Russian operative Maria Butina was indicted in July 2018 on charges of being a covert Russian agent.
Butina struck up friendships with the influential leaders of the National Rifle Association and the Conservative Political Action Conference.
The Deep State FBI knew that she was connected to a Russian operative but did not warn NRA or conservative officials about her intent while she was operating in the US.
It appears Butina was arrested only after NRA and conservative leaders would not deal with her.
The deep state was hoping for a few conservative scalps.
Butina was charged with conspiracy to act as an agent of the Russian Federation and is being held without bond.
Last year investigative journalist John Solomon told Lou Dobbs that the FBI knew about Butina and her operations but they did not warn the conservatives who she was cozying up to.
In December Maria Butina pleaded guilty to one court of conspiracy to act as an unregistered agent of a foreign government.
This is another dud by the Deep State FBI.
Maria Butina will be released from prison on Saturday. She will then fly back to Russia where her family will meet her.
The Examiner reported:
Maria Butina, who pleaded guilty to attempting to infiltrate Republican political circles and influence U.S. relations with Russia around the 2016 election, will leave prison tomorrow and travel to Moscow accompanied by two Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, her lawyer said.
The red-headed Russian national will be released Friday morning from a low-security prison in Tallahassee, Florida, after completing her sentence. She has been behind bars since her arrest in July 2018…
Butina was the only Russian national arrested in the U.S. government’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, though charges were not brought against her by special counsel Robert Mueller. Over the course of his nearly two-year investigation, Mueller charged 25 Russians, including 12 intelligence officers and three Russian companies.
Butina had been living in Washington, D.C., since 2016 while attending American University for a master’s degree. Butina’s lawyers said she was simply a gun rights activist who wanted to improve relations with the United States.
She pleaded guilty in December to failing to register with the Justice Department as a foreign agent while she acted at the direction of Alexander Torshin, a longtime figure in Russian politics, since at least 2015.
Federal prosecutors argued Butina was a national security threat who worked to find Americans who could provide intelligence to the Kremlin. At one point, prosecutors alleged she was a clandestine agent using sex to gain access to the conservative movement. Prosecutors later admitted they misunderstood her text messages.
“She is not a Russian spy,” Driscoll said. “If she were a spy, I would have cut a deal. If anyone knows she’s not a spy, it’s the Russians.
“If she were a Russian spy, she wouldn’t have hung around for the feds to come talk to her. They talked to her boyfriend first. That gave her a warning. If she were a spy, she would have taken her stuff and dumped it. She had the opportunity to do that. She could have gotten rid of it but she didn’t. Eleven FBI agents searched her apartment. They found nothing.”
