,” saying it funds campaigns and sponsors major conferences like the Conservative Political Action Conference. Butina wrote that she and Torshin had already been building ties to the NRA, and proposed that she wanted to go to “all upcoming major conferences” related to the Republican Party before the 2016 elections. She went on to arrange a series of “friendship and dialogue dinners,” frequently reporting back to Torshin. She got tickets for two National Prayer Breakfasts. She worked with two unnamed US people on the effort, one of whom emailed an acquaintance saying he’d secured “a VERY private line of communication between the Kremlin” and key Republican leaders, through the NRA. And she moved to the US in August 2016, on a student visa. By October 5, 2016 — a point when Trump was believed to be very likely to lose the election — Butina exchanged a series of intriguing direct messages with Torshin. “Time will tell. We made our bet. I am following our game,” she wrote. After she expressed some uncertainty, he answered, “Patience and cold blood + faith in yourself. And everything will definitely turn out.” Butina elaborates in another message that same day that the “crucial” issue in the election race was that Republicans were “for us” and Democrats “against,” so “our move here is very important.” After Trump won, Butina and Torshin exchanged messages again, in which she wrote: “I am ready for further orders.” A few days later, she messaged him about someone who might be named secretary of state, and asked how “our people” felt about that person. The affidavit ends by describing how Butina and Torshin attended the National Prayer Breakfast in February 2017, shortly after Trump’s inauguration, and by quoting from some communications in which Butina suggested she was acting on Russia’s behalf (“My dearest president received ‘the message’”). The affidavit also says that she never notified the attorney general that she was acting as a foreign government agent, as required by law. It is not yet known if the investigation of Butina will lead to any other charges.<doc-sep>
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A 29-year-old Russian woman living in Washington, D.C., has been arrested and charged with conspiracy to act as an agent of the Russian government while developing ties with American citizens and infiltrating political groups, the U.S. Justice Department said on Monday. Maria Butina delivers a speech during a rally in Russia. Press Service of Civic Chamber of the Russian Federation/via REUTERS Maria Butina, who studied at American University in Washington and is a founder of the pro-gun Russian advocacy group Right to Bear Arms, was arrested on Sunday and accused of operating at the direction of a high-level official who worked for the Russian Central Bank and was recently sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, the Justice Department said. The court records did not name the official. Butina has appeared in numerous photographs on her Facebook page with Alexander Torshin, the deputy head of Russia’s Central Bank who was sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department in April. A person familiar with the matter told Reuters that Butina worked for him as an assistant. Other media reported on a business relationship between Butina and Torshin. Torshin did not reply to a request for comment. The Russian Central Bank declined to comment. Robert Driscoll, an attorney for Butina, said she was not a Russian agent. He said she was cooperating with U.S. authorities and had previously appeared voluntarily behind closed doors for eight hours before the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Her apartment was raided by the FBI in April, he said. “Ms. Butina intends to defend her rights vigorously and looks forward to clearing her name,” Driscoll said. The Justice Department complaint was made public on the same day President Donald Trump met Russia’s Vladimir Putin at a summit in Helsinki, at which Trump refused to blame the Russian leader for meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Before the summit, Trump took to Twitter to blast Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into whether Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia, calling it a “rigged witch hunt.” The investigation into Butina’s efforts to influence American politics was overseen by the Justice Department’s National Security Division and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, and not by Mueller’s office. Democrats on the U.S. House Intelligence Committee investigating any ties between Trump’s campaign and Russia previously highlighted Butina as a person of interest and sought permission from the committee’s Republican leadership to bring her in for questioning. Republicans declined that request and later issued a report along party lines that found there was no collusion between Trump’s campaign and Russia. INFLUENCE, INFILTRATE The Justice Department said in its complaint that Butina worked with two unnamed U.S. citizens and the Russian official to try to influence American politics and infiltrate a pro-gun rights organization. The complaint did not name the group, however photos on her Facebook page showed that she attended events sponsored by the National Rifle Association. An NRA spokesman did not reply to requests for comment. Butina allegedly arranged dinners in Washington and New York City and tried to develop relationships with American politicians to establish “back channel” lines of communication to “penetrate the U.S. national decision-making apparatus,” the complaint said. The complaint did not specifically mention Trump’s campaign. The source who said Butina worked for Torshin said that she was a Trump supporter who bragged at parties in Washington that she could use her political connections to help get people jobs in the Trump administration after the election. In a Dec. 8, 2016, class project at American University, Butina gave a presentation titled “What Might President Trump’s Foreign Policy Be Toward Russia?” and listed several of Russia’s key policy objectives, according to a copy reviewed by Reuters. American University spokesman Mark Story told Reuters that Butina was enrolled as a student there in the summer of 2016 and graduated in the spring of 2018 with a Master of Arts degree. In a video posted on YouTube from the FreedomFest event in Las Vegas in July 2015, Butina can be seen asking then-candidate Trump if he would continue to support sanctions against Russia if he were elected president. The Justice Department’s complaint also referenced an email written by Butina in March 2015 which discussed the prospect of a major political party winning the 2016 election which was “traditionally associated with negative and aggressive foreign policy” toward Russia.