The Mystery of Maria Butina .

The Mystery of Maria Butina .

Maria Butina ,  a gun toting Russian NRA
member .
Mueller's scapegoat .

If you ever read James Bond novel  , or seen any of the Bond films  the notion of a beautiful Russian spy is stranger than fiction . The Muller investigation produced one indictment- arrest  of a Russian dual citizen ship woman named (1)>>Maria Butina. Sitting in an orange jumpsuit in a Washington courtroom, Maria Butina was either an agent of the Russian government, as federal prosecutors allege, or a just an international graduate student targeted for her nationality, as her defense contends. While DOJ announced indictments against 13 Russian nationals as part of special counsel . Only one Russian is behind bars . I suspect that she is a hostage to a political game .  Both Butina and another Russian named  (1.2)>>Veselnitskaya a Lawyer   made the List of possible "contacts" with the Trump associates ,  Veselnitskaya alleged that Donald Trump Jr. offered to push for changes to the law in exchange for damaging material on Clinton. Which I don't believe existed , its possible that the Russians were blackmailing Trump into thinking that they had damaging material on Clinton, BUT in fact have damaging material on Trump.   This arrest came as a coincidence to the  same day as  President Trump  meets with the Russia President ie Summit in Helsinki... some people try to cast a shadow over the summit... and very likely more to come... Now its "alleged" Butina’s conduct seems to have involved (2)>>socializing and attending US political events, which may not seem all that strange . In a supporting document, FBI Special Agent Kevin Helson said in a sworn statement that one of the goals Butina was attempting to accomplish was to "exploit personal connections with US person having influence in American politics in an effort to advance the interests of the Russian Federation." It notes that one of her contacts was with an "organization promoting gun rights."  But we’ve gotten hints that there’s much .  Not repeating the word "alleged "the government alleged for the first time that Butina used sex — (3)>>she dated and lived with a much older Republican political consultant, and purportedly offered another person “sex in exchange for a position with a special interest organization.” It seems a bit far fetched , but there is a lot of questions about Butina's association with  the (4)>>NRA , the Republicans . Now it gets a bit like a mystery .That’s where Republican operative and lobbyist Paul Erickson — who appears to be Butina’s most important American contact — enters the picture. Erickson has a colorful history. He’s worked for legendary conservative activist Richard Viguerie, for Pat Buchanan’s 1992 presidential campaign, for Lorena Bobbitt’s husband/victim, and for dictatorial Zairean President Mobutu Sese Seko. More recently, he’s been on the board of the American Conservative Union, and he has close ties to the NRA’s leadership, having helped fundraise for the gun rights group. A Forbes columnist has called him “a sort of ‘secret master of the political universe’ known almost exclusively to the (4.2)>>cognoscenti.”Erickson attended the 2013 trip to Russia, and reportedly met Butina there. At some point, the two became very close. Eventually, they dated and lived together, and by 2015, they were close enough for Butina to email Erickson her proposed plan to influence American politics.

NRA Russia Money ?
If the N.R.A. as an organization turns out to be compromised, it would shake conservative politics to its foundation. And this is no longer a far-fetched possibility.  McClatchy reported that special counsel Robert Mueller was investigating whether the National Rifle Association was a conduit for money from Russia to Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. In a follow-up report on Monday, the outlet indicated that a clearer (5)>>picture was emerging of possible connections.The NRA spent $30 million dollars on Trump’s campaign in 2016 and another $40 million in various efforts to lobby and help elect Republicans. Much of this spending was dark money, making it difficult to trace the source and how it was spent.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.” The meetings between Butina and the Obama-era officials were documented by the Center for the National Interest in a report seen by Reuters, which outlined its Russia-related activites between 2013 and 2015. It describes the meetings as helping bring together “leading figures from the financial institutions of the United States and Russia.”During just the 2016 election cycle, the NRA spent $54 million in the presidential and congressional races, nearly $20 million of which went to attacking Democrat Hillary Clinton and more than $11 million to support Republican Donald Trump. In 2008 and 2012, the group had spent $18 million opposing Democrat Barack Obama and $10 million supporting Republicans John McCain and Mitt Romney.  (6)>>The NRA has donated a paltry $3,533,294 to all current members of Congress since 1998, according to The Washington Post  . Question since Russian money did get funneled into the NRA , how much of that went into the coffers of the  (7)>>American Republican Party ? 

