Translated material
"Ready for new tasks!"
Maria Butina will become the first Russian woman convicted of charges of trying to influence American politics
The stormy activity for which the Russian woman was behind bars proceeded on the eve of the presidential election in the United States in 2016, sensationally ending Donald Trump. After the election, Butina wrote to the former senator and deputy chairman of the Central Bank Alexander Torshin, who worked as an assistant from 2012 to 2015: “Ready for new tasks!” In every joke, as you know ...
They detained Mary in Washington on July 15 this year - exactly on the eve of the meeting of Trump and Putin in Helsinki. Interestingly, the commission of Robert Muller, investigating the “Russian intervention in the American elections,” had no attitude to this. Other prosecutors engaged in national security. The FBI followed the girl at least since 2016, the agents during the searches of her house checked a laptop and an iPhone and found an account from the domain, which is associated with the FSB in her list of contacts. The agents saw Butin in the company of a Russian diplomat, who was sent from the United States in March. Special services suspect that he was an intelligence officer. At the time of the arrest, Butina’s arrest was collected and packed in personal belongings, as if she was about to leave the country.
Not a spy
At a court session in Washington on Thursday 13, Butina admitted that her actions were part of a conspiracy aimed at establishing contacts with the Americans, who could influence the policy of their country. It is primarily about the US National Infantry Association (NRA) - one of the major sponsors of the Republican Party. Butina is ready to tell about a US citizen, with whom she conspired to establish ties in the political circles of America, and about the Russian official, who, according to Butina, led her actions.
The wording of the court “Personality number 1” and “Russian state official” hides a 56-year-old conservative activist from the state of South Dakota Paul Erickson, who became the cohabitant of the Russian woman (as the media reports, the charges have not been put forward in his regard) and the 65-year-old Alexander Torshin, an honorary member of the Russian Public Organization, created by Butina. The former First Deputy Chairman of the Federation Council, according to the Spanish police, was in the past associated with the activities of the Tagansk organized crime group. He rejects these messages, but Madrid did not put forward official charges against him. As the trial approaches Butina, the deputy chairman and state secretary of the Bank of Russia first went on vacation, and on November 30-resigned "in connection with retirement." Torshin has been under American sanctions since April this year.
At the next meeting of the court on February 12 of next year, it is expected to be announced the date of sentencing. On Friday evening, the press leaked to the press that before this meeting Butin will meet with federal prosecutors in Virginia and may perform in Washington to testify before a large jury in another criminal process. For its transportation of the FBI you need special permission. A few minutes after the message about this appeared on the judicial registration site, it was hastily deleted.
Experts suggest that Maria Butina, as a result of a transaction with American justice instead of 10 years of prison and a fine of 250 thousand dollars (Article 951, adopted in 1948, is similar to Fara - the Law on Foreign Agents, it is larger for bans; we are talking about “any activity in the interests of a foreign power without registration in the United States”, and not just about interfering in the political process) can now get “only” 5-6 months of imprisonment. Since by the time of the sentence announcement, she will already set this deadline in the prison of Alexandria, Virginia, she is almost immediately deported to her homeland. So many experts believe. They note that this is unlikely to be possible if she really had a spy.
An important detail: American law enforcement agencies and did not make her accusations of espionage.
So the popular comparisons in the Western media comparisons of the Red -haired Mary with the heroine of the film “Red Sparrow” (Russian spy played by Jennifer Lawrence) or real Anna Chapman, in 2010 extradited from the United States during the exchange of 10 Russian “sleeping agents” for four “Western spies”, including the scientist Igor Sutyagin and Colonel of Intelligence Sutyan. Skripal, deprived of reasons. And even the accusation is that Maria Butina offered sex in exchange for career growth and the opportunity to expand her influence among conservatives-republicans, American prosecutors were removed from her. Now they say this: the investigation incorrectly interpreted some messages from its SMS correspondence. The American press less often calls Butina "Spy", the new definition of the "political conspirator" - the Political Conspirator is distributed.
In addition, suspicions were removed that the student visa in which she was in the country was only a cover (the Russian woman studied at the US University of Washington). All these years, a student Butina at events actively supported the Russian politics and the president (she had a Mike with the famous photo “Putin on a horse”). As the crown of this activity, American TV showed how, in July 2015, at the Freedom First event in Las Vegas, Maria asks a presidential candidate Donald Trump: “If you become president, what course will you spend in relation to my country?”
Conservative Americans Maria Butina should be presented with “right Russian,” writes New York Times:
“She loved weapons and the church, talked with senior officials in the National Rifle Association, chatted at ease with republican presidential candidates, and became a supporter of Donald Trump. Thanksgiving was held in the country's country house, took with her an assistant from Trump’s election headquarters for a concert of the STYX rock band and helped the Rockefeller heir to organize “friendly dinners” with influential Washingons. ”
According to experts, they did not arrest the Butin for the expression of personal views, but for the fact that this “activist” worked under the control and for the money of Moscow, without first reporting, as expected, about his lobbying activities (including the organization of Trump's meeting with Putin) the US Ministry of Justice.
Which is confirmed by indications
Butina admitted that she worked for Torshin, and he, according to her, agreed on instructions in the Russian Foreign Ministry.
In March 2015, Maria wrote the project “Diplomacy”, in which she proposed to build unofficial contacts primarily with representatives of the Republican Party of the United States. She already assumed that Donald Trump would win the elections. With the help of a computer Google translator, Butitin made the English version and sent it to Paul Erickson, who was familiar with the previous contacts with the National Rifle Association. According to her, Erickson in response made a list of influential people “for informal contacts”. Butina sent the project to Torshin and requested 125 thousand dollars to organize meetings with the right people. Torshin assured the girl that her offer would be funded, "at least partially." The American media call the Russian sponsor a student of billionaire Konstantin Nikolaev, General Director of the H-TRANS group, whose wife is the president of the Promtechnology company, which produces weapons rifles at the Moscow ORCISS plant. The business partner of Nikolaev is Igor Rotenberg, the son of Arkady Rotenberg, a longtime president's friend.
