The Russian woman arrested this week on charges of being a foreign agent has ties to Russian intelligence operatives and was in contact with them while in the United States, federal prosecutors said on Wednesday.
Maria Butina, 29, also was engaged in a “personal relationship” with an American Republican consultant only for business purposes and had offered sex to at least one other person “in exchange for a position within a special interest organization.”
After a hearing on Wednesday afternoon, U.S. Magistrate Judge Deborah Robinson denied Butina’s request to be released on bail, finding that no combination of conditions would assure her return to court.
Prosecutors had argued strongly against her release, noting “her history of deceptive conduct.” They said Butina could slip into a Russian embassy or a Russian diplomatic vehicle and get out of the country, and had connections with wealthy business executives linked to the Putin administration.
When she was arrested on Sunday, she appeared to be planning to leave Washington and possibly the United States, they said: her apartment was full of moving boxes and she had transferred money to Russia in recent days.
The new allegations laid out on Wednesday explicitly link Butina to Russia’s intelligence services for the first time, painting the portrait of a covert agent backed by powerful patrons who went to lengths to create a pretext for her presence in the U.S.
The details about her alleged activities injected even more drama into the case of the Russian gun rights activist, who in recent years cozied up to top U.S. conservatives, including the leadership of the National Rifle Association.
She once quizzed Donald Trump while he was a presidential candidate about his views on Russia and chatted briefly with the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., at an NRA meeting in May 2016.
In a court filing that could have been ripped from the television show The Americans, prosecutors described her manipulating a South Dakota political operative as part of her scheme and meeting for a private lunch in March with a Russian diplomat suspected of being a Russian intelligence officer — all while FBI agents watched.
Butina, who came to the U.S. on a student visa in August 2016 to study at American University, was charged with conspiring to act as an agent of a foreign government and failing to register as an agent of a foreign government. Prosecutors say she worked to infiltrate American conservative groups to advance the Kremlin’s interests.
Through her attorney, Robert Driscoll, Butina pleaded not guilty at the hearing on Wednesday. He has said she was not a Russian agent, but a student interested in forming bonds with Americans.
In arguing that she should be released, Driscoll said Butina has been cooperating with the government in a federal fraud investigation in South Dakota related to a unnamed person.
A description of that person’s activities in court filings matches that of Paul Erickson, a South Dakota political operative with whom Butina was romantically involved, according to testimony she gave to Senate investigators earlier this year. Erickson did not respond to requests for comment.
Driscoll also argued that Butina had an opportunity to flee before her arrest, noting that FBI agents in tactical gear raided her apartment on April 25.
“Did she flee the country?” Driscoll asked. “Did she call the embassy? Did a Russian car roll up? She called her attorney, and we stood there and let the government go through her apartment for an entire day.”
A spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry on Wednesday called Butina’s arrest alarming, saying it was aimed at undermining the outcomes of this week’s meeting in Helsinki between President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“You get the sense that someone grabbed a watch and a calculator to determine when the decision on Maria Butina’s arrest should be adopted to maximally undermine the outcomes of the summit that took place between the Russian and U.S. presidents. It was that deliberately timed,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said at a briefing in Moscow on Wednesday.
Prosecutors revealed on Wednesday that after executing several search warrants, they learned Butina “was in contact with officials believed to be Russian intelligence operatives.”
A memo written by Assistant U.S. Attorney Erik Kenerson states that Butina maintained contact information for employees of the Russian FSB, the successor to the Soviet Union’s KGB, and was “likely in contact with the FSB throughout her stay in the United States.”
Among the documents seized by the FBI was a hand-written note that asked, “How to respond to FSB offer of employment?”
The Washington Post reported earlier this year that Butina was spotted at an inaugural ball when Trump was sworn into office last January, part of a group of Russians whose presence at Trump’s celebration drew the attention of the FBI.