The Mariia Butina fiasco

The accusations against her were too good to be true

Maria Butina.
(Image credit: Illustrated | Wikimedia Commons, malija/iStock)

Thanks to the timely imposition of a gag order on both the prosecution and the defense by Judge Tanya Chutkan of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, we are unlikely to learn much more about the case of accused Russian agent Mariia Butina beyond what emerges in court. As we await a verdict, however, it is worth reflecting on why this case briefly captured the imagination of journalists and readers before it disappears into the abyss of Page A13.

It was, after all, a perfect story. The premise — that a red-haired spy-mistress had been trained by shadowy Russian malefactors to seduce one or more targets as part of a massive intelligence operation — appeared to have been lifted almost in its entirety from the plot of a recent film starring Jennifer Lawrence. It appealed, with its lurid details, to widespread credulousness about all things Russian, to an uncritical mania for hazily outlined collusion narratives, to a widespread desire to see all the enemies of liberalism, from the organizers of the Conservative Political Action Conference to the National Rifle Association to Muscovite banksters to President Trump, operating in conjunction with one another in service of the same sinister ideals. It was, in other words, too good to be true.

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Matthew Walther

Matthew Walther is a national correspondent at The Week. His work has also appeared in First Things, The Spectator of London, The Catholic Herald, National Review, and other publications. He is currently writing a biography of the Rev. Montague Summers. He is also a Robert Novak Journalism Fellow.