33 Facts About Maria Butina

1.

Maria Valeryevna Butina is a Russian politician, political activist, journalist, and former entrepreneur who was convicted in 2018 of acting as an unregistered foreign agent of Russia within the United States.

2.

Maria Butina served around five months at Tallahassee Federal Correctional Institution.

3.

Maria Butina was released and deported back to Russia in October 2019.

4.

Maria Butina's mother was the chief engineer of an energy enterprise and her father Valery Viktorovich Butin was an entrepreneur who established a furniture manufacturing business in Barnaul.

5.

Maria Butina has one sister and one maternal niece, Kira.

6.

Maria Butina graduated with honors at the age of 17 from Gymnasium Number 22 with in-depth study of the English language, and from school years she strove for active public activity.

7.

Maria Butina studied political science at Altai State University and received a teaching degree.

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8.

Maria Butina began traveling back and forth to the US, initially with Aleksandr Torshin, who was then a Senator in the Federation Council of Russia and a leading member of United Russia.

9.

Maria Butina had hired her as his "special assistant" that year.

10.

Maria Butina resigned from her position as the head of Right to Bear Arms in late 2014.

11.

In January 2015, Torshin became deputy governor of the Central Bank of Russia, and Maria Butina worked as his special assistant until May 2017.

12.

In 2017, Maria Butina told The Washington Post that she never worked for the Russian government.

13.

Torshin and Maria Butina established a cooperative relationship between the NRA and Right to Bear Arms.

14.

Maria Butina attended the Women's Leadership Luncheon at the 2014 meeting as a guest of former NRA president Sandy Froman.

15.

Maria Butina presented to then NRA president Jim Porter a plaque from Right to Bear Arms.

16.

In November 2016, Torshin tweeted that he and Maria Butina were lifetime NRA members.

17.

Maria Butina has attempted to develop ties to conservative American politics.

18.

At the 2014 NRA annual meeting, Maria Butina took pictures with Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal and former US Senator and 2016 presidential candidate Rick Santorum.

19.

In 2015, Torshin, then the Russian Central Bank deputy governor, and Maria Butina met the Treasury undersecretary for international affairs, Nathan Sheets, to discuss US-Russian economic relations.

20.

For five years, prosecutors claimed, Maria Butina lived with and maintained an intimate relationship with activist and fraudster Paul Erickson.

21.

Erickson was jailed and convicted of fraud unrelated to his relationship with Maria Butina, then pardoned by Trump in his last week in office.

22.

On July 15,2018, Maria Butina was arrested in Washington, and charged with acting in the United States as an agent of a foreign government; specifically the Russian Federation, without prior notification to the Attorney General, a conspiracy to commit an offense against the United States, to wit, 18 USC.

23.

Maria Butina was said to be cooperating in a federal fraud investigation in South Dakota.

24.

Maria Butina was held in solitary confinement in Alexandria Detention Center.

25.

Maria Butina later complained that in the US, she was forced to sign a plea-deal.

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26.

Maria Butina claimed that she was sentenced for simply being Russian.

27.

Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov made a statement saying that Maria Butina's arrest was designed to undermine the "positive results" of the Helsinki summit between US President Trump and Russian President Putin.

28.

Maria Butina was arrested a day before Trump met his Russian counterpart.

29.

Maria Butina's father has called the accusations against her "a witch-hunt".

30.

Maria Butina expressed support for the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, sharing a video on social media displaying the Z symbol on her jacket.

31.

Maria Butina had previously made an appearance the day after the beginning of the invasion on state-controlled TV talk show Time Will Tell condemning the Ukrainian government for arming civilians to repel Russian assaults on cities.

32.

Maria Butina claimed that Russia was not bombing Ukraine, and suggested that the Ukrainians were bombing themselves.

33.

Maria Butina is one of the members of the State Duma the United States Treasury sanctioned on 24 March 2022 in response to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.