Russian “Spy” in Prison Seemingly for Connection to NRA and Being into Guns

Now that Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report has been released to the public, we know definitively and beyond any shadow of a doubt that the Russian collusion narrative, which gripped the nation for more than two years, was a complete and total hoax.

It was a fabrication concocted by the Hillary Clinton campaign, the DNC and the FBI to smear and derail the Trump presidency. While Americans are still waiting for justice against the perpetrators of this seditious coup attempt, we can start to assess the damage that “Russiagate” inflicted on specific individuals.

Paul Manafort will be in jail for the rest of his life, unless he receives a pardon, for the crime of not filling out some federal paperwork. Roger Stone will face hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal bills as he attempts to fight off the feds over a perjury trap. Carter Page’s life was ruined by Russiagate, after the FBI openly declared him to be a “Russian agent” – a claim that was utterly false.

One of the most tragic victims of the entire saga, though, is Maria Butina. She’ll be in prison for 18 months because overzealous liberal federal prosecutors really, really wanted to throw a Russian – any Russian – in prison, to prop up the Russiagate hoax.

Ms. Butina was a graduate student from Russia. She was here going to school, and while she was politically active on the issue of gun rights, she was not a lobbyist or a politician. She wasn’t in the United States in any sort of diplomatic function. She wasn’t employed by the Russian government.

She loved guns, so she became active in the NRA. She was associated with a like-minded group in Russia called “The Right to Bear Arms.” And during her attendance at NRA events during her free time, she met and fell in love with Paul Erickson, an older man who’s a political activist with long ties to the NRA.

When Butina was snared in the Mueller witch hunt, the media immediately seized upon her relationship with Erickson. It was the perfect smear.

Why would a young woman fall in love with an older man who has similar interests who happens to be fairly wealthy?! She must be a Russian spy!

Jeff Bezos’s personal blog, the Washington Post, called Butina a “honeypot.” Rolling Stone referred to her as the “femme fatale” of the entire Russiagate saga.

The NRA donated to the Trump campaign in 2016. Therefore, the dots were simple to connect. Maria Butina was the missing link. Vladimir Putin funneled illegal campaign cash to the Trump campaign through the NRA, and Maria Butina was the conduit who made it all happen. “Lock her up!” declared the media.

Normal people usually don’t even blink twice at a May-December romance like the one between Butina and Erickson. It happens all the time. But to the media, it was freakishly weird that an attractive younger woman would be interested in a wealthy older man. She had to be a spy. (If they think the Butina-Erickson pairing is strange, just wait until details about 2020 candidate Pete Buttigieg’s personal life come to light!)

Of course, this was all fictitious. The Mueller witch hunt didn’t establish any of it as fact. There was such a great absence of proof that Butina was a Russian spy that Mueller didn’t even prosecute her. The Southern District of New York opted to do that.

Butina was charged with “operating as an agent of a foreign government” under 18 USC 951. This is so ludicrous that it’s almost beyond words. It’s a statute that under normal circumstances is used to prosecute an actual spy who steals classified information and gives it to a foreign power. Maria Butina didn’t do any of that.

Vladimir Putin and the entire Russian government are opposed to personal firearms ownership for citizens. Not only was Butina not employed by the Russian government, but her goal of liberalizing gun laws in Russia are not supported by any government entity there. By working to secure gun rights for private citizens in Russia, she was technically working against the interests of the Russian government.

But the liberal prosecutors in New York branded her as a “Russian spy” and the media helped. She’s serving an 18-month prison sentence as a result.

The Democrats wanted a Russian to put in jail to make it look like their Russian collusion hoax was true, and Maria Butina is paying the price.

Her own government views her as a nuisance, so no one from Russia is lobbying to get her released from prison. She’s in jail for being a pro-gun Russian. And that’s just one more tragedy of the entire seditious Russiagate coup.