A federal district court judge ordered Wednesday that the alleged Russian foreign agent Maria Butina will need to remain in custody while she awaits trial.
According to The Hill, U.S. Magistrate Judge Deborah Robinson, an Obama appointee on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, said the government had proved there are no conditions of release or combination of conditions that would ensure Butina would return to court for her trial
The 29-year-old-woman, co-founder of the Russian gun-rights group “Right to Bear Arms,” was arrested a day earlier and appeared in U.S. District Court before Magistrate Judge Deborah A. Robinson, where she was ordered held without bond.
The affidavit attached to a criminal complaint filed in the court said that Butina “took steps to develop relationships with American politicians in order to establish private, or as she called them, ‘back channel’ lines of communication.”
It adds that the Russian Federation could then use these ties “to penetrate the U.S. national decision-making apparatus to advance the agenda of the Russian Federation.”
The case against Butina was not brought by special counsel Robert Mueller and is not part of his investigation, so it is unclear whether it has any connection to the broader investigation into Russian meddling in the presidential campaign.
However, the FBI said in the affidavit that Butina came to the U.S. under the direction of an unnamed Russian official, most likely her longtime mentor and close ally of the Russian president, Alexander Torshin.
The Washington Post writes that she was allegedly assisted in her efforts by a U.S. political operative, who was not charged or named in court papers but appears to be Paul Erickson, a Republican consultant who sought in 2016 to organize a meeting between then-candidate Donald Trump and Torshin.
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