prosecutors say was a russian spy hiding in plain sight. julia ainsley is outside that court in d.c. this case was brought by federal prosecutors in washington and not by robert mueller s team. reporter: that s right, hallie. it s not brought by the special counsel s office but the u.s. attorney s office in d.c. where maria butina has pled guilty to conspiracy to violate the foreign agents act. it could have been legal if she had been forthcoming about it. she came to the united states as a graduate student and american university. she used her positions within the gun rights community and at the direction of alexander torchin, russian official and central bank there to influence the republican party. she used it as unofficial capacity. we ll see butina come into court where she will plead guilty and a key part of this is how she will cooperate. in the plea agreement it says
she will cooperate in all matters that the government deems relevant. that could touch on robert mueller s investigation, particularly if she had contacts with republicans before the campaign, through her work with the nra. also we know alexander torchin, that man i mentioned, did reach out to jared kushner in order for a sideline meeting in 2016 at an nra convention in kentucky. kushner rebuts that, said he didn t want it. but we know they were at the same dinner for the nra around the same time. that could all be of interest to mueller once butina starts talking and cooperating, as we believe she is. julia ainsley outside the courtroom there. we expect that hearing to begin shortly. we ll have much more coming up this hour. in the meantime, get ready to see a lot of nancy pelosi the next couple of years as she cleared a big fight to become speaker once again. how she got seven house rebels, they re called, to pull a 180.
and alexander torchin s group doesn t do anything to support gun rights in russia, at all. what they have done is make lots and lots of connections to the american nra. this official, torchin and his protege maria butina started attending the nra s yearly conferences every year in the usa. at the start of the 2016 campaign, torchin and butina hosted that delegation in moscow, december, 2015. then, during the campaign, butina was flying around the country, showing up at events for various republican presidential hopefuls during the primaries, including famously a las vegas event with donald trump where maria butina became the very first person to ask trump his position on u.s. sanctions against russia. she was the first person to get him on record opposing those sanctions. in may, 2016, butina s boyfriend, an american republican activist, paul erickson, reached out to a trump campaign adviser offering to arrange a back channel meeting between donald trump and vladimir putin. he did it b
in the lead-up to the 2016 presidential election, there was all of a sudden a weird russian twist in u.s. gun politics. i spelled out maria butina s plea agreement in december 2015 in the middle of the presidential campaign right before the iowa caucuses, a former nra president and a future nra president and a whole delegation of nra officials and members all got an all-expenses paid trip to moscow. it was organized by the right to bear arms, purportedly a gun rights group founded by a senior member of vladimir putin s political party. the head of that group is a deputy governor of the russian bank. a close ally of vladimir putin. and torchin s group, the rights to bear arms group has always been kind of a head scratcher. because putin and his party don t actually support gun rights in russia.
unsubtle subject line, kremlin connection. and paul erickson didn t name alexander torchin in the e-mail but he referred to him as president putin s emissary on this. that didn t work, but that same month torchin sought a meeting with donald trump at an nra convention. and that itself didn t pan out, but torchin did get to spend some time with donald trump jr. at a gala hosted by the nra. and then at the beginning of this year, we learn that the fbi was investigating whether all of this, the nra s huge spike in 2016 campaign spending, its weird and sudden and suddenly deepening russia ties, and this russian official s persistent attempts to connect with donald trump or to connect donald trump and the russian government, we learned at the beginning of this year that the fbi was investigating whether all those things might be investigated.