russia. it wasn t russians she was courting, it was americans. in 2013 she held a concealed carry fashion show in moscow, the stars of america s second amendment movement flew in to spend time with their new best friends. there are no people who are more alike than americans and russians. at the same event butina met paul ericson, with longstanding ties to the republican party. they started a working relationship that turned into a relationship. everything she was doing was essentially political operative 101. go out and build friendships, get people who are willing to do favors for you. reporter: soon she was rubbing shoulders with some of the republican establishment heavy hitters, john bolton even
thousands of dollars to donald trump s 2016 run. that got him and his russian girlfriend right up close to the future president. in political circles, no one had ever heard of simon kukis before. he s been an american citizen for decades and he s never given a political con contribute use. robert mcguire worked at the center for responsive politics. suddenly he starts giving to trump allied joint fund-raising committees. and to the trump campaign itself. mcguire and his team tracked donations to both parties. 99.9% of americans give $2700 or less, that s the maximum you re allowed to donate directly to a candidate. but he s donated $2700 to the trump campaign, plus another $273,000 to the trump victory committee which distributed the
that happened. the u.s. government disagrees. a top intelligence source tells us butina was very much the real deal. but folks at the virginia gun show we visited were unimpressed. it doesn t bother you that this woman was allegedly working for the russians? no, because we re probably doing the same thing. we re making it sound like the united states doesn t do any of this stuff, the united states does it everywhere. that may be the real victory for the russians, persuading americans that meddling in u.s. politics is no big deal. one lesson we learned the hard way is that the russians are really good at finding and exploiting the open wounds in our society. zeroing in on the issues that divide us. and then driving a wedge right through them. issues like race, immigration, guns and gay rights. which are under constant attack in russia. that s next.
in a lot of different areas, there are a lot of issues about donald trump and his organizations finances. his personal finances, his business finances, and they do overlap to some degree with questions about russia. when i talked to trump supporters, they say this isn t true, there s nothing there, it s a witch hunt and others who acknowledge that some of this might be true don t seem to care. why do you think that is? well, i think we live in a highly tribalized moment of politics, where people who want to support trump listen to what he says, and if he says it s a witch hunt they believe it s a witch hunt. and that s not everybody, that s you know, some percentage of the public. i think there are americans out there who when mueller brings out indictments they support his investigation and they re curious to see what details he has. david, we have a lot to get to tonight, thank you so much for taking time to speak to us.
you took a big risk writing a book on the russia connections early on, but so far, everything that seems to be coming out was already said in your book, congratulations on that, we appreciate your insights. thanks a lot. thanks so much. next up, russia attempts to undermine u.s. democracy have been going on for a lot longer than the past few years, under communism when the ussr courted americans from the far left. under putin russia seems to have complaininged track, targeting people and institutions from the american right. we have reporting from inside one of those institutions, and you ll recognize some of those players, here s a hint, think mueller investigation. stigation.