Russian gun-rights activist Maria Butina was released from a Florida prison on Friday and is expected to arrive in Russia on Saturday morning.
Butina was released into the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and has already boarded a plane in Miami bound for Moscow.
Butina was arrested in July 2018 and was charged with conspiracy to act as an unregistered foreign agent. She entered a plea deal that December and received an 18-month sentence, credited with time served.
Butina organized an NRA delegation visit to Russia in 2015 on behalf of her own gun rights organization. She visited the US for NRA events before moving there in 2016 on a student visa to attend American University in Washington DC.
The allegation against Butina was that she infiltrated Republican circles on behalf of the Russian government to influence the 2016 election. Ultimately these claims were unfounded, and she was charged for simply failing to fill out a form to register herself as a foreign agent with the U.S. government.
Since her arrest, Butina was portrayed as a spy by US media outlets. The coverage after her release was no different. Politico ran a story titled, “Maria Butina, who admitted being secret agent of the Kremlin, out of prison.” AP news titled their story on Butina, “Russian woman who admitted being secret agent out of prison.”
The term “secret agent” is misleading, everything Butina did in the US was done in the open. It was no secret that she was a Russian looking to learn how to further gun rights in her own country. Butina was also outspoken about her other goal, improving US-Russia relations.
After an NRA event Butina attended in 2015, she posted on her blog, “maybe such meetings are the beginning of a new dialogue between Russia and the US and back from the Cold War to the peaceful existence of the two great powers?!”
Poor girl was convicted due to Nationality.
I hope she can cash in of the whole unfortunate episode.
There probably is a good chance of that.
Anna Chapman, the alleged Russian economic intelligence agent, made it big when she was deported to Russia. She became a media celebrity, did recruitment videos for the Russian military and more. That was mostly because she was totally hot.
She still swears she was never a spy. The evidence the FBI had was considerably more than what they had on Butina, though.
Thank goodness this menace to the Nation was apprehended and neutralized before her evil plans succeeded. The plan to improve US-Russian relations. Next: FARA registration for AIPAC.
Sweet Maria is finally out of gulag USA and back in the land of the free & the home of the brave.
Good riddance. Now get some guns into queer hands back in Mother Russia. They need em more than most.
Now Maria can start up NRA-East. Nothing quite so American as exporting a bona fide domestic terrorist organization. San Fran city hallers must all be getting delightful tingles up their legs, given how much they hate the NRA and Russia.
Well, we can all sleep better now, knowing that this “Russian Operative” is safely back at home. (Absolutely scandalous that any person would try and promote better relations between two nuclear countries!)
How low can we go? Very low, apparently.
I feel sorry for what this woman suffered (and no, I am not a Russian Asset).