 Final Additional Thoughts on Maria Butina .

Poster for Maria . Speaking  on the
"right to bear arms"
@ the University of South Dakota
USA 2015 .

My Final thoughts in regard to Butina . Butina was detained in the US in July, she faces up to 15 years in prison. She is accused of conspiracy to work as an agent of a foreign government without registration with the US Justice Department, and also in fact by a foreign agent. Butina said in court that she was not guilty. The judge ruled to arrest the Russian woman. The next meeting on her case is scheduled for 10 September. Until August 17, Butina was kept in Washington's prison, and then she was transferred to the prison of Alexandria (near the capital).In general, to read about the conditions under which Maria is kept is even strange, the term is that she was easily a scape goatee because "evidence" that she was a agent "working" on behalf of a foreign  government ( Russia) ,while her actions are "suspicious. As we know that  Mueller investigation is turing up less evidence of Russian collusion , but has its hands full turning up  more corruption within the FBI and Trump's former attorney Cohen's big payoff of Stormy Daniels  seems to have deviated the entire investigation.  Maria Butina could possibly be a victim of Russo phobia .

NOTES AND COMMENTS:

 (1)>>Maria Butina. Maria (sometimes spelled “Mariia”) Butina, who’s said she’s originally from Siberia. She says she moved to Moscow around 2010 in hopes of starting a furniture business, and then an advertising agency. The exact sequence of events is unclear, but at some point soon afterward, two things happened: She founded a Russian gun rights group called Right to Bear Arms, and she started working for Alexander Torshin as his special assistant. (It’s unclear whether the group was a front all along.)Citing a shared interest in gun rights, Torshin and Butina were introduced to top NRA officials, began regularly attending the NRA’s conventions in the United States, and became “life members” of the group. They also began to reciprocate with their own invitations to NRA bigwigs to visit Moscow for Right to Bear Arms events — the first of which, it seems, took place in November 2013 and featured a “concealed carry fashion show.” That’s where Republican operative and lobbyist Paul Erickson — who appears to be Butina’s most important American contact — enters the picture. (He is reportedly “US Person 1” in government charging documents.)  (1.2)>>Veselnitskaya. Lets explain ...There is every reason to believe that Butina is in prison because a lawyer by the name of Veselnitskaya is at large. These two Russians are not connected by their Russian origin or their suspicious (and suspiciously successful) activities in America. They are connected because of the inexplicable desire of the Obama administration to see both of them on American soil...It looks as though both Veselnitskaya and Butina worked not for Russian intelligence, but rather for American intelligence, which, under Obama's leadership, organized full-scale surveillance of his political opposition during the 2016 election campaign.Of course, they were kept in the dark. Veselnitskaya and Butina had no idea what kind of work they were doing on behalf of the Obama administration. Their potential handlers in Moscow also suspected nothing. As a result, Obama's FBI used Veselnitskaya and Butina to the greatest extent possible. By the way, it should be noted here that U.S. intelligence services, which for many decades lagged behind their British, Russian, and Israeli counterparts, still managed to learn a lot. They advanced in both professionalism and corruption.After the 2016 elections, political power in America had changed, and Trump's FBI arrested Butina. However, embarrassingly for the FBI, Veselnitskaya managed to leave the U.S. in time.The game in which these two Russians were involved is much more serious than the Magnitsky Act (Veselnitskaya's primary activity) or the right to bear arms in Russia (Butina's primary business). We are talking about Obama's widespread usage of the state intelligence apparatus to spy on political opponents. This scandal – Obamagate – is thousands of times bigger than Watergate.    (2)>>socializing and attending US political events. Her crime? Conspiring "to have a 'friendship dinner' at Bistro Bis with a group of Americans and Russians to discuss foreign relations between the two countries." They are charging her with violating the Foreign Agent Registration Act. statement from the DOJ reads. "This Russian official was sanctioned by the US Department of the Treasury, Office of Foreign Assets Control in April 2018." It adds that the 29-year-old "undertook her activities without officially disclosing the fact that she was acting as an agent of Russian government" and that the international relations student tried to build relationships with people in the Washington, DC, area while working at the behest of a former Russian lawmaker who went on to become a central bank official.