washington, d.c. what are we hearing? reporter: a guilty plea and a remarkable portrayal about how maria butina tried to infiltrate organizations at the behest of russian officials. they laid it all out saying this kicked off in 2015 when maria butina drafted a proposal and in that proposal she detailed how she would be a conduit between the russian government and important u.s. political figures. they say at one point, alexander tortian, a bank official gave her $125,000 to attend important political conferences including those led by the national rifle association and said how she worked with a u.s. citizen to organize a friendship dinner where important figures would be there and they would discuss russian-american policy and said as recently as 2017, maria
democrat ron widen sits on the senate intelligence committee which questioned putina for eight hours, he thinks she wasn t acting alone. she and alexander tortian. very close to vladimir putin spent years works to worm their way into our political system. they were quite the pair. a passionate young woman from siberia and a veteran russian operator. she s a politician, a banker and according to spanish officials. a money laundering crime boss. in these police surveillance recordings, which were recently shared with the fbi. russian criminals in spain referred to tortian as the godfather. but it was his official work for putin s government that got him sanctioned by the u.s. treasury department. for years, tortian sought to
built in very close ties with power players with the deputy head of russia s central bank. you consider alexander tortian a friend? absolutely. senator tortian is a gun enthusiast and a big proponent of the right to bear arms. do you ever suspect that there s more to tortia there than just a great friend and a public servant? do i suspect that? well, you know, i don t live with him he s a brilliant man. i never heard a bad word about him. so klein preston didn t have any suspicions about tortian, not a hint. in fact he liked him so much, he introduced him to the leaders of the nra and the rest is history.
student and activist. there s nothing nefarious about it. innocent college students in my view don t get setting up shell companies thousands of miles away from where they go to college. oh, wow! but butina did, the day after trump won his first primary. she set up a company in south dakota. it was used to fund her studies and bank records will show there was nothing illegal. she s a student in a an honest honorable person. senator widen expects the company could have been part of a financial network that helped the nra raise the $30 million it spent to help put donald trump in the white house. that is central to the whole debate. did the nra use shell companies like the one maria set up in order to achieve this unprecedented level of political
firearms are not legal. there is no second amendment in russia, and she was trying to get with the help of alexander tortian, sitting russian senator and with connections to the nra trying to legalize firearms in russia. so to me it was more about americans and american groups like the nra trying to push their agenda inside russia. so, that s the other thing. i think we have to keep in mind that this is a pourous border. these are things that go back and forth. there was a lot of american influence on russia, a lot of right wing christian fundamentalists, evangelical groups trying to push a family values agenda in russia, trying to get the russian government to ban abortion, for example. so charlie, one of the things that happened over the last 24 hours is the way the president spoke standing next to vladimir putin has caused a lot of people to reassess their view of this relationship and their view of exactly what russia may or may