Influencing people in politics is politics. The key word is "lobbying."
Maria Butina Agrees to Cooperate With U.S.
Maria Butina, a Russian national who cultivated relationships with powerful American conservative activists, agreed Monday to plead guilty to conspiring to violate laws prohibiting covert foreign agents. As part of her agreement, which was reviewed by The Daily Beast, she has promised to cooperate with American law enforcement.
As a result of the deal, Butina will become the first Russian national since the 2016 election to plead guilty to a crime connected to efforts to influence American politics. After running a gun rights organization in Russia, she moved to the United States, where she spent years building relationships with conservatives in hopes of influencing a future Republican presidential administration. During the campaign season, she questioned then-candidate Donald Trump about sanctions; built relationships in the upper echelons of the American gun rights community; arranged for NRA leaders to travel to Moscow; and bragged that she was a channel between Team Trump and the Kremlin, as The Daily Beast first revealed.
She also struck up a romance with Paul Erickson, a longtime Republican gadfly close to NRA leaders. He sang Disney songs with her on camera, called her his “Siberian princess” in emails reviewed by The Daily Beast, and—since her July arrest—has visited her regularly in jail.
In March 2015, according to the plea deal, Butina worked with an unnamed U.S. person—known to be Erickson—to draft a proposal for a diplomatic endeavor. Given the fraught relationships between the governments of Russia and the United States, she “cast herself as a possible unofficial transmitter of communications” between the two countries.
No comments:
Post a Comment