Just hours after President Trump's summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday, the Justice Department revealed charges against a Russian citizen for conspiracy against the U.S.
Mariia Butina, a Russian national living in Washington, D.C., was charged Monday with conspiracy to act as an unregistered Russian agent, per the DOJ's press release. She was arrested in D.C. on Sunday after allegedly working from 2015 until at least February 2017 to infiltrate American politics.
Butina apparently built close ties with the GOP through a gun rights organization, which sources say is the NRA, to advance Russia's interests in America, per the DOJ affadavit. She connected with politicians and candidates and even went to National Prayer Breakfasts, all under the direction of a high-level Russian official who was sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department in April, The Associated Press reports. Butina was supposed to be studying international relations in the U.S. on a student visa but was secretly reporting back to Moscow, per NPR.
In a statement, Butina's lawyer denied the charges, saying that "there is simply no indication of Butina seeking to influence or undermine any specific policy or law in the United States," NPR says. The charges are not part of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's probe into the 2016 election but are connected to a separate Russian intelligence operation, The New York Times reports.