How Russian won over gun-lovers
Student accused of spying became a ‘novelty’ at events
For nearly five years, the young Russian politicalscience student was an unusual fixture at the most important events of the US conservative movement.
Maria Butina, who was indicted this week on charges of being a covert Russian agent, struck up friendships with the influential leaders of the National Rifle Association and the Conservative Political Action Conference, touting her interest in United States affairs and efforts to promote gun rights in Vladimir Putin’s restrictive Russia. She sidled up to GOP presidential candidates, seeking first an encounter with Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and then, after his rising candidacy stumbled, with Donald Trump.
But by August 2016, when she moved to the US on a student visa, the FBI was watching, according to US officials familiar with the matter.
Rather than question or confront her, they said, officials decided to track her movements to determine whom she was meeting and what she was doing in the US — the kind of monitoring that is not uncommon when foreign nationals are suspected of working on behalf of a foreign government.
By then, Butina had already publicly quizzed Trump about his views on Russia and briefly met his eldest son at an NRA convention. After the FBI began monitoring her, Butina attended a ball at Trump’s inauguration and tried to arrange a meeting between him and a senior Russian government official at last year’s annual National Prayer Breakfast.
By 2017, after she had enrolled as a graduate student at American University in Washington, Butina began probing groups on the left as well, trying unsuccessfully to interview a Washington-based civil rights group about its cyber-vulnerabilities for what she said was a school project, according to a person familiar with her outreach.
On Monday, alerted that she was preparing to leave Washington for South Dakota, where monitoring her would be more difficult, federal authorities arrested Butina. The 29-year-old was indicted by a grand jury yesterday, accused of conspiracy and failing to register as a foreign agent. The indictment alleges that she worked with her contact in the Russian Government to infiltrate American political groups as part of a scheme “to advance the interests of the Russian Federation”. Robert Driscoll, a lawyer for Butina, said she is not a Russian agent but merely a student with an interest in politics and a desire to network with Americans. “She intends to defend her rights vigorously and looks forward to clearing her name,” he said.
US officials allege that her activities show the breadth and sophistication of Russia’s influence operations in the US. At the same time prosecutors say 12 Russian intelligence agents in Moscow sought to affect the 2016 presidential campaign by hacking and releasing stolen documents from Democrats, Butina was roaming the country, building ties on the Kremlin’s behalf with powerful conservative figures, according to court filings.
Butina’s activities raise questions about why the NRA and other groups gave her high-level access, allowing her to meet important politicians and influential thought leaders.
NRA officials did not respond to requests for comment.
People who encountered Butina said the gregarious redhead had a life story that appealed to many activists and officials she met at GOP events. She told a conservative radio show in 2015 that she grew up in the woods of Siberia, where her father taught her and her sister to hunt bears and wolves.
After a brief career as the owner of a small chain of furniture stores, Butina moved to Moscow, where she began a career in public relations and founded a group called the Right to Bear Arms to advocate for the loosening of Russia’s restrictive gun laws.
Soon, her group acquired a powerful patron, a Russian senator from Putin’s party who later became the deputy director of Russia’s central bank: Alexander Torshin, a lifetime member of the NRA who had ties with Christian conservatives through an annual prayer breakfast he helped host in Moscow.
Acting as Torshin’s assistant and translator, Butina soon began forming her own connections to the NRA.
Starting in 2014, Butina began attending annual NRA conventions, according to her social-media accounts. In recent years, she and Torshin were regular guests at Golden Ring of Freedom dinners and VIP events reserved for people who typically donate US$1 million ($1.47m) to the NRA.
The NRA, which spent millions more to support Trump than any previous presidential candidate, has denied accepting funding from Butina or Torshin.
At political events and rallies, she often raised the issue of gun rights with people before asking to exchange business cards and to stay in touch on social media, according to people who met her.
“She was like a novelty,” said Saul Anuzis, a former chairman of the Michigan Republican Party, who met Butina at a handful of conservative events in 2016.
“She ran a gun rights group in Russia and, by definition, with the kind of repression under Putin, your assumption was that was kind of a revolutionary, radical thing.”
In a 2017 email to the Washington Post, Butina argued that her group was “not very popular” with Russian officials. She said she received no funding from the Russian Government and that: “No government official has EVER approached me about ‘fostering ties’ with any Americans.”
Igor Shmelyov, the chairman of the Russian group Butina founded, said her arrest came as a “great shock”. “Maria is interested in guns, so of course her social circle is connected to this,” he said, adding that she interacted with supporters of the NRA and the Second Amendment Foundation because of that personal interest. “To say that all this means she was lobbying for Russian interests is rather ridiculous.”