Guilty plea expected in case alleging Russia attempting to influence NRA
Maria Butina, a Russian gun rights activist, is poised to plead guilty in a case involving accusations that she was working as an agent for the Kremlin in the United States, according to a new court filing.
Federal prosecutors and attorneys for Butina jointly requested in court documents Monday that U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan set a time for Butina to withdraw her previous plea of “not guilty.”
“The parties have resolved this matter,” Butina’s attorneys and D.C.based prosecutors wrote in their joint filing.
Chutkan said she would hear the matter Wednesday.
A plea is not final until it is entered in court and accepted by a judge. Monday’s filing did not indicate to what charge Butina would plead.
Butina was accused of working to push the Kremlin’s agenda by forming bonds with National Rifle Association officials and other conservative leaders and making outreach to 2016 presidential candidates.
A native of Siberia, she founded a group to expand gun rights in Russia, a profile that allowed her to develop relationships with U.S. conservatives intrigued with her work. Prosecutors said Butina, 30, stepped up her activities after moving to Washington in September 2016 to attend graduate school at American University.
Her attorneys had said her interactions with the NRA and others were typical of an ambitious student anxious to network and eager to build better relations between the U.S. and her country. They had at one point argued her outreach should be covered by constitutional protections of free speech and noted that she was not accused of attempting to steal U.S. secrets or working with Russian intelligence.
Prosecutors said her goal was to advance the foreign policy aims of the Kremlin and that she was acting at the direction of a Russian government official, Alexander Torshin, a former senator who until last month served as deputy director of the Russian central bank. The U.S. government imposed sanctions on Torshin earlier this year.
Butina has been jailed four months since her July arrest. In that time, her case had been embraced by the Russian government, which had vigorously protested that she was an innocent student whose incarceration was unjust. With the plea deal, Butina could be released in coming months and deported to Russia.
Butina was prosecuted by the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, rather than by special counsel Robert Mueller — an indication that Mueller may have determined that her activities did not directly connect to his investigation, which involves scrutinizing any links between Russia and Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.