Maria Butina's defense lawyers fight prosecutors' request for 18 months in prison



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Prosecutors on Friday filed a pre-sentencing memo asking for 18 months in jail for Butina, in a case where they alleged outrageous acts and had to return to some of them while they were in jail. they still claim that the Russian woman wanted to hurt the United States her job as a foreign agent.

"The activities in this case are part of Russia's more general plan to acquire information and establish relations and communication channels that can be exploited for the benefit of the Russian Federation," prosecutors wrote in their report. memorandum of preparation for the sentence, Friday.

They say that she was not a traditional spy nor a "qualified intelligence officer", but that she had sought to help Russia at the expense of US national security.

On this strong case, her defense lawyers, who had previously requested that the sentence be imposed on her, reiterated that she was neither a spy nor a Russian intelligence agent and had assisted the Commission. The former Russian central banker Alexander Torshin and the prosecutors have urged the judge to reject some of the prosecutors' discussions about his activities in favor of Russia.

"Maria is neither a trained intelligence agent, nor a spy, in any sense," wrote his lawyer. "The government is well aware that its prosecutors and federal officials in camera have practically expressed it, there is no evidence to support it, and they have not been charged with any crime related to it. espionage who attacks that. "

"All that Maria did is accepted the responsibility of conspiring to act as" agent "- no secret agent, nor intelligence agent – for Torshin, who was a friend but a former foreign manager of the Russian Central Bank," continued his lawyers.

His sentence is scheduled for Friday.

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