UPDATE: 11/16/18 Justice Department says in new filing it is engaged in talks “regarding a potential resolution of this matter” involving accused Russian agent Maria Butina and ask a court to postpone status conference for two weeks while they figure out whether they can make a deal.
HERE IS THE FILING — USA VS. BUTINA
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5141629-USA-v-Butina-Motion-to-Continue.html
Maybe now we’ll find out how Russia funneled money through the NRA to Trump.
BCKG: Butina began working for then-Russian Senator Aleksandr Torshin, an oligarch and Putin ally, in 2011. Torshin is now the deputy governor of the Central Bank of Russia.
Jill Wine-Banks Former Watergate Prosecutor says:
“His performance today will live in infamy as much as the Pearl Harbor attack or Kristallnacht,”
“We were burglarized this time by foreign agents,” said Wine-Banks, a former Watergate prosecutor, speaking of the 2016 Russian hacking campaign. “It’s just as serious to me as the Cuban Missile Crisis in terms of an attack or the 9/11 attack. The president is taking the side of the people who attacked us.”
Jill Wine-Banks offered some analysis of the situation making comparisons to 9/11, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and Kristallnacht.
https://www.thewrap.com/this-msnbc-contributor-cited-9-11-pearl-harbor-and-kristallnacht-to-assess-trump-putin-summit/
The country can no longer afford to wait to ascertain why President Trump has subordinated himself to Putin
it must deal with the fact that he has.
Putin ordered the interference with the American Election!
His motivation is everything you already know plus the repeal of a law called the Magnitsky Act, passed to punish Russian officials responsible for the death of a Russian whistleblower, Sergei Magnitsky.
Thread Here’s Trump in 2015, suggesting to Maria Butina (Russian crime boss Alexander Torshin’s special assistant) that he would lift sanctions on Russia. “I believe I would get along very nicely with Putin… I don’t think you’d need the sanctions.”
In 2017, Butina told The Washington Post that she never worked for the Russian government.
Helderman, Rosalind S.; Hamburger, Tom (April 30, 2017). “Guns and religion: How American conservatives grew closer to Putin’s Russia”. The Washington Post. Archived from the original on April 9, 2018. Retrieved April 8,2018.
Born in Barnaul, Altai Krai, Russia, in Siberia, in 1988.
According to her Linkedin profile. She wrote on Linkedin: The chief focus of Butina’s master’s degree in International Service is a concentration in cyber policy, the “internet of things”, cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology. Her American University summer internship was with the Asian Pacific Top Level Domain Association on the topic of internet governance. Maria was a featured panelist at the group’s international conference in Tbilisi, Georgia in 2017. She has lectured in a dozen countries around the world and been in and out of active conflict regions. She studied global energy markets and other international trade issues. Maria was a small business owner (a chain of furniture stores) when she was still an undergraduate in Siberia, Russia.
Butina began working for then-Russian Senator Aleksandr Torshin, an oligarch and Putin ally, in 2011. Torshin is now the deputy governor of the Central Bank of Russia.
2011 Maria Butina @Maria_Butina
Founder & Board Member of “The Right to Bear Arms” (Право на оружие)
Мария Бутина @Maria_Butina 23 Jun 2011
Arrested Russian Spy Maria Butina Using Folkore for Facism
First Russian tweets translated into English
May 9th 2011- June 23 2011
Butina Began Building a Relationship Between the NRA & Her Russian Group, Right to Bear Arms, in 2012 see picture of her with everyone
Kremlin discussed support for Maria Butina as she visited NRA headquarters in 2014 Exclusively obtained photos show Sheriff Clarke and NRA leaders drinking with Russian politicians and Putin confidants in 2015
In 2015, Butina wrote an opinion piece in The National Interest in which she argued, “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.” 5. Butina Founded a Company in South Dakota With an American Political Operative in 2016 & Hosted a Birthday Party Attended by Trump Campaign Staffers
Butina, Torshin, and Erickson have been subjects of an investigation by the Senate Intelligence Committee into Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections.
Torshin has also been the subject of a probe by the Federal Bureau of Investigation into whether the Russian government attempted to illegally funnel money to the NRA in order to help Trump win the presidency.
The FBI began to monitor Butina in August 2016 when she moved to the United States on a F-1 student visa. Rather than confront her immediately, the organization chose to track her movements and gather information of who she was meeting, and what her end goals were to be.[32] On July 15, 2018, Butina was arrested in Washington, D.C. and charged with conspiracy to act as an unregistered Russian agent within the United States.[33] According to the affidavit in support of the complaint, 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, widely believed to be Torshin. The court filings detail the Russian official’s and Butina’s efforts for Butina to act as an agent of Russia inside the United States by developing relationships with U.S. persons and infiltrating organizations having influence in American politics—such as the National Rifle Association, the National Prayer Breakfast and religious organizations—for the purpose of advancing the interests of the Russian Federation. The filings also describe certain actions taken by Butina to further this effort during multiple visits from Russia and, later, when she entered and resided in the United States on a student visa. The filings allege that she undertook her activities without officially disclosing the fact that she was acting as an agent of Russian government, as required by law.
Mother Jones: “The Very Strange Case Of Two Russian Gun Lovers The NRA And Donald Trump”
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/3/10/1748106/-Mother-Jones-The-Very-Strange-Case-Of-Two-Russian-Gun-Lovers-The-NRA-And-Donald-Trump
Maria Butina’s gun rights group deleted the video it had posted of John Bolton praising “a new era of freedom” in Russia. John Bolton’s message on Russian gun rights
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EytAMUUH9Yc
