{"id":25460,"date":"2018-12-13T20:23:18","date_gmt":"2018-12-13T20:23:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=25460"},"modified":"2018-12-13T20:23:18","modified_gmt":"2018-12-13T20:23:18","slug":"russian-spy-maria-butina-pleads-guilty-in-us-court","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=25460","title":{"rendered":"Russian spy Maria Butina pleads guilty in US court"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

A woman accused of acting as a Russian agent to infiltrate a powerful gun lobby group and influence the United States’ policy towards Moscow has pleaded guilty to a single count of conspiracy.<\/p>\n

Maria Butina<\/a>, a former graduate student at the American University in Washington who had publicly advocated for gun rights, changed her plea from not guilty to guilty during a hearing on Thursday.<\/p>\n

The 30-year-old was charged in July<\/a> with acting as an agent of the Russian government and conspiracy to take actions on behalf of Moscow.<\/p>\n

Prosecutors accused Butina of working with a Russian official and two US citizens in trying to infiltrate the National Rifle Association (NRA), a group closely aligned with Republican politicians<\/a> including US President Donald Trump, and sway Washington’s policy towards Moscow.<\/p>\n

Butina’s lawyers previously identified the Russian official as Alexander Torshin, a deputy governor of Russia’s central bank who was targeted with US Treasury Department sanctions in April.<\/p>\n

One of the two Americans cited in the prosecution’s criminal complaint was Paul Erickson, a conservative US political activist who was dating Butina.<\/p>\n

‘Fabricated’<\/strong><\/h2>\n

After she was charged, Russia<\/a> labelled the case against Butina as “fabricated” and called for her release.<\/p>\n

Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke about Butina on Tuesday in Moscow, a day after US court filings indicated she would plead guilty in Washington.<\/p>\n

“She risks 15 years in jail. For what?” Putin asked. “…I asked all the heads of our intelligence services what is going on. Nobody knows anything about her.”<\/p>\n

The prosecutors in the Butina case are not from the office of Special Counsel Robert Mueller<\/a>, who is investigating Russia’s role in the 2016 US election and whether Trump’s campaign conspired with Moscow to help him win.<\/p>\n

The complaint against Butina, however, did not explicitly mention Trump’s campaign.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, with a guilty plea, Butina became the first Russian citizen to be convicted of working to shape US policy in the time period spanning the 2016 election campaign.<\/p>\n

Mueller has brought criminal charges against a series of Russian individuals and entities but those cases are still pending.<\/p>\n

While Trump has denied any collusion with Moscow, Russia, in turn, has also denied interfering in the US politics.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A woman accused of acting as a Russian agent to infiltrate a powerful gun lobby group and influence the United States’ policy towards Moscow has pleaded guilty to a single count of conspiracy. Maria Butina, a former graduate student at the American University in Washington who had publicly advocated for gun rights, changed her plea…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":25461,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25460","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25460","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25460"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25460\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/25461"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}