Russian gun rights activist Maria Butina sentenced to 18 months after conspiring to infiltrate the NRA
By Spencer S. Hsu and Spencer S. Hsu Investigative reporter Email Bio Follow Rosalind S. Helderman Rosalind S. Helderman Reporter focusing on political enterprise stories and investigations Email Bio Follow April 26 at 11:20 AM Russian gun rights activist Maria Butina was sentenced to an 18-month prison term Friday in Washington after failing to register as a foreign agent for conspiring to infiltrate conservative U.S. political circles for the Kremlin.
Butina admitted to working as an undeclared agent of a foreign government, but she did not admit and was not charged with espionage in federal court proceedings. The defense team asked Chutkan to toss out expert testimony prosecutors filed to bolster their 18-month sentencing request. The statement relied heavily on a former FBI official’s opinion that Butina’s effort to infiltrate conservative groups bore “all the hallmarks” of an intelligence operation to target powerful political individuals for Kremlin recruitment later.
Driscoll and Carry called prosecutors’ “newly-minted theory of the case,” nothing more than “speculation and supposition,” lacking evidence that anyone Butina met with was approached by Russian intelligence using information she provided.[Guns and religion: How American conservatives grew closer to Putin’s Russia]
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