The agent of influence

Who is Maria Butina, arrested in the USA

The second Anna Chapman appeared in the United States, she was also arrested, but it seems to be a little longer in the United States than the first, which was released home a few days later.

Like Chapman in 2010, the 29-year-old native of Barnaul Maria Butina, detained by the FBI last Sunday, is accused of working in the United States as a foreign agent without proper registration in the Ministry of Justice. Unlike Chapman, which no one in the United States, except for the FBI, had heard, Butina was mentioned in dozens of articles and was entering the conservative circles of America thanks to his connections in the National Infantry Association (NSA) and acquaintance with the republican political technologist Paul Erickson.

The latter was in the last member of the board of the influential organization “American Conservative Union”, which holds the annual “conservative conferences of political action”. Erickson first appeared on the general American stage in 1984, when he was a treasurer of a student republican organization.

“Erickson took part in the primaries of all the presidential campaigns of the Republicans since 1980 and was the head of the election headquarters of Pat Buchenen when he ran for the presidency,” the Forbes article said two years ago.

He is a kind of "secret lord of the political universe", known only to the initiates. "

In other words, Erickson is almost half Manafort.

The capture group of the FBI arrested Butina in a Vishinton apartment, in which, according to the federal prosecutor’s office, they “cohabit” with Erickson. Seeing the judge not to let Boutine on bail, the representative of the prosecutor’s office on Wednesday emphasized that the FBI had found a box of packed things at her house and a letter to the housewife, in which the Russian woman asked not to extend the apartment for renting an apartment that expires of the 31st.

According to prosecutors, all this proved that Butina was going to leave for Russia, with which the United States has no issuance agreement. However, according to the media, Butina was going to move to Erickson to South Dakota. A year and a half ago, Tim Mack (The Daily Beast) wrote that although Butina lived in Washington, her mobile phone began with the code of this provincial state.

It was in Southern Dakota that Erickson opened in February 2016 Bridges LLC, explaining that it was supposed to finance Butina’s studies in the graduate school of the American University in Washington.

There is a theory that, since in a deserted deafomani it would be more difficult to monitor Butina than in Washington, the FBI decided to take it before leaving.

Butina came to the United States many times in the company of her mentor Alexander Torshin, a former senator and deputy chairman of the Central Bank. They flew to the NSA events, whose lifelong members are both.

The young Butina owned seven furniture stores in Barnaul, but sold six of them and moved to Moscow, where she soon founded the public organization “Right to Weapons”, which she headed for several years, and then was a member of her board.

The American seyschers of the right to weapons, which in recent years have been in a siege, willingly accepted their Russian like -minded people and went to Moscow. Julia Joffe, a former Muscovite brought by a child to America, printed a report on a meeting with Butina in the Moscow Tira in 2012 and noted in the text that the “right to weapon” does not apply to opposition movements, and its founder voted for Putin.

But in the United States, Butina was often perceived as the opponent of the Kremlin regime and treated her with sympathy, which opened many doors to her, although not so much as acquaintance with Erickson.

He met Butina in Moscow, where Erickson came with the NSA delegation. The same Tim Mack talks about how on November 12, 2016, that is, a few days after Trump’s victory, Butina celebrated her birthday in the Dolux cafe near the American university. Several employees of Trumpovsky headquarters and Erickson came to the costume party, claiming that he was taken to the Trump transition team.

The birthday girl was dressed up by the empress, and Erickson - Rasputin. As MEK writes, standing against the backdrop of an ice sculpture depicting a bottle of vodka with a sickle and a hammer, Butina boasted that she was participating in the negotiations of the Trumpists with Russia, and then repeated this statement in graduate school.

“She announced this in my lesson,” says Svetlana Savranskaya, former professor of American University. - And several times repeated it in the last semester. She is a former journalist and keeps ties in Russia. And she also works for a member of the Russian Duma and claims that she retains his connections. ”

I will not be surprised if the prosecutor’s office, who calls this “member of the Duma”, that is, obviously, Torshin, the “curator” of the Russian agent Butina, will now call the Savran witness to the prosecution. After all, Butina is also charged with an attempt to establish a secret communication channel between the Trumpists and Moscow.

She had every right to establish him, but only having previously registered in the Ministry of Justice. The prosecutors say that the traces of her registration were not found there.

Erickson and Butina were often seen together, for example, on the exclusive “Balu Freedom” after the inauguration of Trump, or in “Rush House”-Bar A La Ryus on the Washington Duppo-Serkle. In the fall of 2016, Erickson spoke on one booze, as he introduced to Mikhail Kalashnikov to former NSA President David Kinu, who, incidentally, in his youth, was working as an interns of the current adviser to National Security, John Bolton, who wrote a small video message to the Russians in defense of the right to weapons at the request of Butina and Erickson.

In their last petition, the prosecutors do not spare Erickson, mention them with Butina's age difference (she is 29, and he is 56) - according to American concepts, completely abnormal - claim that the Russian woman considered their relationship simply as the necessary aspect of her work, and notes that she belonged to the prospect of further cohabitation with his “with a science”.

Having created this gaping wound, they immediately poured salts at her, saying that “at least once” Butina allegedly offered another man in exchange for a position in a certain lobbying organization.

The FBI, as it turned out now, has unobtrusively followed Butina since 2016, and in the spring of the present changed tactics to obsessive.

According to her lawyer Robert Driscollah, in April at the house, Butina was searched at Botina, which, however, did not prompted her to immediately return to her homeland: Butina continued to go to graduate school and in May graduated from a master's degree on international relations.

A few months ago, she testified behind closed doors in the Senate Intelligence Committee and, according to Driscall, presented a thousand documents there. According to the lawyer, Butina was ready to cooperate with the special prosecutor Robert Muller, but he did not express his desire to use this.

Driscall denies that Butina was a Russian agent, and says that she made acquaintances with influential Americans from innocent motives.

The prosecutors argue that she did this on the instructions of Torshin, who fell under American sanctions and, apparently, will not soon appear again at the NSA congresses, or even the FSB, the address of one of the structures of which was found in the electronic list of contacts by Butina.

Prosecutors, however, do not mention scouts of Butina and, most importantly, wiretaps, without which almost no federal process in the United States does not go into the start of years. However, they abundantly quote selected places from her correspondence with Torshin, emphasizing phrases such as “I expect further orders”

The accusation also significantly quotes last year’s letter Torshin, which followed the appearance of a number of articles on Butina in the United States. Torshin congratulates her on the fact that she was overwhelmed by Anna Chapman, who poses with toy weapons, “and you are published with the present,” and asks whether they had already begun to ask Butina's autographs. Thus, based on the logic of the prosecutors, since Torshin likes the Butina Anna Chapman, then Butina is also an agent.

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