Maria Butina, a 30-year-old Russian national who ingratiated herself with conservative circles and the gun rights movement in the U.S., will be sentenced on April 26, a federal judge said Thursday.
Butina was charged last July with conspiracy and acting as a foreign agent, and has been in jail since then. She pleaded guilty in December to conspiracy and has been cooperating with investigators.
The cooperation included a brief interview with special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, CNN reported Wednesday.
At a brief hearing on Thursday, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan scheduled the sentencing for 10 a.m. on April 26. The hearing included a very brief discussion among the lawyers at her bench — out of earshot of the public and the media — that government prosecutors asked to be kept under seal.
According to court filings in her case, Butina worked with Kremlin-linked Russian banker Aleksandr Torshin to ingratiate herself in Republican circles as part of an effort to boost Russia’s standing with the party. She pitched herself to conservatives as a gun rights activist, and was able to interact with a number of high profile GOP politicians, including President Donald Trump, who answered a question she posed to him at 2015 townhall during the presidential campaign.
Her and Torshin’s efforts included taking top NRA officials to Moscow in December 2015.
Her then-boyfriend, American GOP operative Paul Erickson helped connect her to prominent figures in the conservative movement. Erickson has since been indicted for wire fraud by federal prosecutors in South Dakota. According to CNN, Butina has been cooperating with an investigation into Erickson in D.C., where federal prosecutors have not brought charges against him.
