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The NRA Welcomed Maria Butina--Even As She Worked to Arm Anti-American Thugs Abroad
While NRA leaders embraced her, Butina denounced US sanctions and advised a militia group helping Putin seize Crimea.
MARK FOLLMAN AND HANNAH LEVINTOVAFEBRUARY 7, 2019 9:45 AM
The American public has continued to know little about Maria Butina, who pleaded guilty in December to participating in a foreign conspiracy against the United States. Not much has emerged about the confessed Russian agents political activities beyond her efforts to build ties with Republican leaders and top officials of the National Rifle Association. But Butina wasnt just a gun rights fan who attended American University, romanced a veteran Republican operative, and pitched US-Russian collaboration at NRA conventions.
Mother Jones has uncovered a trail of activity showing that during the same period when top NRA leaders welcomed Butina into the foldmeeting with her extensively in Moscow and the United StatesButina actively supported Russian President Vladimir Putins military takeover of Crimea. In the immediate aftermath of the invasion and annexation in March 2014, Butina denounced retaliatory sanctions by the Obama administration and traveled to Crimea to promote the arming of pro-Russian separatists. Her efforts there included pledging support to a leader of a militia group that violently seized a Crimean news outlet it deemed pro-American and swiftly repurposed for a Kremlin propaganda operation.
As multiple congressional probes of NRA ties with Russia intensify, the NRA now says it had no official connection to a trip NRA leaders took to Moscow to meet with Butinas gun group and Kremlin officialsa claim that Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden, who is leading one of the probes, calls not credible. Butinas role in Crimea raises additional questions about why the NRAknown historically for its hawkish freedom loving imagespent years getting close with a Russian national who was doing work hostile to US national security interests.
By late 2013, NRA leaders had already forged ties with Butinas boss, Alexander Torshin, a high-level official from Putins party who was hosted by NRA board member and past president David Keene at NRA annual conventions. (Torshin was sanctioned by the US government last April and described as an unidentified co-conspirator in Butinas indictment.) In November 2013 Keene traveled to Moscow, where he gave a speech to Butinas fledgling group, the Right to Bear Arms, offering to work together to advance common interests. Also at that time, future Trump national security adviser John Bolton, then a member of the NRAs international affairs subcommittee, recorded a video address to the Russians talking up gun rights, which Butina used to lobby the Russian legislature.
More:
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/02/nra-russia-maria-butina-putin-crimea/
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The NRA Welcomed Maria Butina--Even As She Worked to Arm Anti-American Thugs Abroad (Original Post)
Judi Lynn
Feb 2019
OP
vlyons
(10,252 posts)1. "additional questions about why"
For the money, of course! Never forget, the NRA represents and supports, not just sportsmen and marksmen, but GUN MANUFACTURERS. So in addition to all that Russian money coming in to finance their political campaigns, Russians represented more international gun sales.
mr_lebowski
(33,643 posts)2. Anyone still supporting Trump, the GOP, and/or the NRA at this point ...
One must logically wonder whether they are a Traitor to the United States of America.
At the very least, they have been co-opted by a Military-Level Russian Intelligence and Propaganda operation designed to destroy Democracy, world-wide. And the fact they are dumb and/or fascist enough by nature ... to be so utterly taken in ... means they are clearly not to be trusted in any capacity.