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Rachel Maddow takes a look at the days top political news stories. Many months later, thats after the inauguration, after the election, when fbi director james comey went down to the hill, where he was testifying and said, yes, there was an open probe. By that time, the fbi had also initiated a separate but related investigation and that has now been broken much into public view, much more, because the break came with this very curious indictment of a woman named maria butina. Now, she was suspected as an unregistered agent of the russian government. That she was trying to mount this covert influence operation through a conservative group, a Gun Rights Group in the u. S. Tonight, the same reporter who had the Breakthrough Scoop about the Steele Dossier has a new and obviously provocative question. Did alleged russi ....
With sergei lavrov, russia s minister of foreign affairs and dimitri rigosin. after she sent a message to the russian central bank official to whom she allegedly reported as part of this foreign the agent scheme. her message had two translations in the plea agreement. the first translation about these nra officials going to moscow in december 2015 said, quote, we should let them express their gratitude now. we will put pressure on them quietly later. the second translation, the alternate translation in the plea agreement according to the daily beast said, quote, we should allow them to express their gratitude now and then quietly press. so, again, that was a trip to meet with russian government officials in moscow in december 2015. it was senior people in the nra. we will put pressure on them quietly later. let them express their gratitude ....
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 ....
Copping a plea and cooperating with the fbi now, can it? now today we apparently got his alleged agent, maria butina, reportedly agreeing to cop a plea and agreeing to cooperate with the fbi and federal prosecutors. so, here s my question. maria butina has been in jail since she got arrested. she has been denied bail. we have very little window into what s been going on with her case. there is a gag order on the case. we had very little transparency there. if she in fact is going to plead, does that mean we re finally going to figure this out? if she s cooperating, already, if she is going to enter into a formal cooperation deal and plead guilty, will this even this week in court, shed light on, okay, what appears to be the related case of paul erickson, the republican activist and nra member who was her maybe boyfriend who appears to have been her entree into this world. we ve had reports from the ....
Operation being run by aleksandr torshin. the affidavits submitted by prosecutors in conjunction with the charges in her case, there is maria butina at 3:00 a.m., the night of the election, just after donald trump has won the election, e-mailing aleksandr torshin in moscow, quote, i am ready for further orders. what was the nra doing tied up with these guys? and now just in the last week, things are moving fast for both maria butina and for aleksandr torshin. last week, aleksandr torshin more or less evaporated in moscow. the russian central bank where he had been a deputy governor in a very high profile official announced unexpectedly that he had suddenly retired. and bloomberg news rather ominous characterization, quote, the central bank declined to elaborate on its one-sentence statement friday. torshin did not immediately respond to attempts to reach ....