[ad_1]
This is what we know about Maria Butina. This is a 29-year-old white woman passionate about guns who has participated in several National Rifle Association events, socialized with NRA leaders and repeated NRA talking points.
She attended the announcement of the Wisconsin governor president, and later supported Republican Donald Trump as president. She attended the National Prayer Breakfast, a Republican gathering place, in Washington this year.
Butina publishes an article in a conservative magazine advocating close ties between Republicans and United Russia, Vladimir Putin's party, citing shared values and support from the GOP of "social conservatives, businessmen and supporters of An aggressive approach to the war against Islamic Terrorism. "
In addition, she had a romantic relationship with an older Republican man who introduced Butina to other Republicans and appears to be the type of entrepreneurial grifter who is a mainstay of the conservative movement.
The most obvious conclusion to draw from this brief profile Maria Butina is a Republican
Federal prosecutors could challenge this qualification They imprisoned Butina last weekend on charges that she is a Russian agent who worked surreptitiously, on the orders of a close friend of Vladimir Putin, to subvert US policy for the benefit of Russia.But in the days of Trump, a few days after a summit in Helsinki, Finland, which has forced the entire world to recognize how much the US president is subservient to the Russian president, the distinction between Russian and Republican is no longer what it once was. [19659005] Butina seems to have been shrewd enough to recognize it herself. In 2015, she went on a trip to South Dakota and spoke to a teenage Republican group. According to Dusty Johnson, Republican of South Dakota and current congressional candidate, Butina described Putin as a dictator and a tyrant.
Washington, however, where Butina assiduously wooed conservative activists in the arms movement and the religious right, she acknowledged that her new friends were engaged in a racial struggle and cultural war so intense that they could to be open, even eager, to align with Putin. defeating their true enemy: American compatriots
Putin is a thug, but for Trump, obviously, and for many of his conservative henchmen, more and more, Putin is a thug to admire. Polls have shown growing Republican support for Putin's Russia despite Russian military aggression in Eastern Europe, the Russian carnage in Syria, the Russian murders of journalists and political opponents of Putin, and even the Russian cyber-attacks against United States. vey, the share of Republicans expressing their trust in Putin has doubled from 2015 to 2017, from 17% to 34%.
Like Trump, some Republicans have weighed Russia's attack on the Democratic Party in 2016 and concluded that they very much like what they've seen. Two-thirds of Republicans approved the Trump summit in Helsinki, where the only known achievement was Trump's obsequious exoneration of previously documented Russian sabotage. As the collusion of the Trump team with Russia, both open and secret, has become clearer, many Republicans pass from "No Collusion!" To "So what?" Like their inevitable defect.
But in a Republican party still wary of gangster politics, Butina chose her targets well. The NRA's armed activists and Christian right-wing activists are Trump's most inflexible supporters and pillars of the GOP's authoritarian-racial wing. Those who are not already fans of the racist, homophobic, macho and militarist Russia of Putin are more and more curious about Putin
Putin clearly sees the potential for transnational white Christian solidarity. Dozens of Russians attended the most recent national prayer breakfast in February. As the New York Times reports:
In 2013, Bryan Fischer, then spokesperson for the American Family Association, called Mr. Putin "lion of Christianity". In 2014, Franklin Graham – the politically influential evangelist and supporter of Trump – defended Putin for his efforts "to protect the children of his country from the detrimental effects of any gay and lesbian program," while lamenting that the Americans have "abdicated our moral leadership". In December 2015, Mr. Graham met with Mr. Putin for 45 minutes
Butina did not camouflage his Putin relationship by courting the NRA. She exhibited them. She worked as an assistant to Alexander Torshin, a friend of Putin, an oligarch and high-ranking member of United Russia, who had already been greeted in the embrace of the NRA with a lifetime membership and social commitments with the leaders of the NRA – despite credible allegations. links with organized crime.
Butina organized an NRA trip to Moscow in 2015 under the auspices of Right to Bear Arms, a small and strange Russian weapons group that she ostensibly leads – although she is in the States United States with a student visa since 2016 – and apparently does not seem to be oppressed by a Russian government with little interest in a large number of armed citizens. Butina called the group a "Russian version of the NRA". A 2012 article in the New Republic described it as "a soup of communists and nationalists."
A representative of the NRA, the right-wing provocateur David Clarke The Sheriff of Milwaukee County at the time and included the trip on a county financial disclosure form. According to Clarke's disclosure, the small Russian version of the NRA was pretty flush with funds to pay Clarke's $ 6,000 spending in Russia.
Clarke tweeted that the NRA delegation had met with the Russian Foreign Minister, further evidence that Butina's campaign with the NRA was blessed at the highest level of the Russian government and that the NRA understood very well. By pushing republican extremists to ally with Putin's Russia, Butina seems to have pushed a door that, at the very least, was fragile and half-open.
In the documents filed in the Butina case, the US Department of Justice writes: "Moscow seeks to create corners that reduce confidence in democratic processes, degrade democratization efforts, weaken US partnerships with European allies, encouraging anti-American political views and countering efforts to integrate Ukraine and other former Soviet states into European institutions. "
The prosecution suggests that Butina targeted the GOP because that is where extremism and authoritarianism stole the banks because that's where the money is. "For the current leader of the Party Republican and for millions of its supporters, the description by the Ministry of Justice of the Moscow espionage does not read as an indictment.It reads like an agenda
This chronicle does not necessarily reflect t the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Katy Roberts [19659025] at [email protected]
[ad_2]
Source link