(3)>>she dated and lived with a much older Republican political consultant. The meetings, disclosed by several people familiar with the sessions and a report prepared by a Washington think tank that arranged them, involved Stanley Fischer, then Federal Reserve vice chairman, and Nathan Sheets, then Treasury undersecretary for international affairs.  Fischer, and Israeli-American economist, served as governor of the Bank of Israel from 2005 – 2013 before President Obama nominated him to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors in January, 2014. In April, 2015, Fischer and Sheets met with Butina and Alexander Torshin – then the Russian Central Bank deputy governor, where they participated in separate meetings with Fischer and Sheets to discuss US-Russian economic relations during President Obama’s administration. (4)>>NRA , the Republicans . The love affair between the NRA and the Republican Party is perfectly understandable. As the "republican base" of angry white lower middle class men gradually ages and dies out, the Party is desperate to hold onto as many reliable voters as they can. It seems Republicans have been coalescing in greater numbers around the NRA ever since -- though particularly in the Obama years -- partly driven by our country's increased political polarization.   As you can see from the chart above, Democrats disagree with Republicans on the NRA wholeheartedly. And they are moving in the other direction.That partisan split could provide a hint as to why Republicans are so united today behind the NRA. Some of America's biggest social-issue shifts have been driven by motives other than ideology; young people regardless of party have buoyed America's increasing tolerance of same-sex marriage and marijuana legalization, for example.Gun rights, by contrast, have magnetized Americans toward the political poles. So Republicans might be naturally lining up with the more conservative factions in their party on everything from gun rights to immigration(4.2)>>cognoscenti.. persons who have superior knowledge and understanding of a particular field, especially in the fine arts, literature, and world of fashion.Italian, Latinized variant of conoscente (present participle of conoscere to know)  (5)>>picture was emerging of possible connections. The National Rifle Association has accepted contributions from about 23 Russians, or Americans living in Russia, since 2015, the gun rights group acknowledged to Congress.The NRA said in a letter to Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., unveiled on Wednesday, that the sum it received from those people was just over $2,500 and most of that was "routine payments" for membership dues or magazine subscriptions.About $525 of that figure was from "two individuals who made contributions to the NRA." Here are the  U.S. senators and House members who have benefited the most from the NRA’s ad buys, according to (see Federal Election Commission )  records.  (6)>>The NRA has donated.  Database in a way to make it easy for readers to search for how much their representative or senator received from the NRA. That means the database won’t allow searches for NRA donations to previous members of Congress who were serving for a portion of that almost 20-year period. If you include these members, the amount of contributions increases substantially.     See:     [https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/recips.php?id=d000000082 ]     (7)>>American Republican Party ?     A  number of top Republican leaders. Buried in the campaign finance reports available to the public are some troubling connections between a group of wealthy donors with ties to Russia and their political contributions to President Donald Trump . While "alleged" I use here cautionary, Russian money made it right into the GOP coffers , perhaps influenced the GOPs nomination of Donald Trump over the other Republican candidates . Amid a raft of congressional and law enforcement probes into Russian meddling during the 2016 presidential election, it’s still unclear whether members of Trump’s campaign actively colluded with Moscow. Forty-eight percent of Republicans, meanwhile,think Don Jr. was right to take the meeting. During the campaign, as operatives linked to Russian intelligence dumped hacked emails onto the internet, few Republicans stood on principle, like Florida Senator Marco Rubio, and condemned their provenance. “I will not discuss any issue that has become public solely on the basis of WikiLeaks,” Rubio said at the time. And he issued a stark warning to members of his party who were looking to take advantage of Clinton’s misfortune: “Today it is the Democrats. Tomorrow it could be us.”