The “diplomacy” plan begins to come true. In April 2015, a student from Russia, advocating the legalization of small arms in our country, became an honorary guest of the NRA Congress, and in December the American delegation was in Moscow. Visit program: Bolshoi Theater, visiting the weapons factory and meeting with Russian politicians, including the Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov and then Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin. In 2016, at the NRA conference in Louisville, Torshin met with the son of Trump Donaldo Jr., who now says that their conversation lasted only a few minutes.
According to the American media, the sponsorship contributions of the National Infantry Association in the 2016 election have miraculously increased. 54.4 million dollars were raised, of which 30 million went in support of the candidate Donald Trump-this is 3 times more than the same sponsors presented Mitt Romney in 2012. Today, the members of the Democratic Party in the Congress are asking about the origin of money: are they somehow connected with Russian contacts established through Butina and Erickson. In the NRA, this is denied: the contributions of foreigners are prohibited by law. However, the former member of the Federal Election Commission, Ann Ravel, said that Botina’s case emphasizes the risk of how foreign subjects will strive to influence the elections in the United States through politically active groups whose finances are difficult to track. “They have a lot of different ways to give this money through the circular system,” Radel said.
In 2017, Butina helped the “Russian official” (I remind you, as the court calls Torshin) to organize a trip of a Russian delegation of 16 people to a national prayer breakfast to Washington. Torshin gave direct instructions by Butina, whom to include in the delegation. Maria noted that he consulted with the Mid and his bosses in the Central Bank.
This is only part of the data, Maria has the time to “remember everything” before the sentence.
The context is important
According to the American media, Butina's activity fell into the context of a more extensive picture, where at least 14 people from the Trump team before the elections met with Russian officials and businessmen. Advisor George Papadopulos with the help of British professor Joseph Methsuda talked with Russian Ivan Timofeev from the Council for International Affairs on the organization of the meeting of Trump and Putin.
Conservative activists - the already mentioned Erickson and Rick Clay - tried to organize the meeting of Trump, if not with Putin, then at least with Torshin. At the same time, a hacking of the mail of the Democratic Party of the United States and the head of the campaign headquarters Hillary Clinton John Podesta, in which Washington accused Russian hackers from intelligence, occurred. At the same time, the Internet research agency created for American voters a whole system of fake messages in social networks with fictional personalities and fake addresses (this is more detail in the documents of the Muller commission-names, date, address).
Two weeks after the meeting of Trump Jr., the president’s son, the son of the president, receives through the British music producer an invitation to a meeting “with the Royal Prosecutor of Russia” (the Briton has flinted his realities with the Russian, this was not a direct attitude to Yuri Chike), promising a compromise on Hillary Clinton. At the already famous meeting with the intermediaries of Manafort and Kushnere, the lawyer Natalya Veselnitskaya came to the New York Tower of Trump.
And Trump's lawyer Michael Cohen promoted the idea of building the Moscow Trump Moscow Tower, supposedly with a gift penthouse for Putin. Carter adviser Page made a speech in Moscow, where Arkady Dvorkovich, then Deputy Prime Minister, expressed, according to Page, "the strongest support of Trump and the desire to work together for the benefit of the two countries." At first, Page denied the fact of a conversation with a Russian official, but he was “fed” at a hearing in Congress.
All of the above is a pile of random facts and coincidences or a system of thoughtful “active actions”, in which Maria Butina is just “another brick in the wall”, in the general game of diplomats, scouts, political and public activists, politicians, businessmen and “influence agents”?
“Washington Post” notes: “We do not know what Vladimir Putin knew from this by July 2016, but American voters on the day (November) elections were almost nothing (from this list).”
After the election, this plate seemed to be turned over to the other side. The then national security adviser Michael Flynn met with the ambassador Sergei Kislyak. And before that, in 2015, the general received 45 thousand dollars from the RT channel - a fee for a performance at an event in Moscow, where Flynn was sitting at the same table with President Putin ...
Torture, serious?
The main argument of the Russian side from Smolenskaya Square and to Ostankino - the girl “Americans tortured torture” (however, Sergey Lavrov put it more accurately - “peculiar torture”), “no one would withstand them,” so Butina “partially admitted”.
An interesting coincidence - before visiting in prison Russian diplomats, Maria did not complain about the conditions of detention and called them "acceptable."
At the end of August, her father Valery Butin told the Russian media - TASS and NTV - that in a telephone conversation, Maria said that she had "acceptable conditions of detention, normal nutrition, difficulties only with a temporary routine." Due to the “administrative segregation” that she was announced, she has a wakefulness regime at a late night, that is, she was allowed to call the Washington time at one in the morning. ” The insider notes:
“The frightening administrative segregation is that, due to the difference in temporary Boutine zones in prison, a special regime was established so that it could talk on the phone with Russia. When on the east coast of the United States the hour of the night, eight in Moscow ( *now nine. - *a. P. ) in the morning, and in its native Barnaul 11 in the morning. And from the camera she can go into the room where the phone is installed. ”
The administration of the prison report about the “unbearable conditions” does not comment on Butina, like the American Ministry of Justice, until the process continues, and the verdict has not been issued. The American media did not at all led to this topic. According to the reviews of former prisoners, the prison in Alexandria is the most ordinary, “does not pull” either to the base of Guantanamo or to Abu Graib. There are a library, observation halls with TVs, classes are organized for convicts and there is a place where you can pray, and during the day to the phone - a whole turn.