Boyfriend's Email: Butina 'Manipulated' Russian Spy Agency for NRA Trip

[babylonsister]

Boyfriend’s Email: Butina ‘Manipulated’ Russian Spy Agency for NRA Trip
According to her boyfriend, Russian agent Maria Butina had major sway with the FSB officers ‘assigned’ to her.
Betsy Woodruff,
Spencer Ackerman
02.14.19 7:51 PM ET


The boyfriend of confessed Russian agent Maria Butina wrote that she “manipulated” a Russian spy agency when arranging NRA bigwigs’ trip to Moscow, The Daily Beast has learned.

Paul Erickson, Butina’s boyfriend, made this claim on Nov. 25, 2015 in an email to a trip participant. The light-hearted, chummy tone of the email, which was subsequently read to The Daily Beast, contrasts significantly with how Erickson characterized Butina’s relationship with the FSB to The New Republic: tense, bordering on hostile.

It also shows that at least one trip attendee was led to believe that Russia’s FSB—whose predecessor was the KGB—helped lay the groundwork for the trip.

Erickson began the email, sent to then-incoming NRA President Pete Brownell, with florid language.

“Dear International Man of Mystery or should we just start calling you “Austin Powers” to your face??” he wrote, with a smiley face.

“Miss Butina has (apparently) moved heaven and earth and manipulated the Russian FSB (the current incarnation of the old KGB) and gotten you cleared for a tour of one (1) Russian arms factory the day before the NRA delegation arrives in Moscow,” he continued. “She found a way to shrink a normally 3-week process into about 3-days (probably because most of the FSB agents ‘assigned’ to her want to marry her).”

“The right thing to do would have been to inform the FBI and cancel the trip,” Sipher said. “Cavorting with those who claim to be at war with you is unpatriotic at best. Mr. Erickson’s actions are especially abhorrent.”

more...

https://www.thedailybeast.com/boyfriends-email-butina-manipulated-russian-spy-agency-for-nra-trip?ref=home

[vlyons]

1. What's a little treason?

Hey what's a little treason, when you can hob-nob with NRA big-wigs, and maybe turn the connection into a few buck? Maybe even some big bucks?

*snark*

Hey, can we talk about honor and virtue?

My friends, unfettered greed in pursuit of money is not a virtue. It's not honorable. It's beneath the dignity of a decent human being.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

2. treason defined

The trumpers provide good examples of treason, as defined in Article III, Section 3:

Section 3.

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court.

The Congress shall have power to declare the punishment of treason, but no attainder of treason shall work corruption of blood, or forfeiture except during the life of the person attainted.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articleiii#section3

Now we just need Congress "to declare the punishment of treason" for acts committed when our enemies are engaged in hostile activity that is not governed by rules of war, e.g., cyber attacks and election rigging.