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Angela Charlton, Associated Press
Published Wednesday, July 18, 2018 9:32 AM EDT
MOSCOW – In her early twenties, Maria Butina seemed to have a budding political career and a mini furniture empire in her secluded hometown of Siberia. Then she abandoned both to pursue her pbadion for gun rights – and, according to prosecutors, to spy on the United States.
Butina, 29, will be heard Wednesday in Washington on charges of working as a foreign agent. generation of Russian operators looking for a long-term US anchor. Her attorney says she's done nothing wrong
"It's a psychosis, a witch hunt," said her father, Valery Butin, quoted on Wednesday by the website of D & C. Altapress in his hometown of Barnaul
. Prosecutors suggest that Butina used her lobbying efforts to infiltrate the NRA and the Republican Party, both during the 2016 presidential campaign and after Donald Trump's election.
U.S. Federal prosecutors detailed private conversations on Twitter and other discussions between Butina and a senior Russian official about his activities in the United States.
Alexander Torshin, deputy head of the Central Bank of Russia and targets US sanctions since April. He and the Central Bank did not respond to requests for comments on the arrest of Butina.
Russian television supported by the Kremlin describes it as the "ideal victim" of anti-Russian hysteria in the United States. Since its provincial debut, the Russian media say that Butina has shown a remarkable ambition, a good political sense and a clear love of arms
who transported her off the Siberian steppe. in Moscow, where she had a friendship with a well – placed senator and founded a firearms defense group.
His ambitions did not stop at the borders of Russia. She participated in gun shows and right-wing events from the Freedomfest of Las Vegas at a meeting of the National Rifle Association in Indianapolis, according to her own social media. On the way, she met the governor of Wisconsin and made speeches at a high school and a university in South Dakota.
"There is nothing new in this case," said Russian Ambbadador to the United States, Anatoly Antonov. according to Russian news agencies. "US intelligence services are looking for Russian citizens not only in the United States but also in other countries."
Before leaving for the United States, Butina studied politics at the State University of Altai and Barnaul. According to Altapress and other local news sites, Butina was elected to the local Public Chamber, an advisory body that serves as an intermediary between local officials and the public
. She ran for a place on the National Public Chamber; she did not understand but she made contacts in Moscow and moved to the capital where she founded Right to Bear Arms.
Among those she met in Moscow, political expert Andrei Kolyadin, who used him as an interpreter when he attended a national prayer breakfast in the United States. United and said that he spoke with her just before his arrest of the World Cup, held in Russia.
"She is an extremely energetic person with lots of ideas, an interview of the Russian news agency Interfax.Butina is accused of conspiring to act as an unregistered agent of the Russian government , suspected of gathering information about US officials and political organizations, and working to set up return lines of communication for the Kremlin.
His lawyer, Robert Driscoll, called the allegations "" Exaggerated "and said that prosecutors had criminalized social networking opportunities." Driscoll says that Butina is not an agent of the Russian Federation but is in the United States with a visa. student, graduate of American University with a master's degree in international relations.
The former director of the School of Real Politics in Barnaul charges against her – and especially the moment of her arrest, has year nounced right after Trump held a summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
"What is the interest for Maria? She studied there two or three years, they suspect it a year ago? Why exactly the day of the visit with Trump is it necessary? Konstantin Emeshin asked a question about state television Rossiya 1.
Answering his own question, he continued: "So, there is a reason for the information to spread, so we can deform it" (1965, p, s, id)
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