Russian woman gets 18 months for role in trying to influence conservative US voters

The gun-loving Russian woman who ran a secret operation to influence conservative Americans was sentenced Friday to 18 months in prison.

The woman, Maria Butina, 30, pleaded guilty late last year to conspiring to act as a foreign agent, admitting that she was part of an organized Russian campaign to create unofficial lines of communication between Russia and influential Republicans. Prosecutors initially described her as a charming operative who traded sex for access to influence powerful conservative circles, including the National Rifle Association, though they later acknowledged being “mistaken” on the salacious aspect of the accusations.

The Justice Department had recommended an 18-month sentence and cited “substantial assistance” that Butina provided to investigators. Including time served, Butina will be incarcerated nine more months and then promptly deported. Butina has been incarcerated for nine months, and her lawyers recommended no further time.

“Nothing about Maria has been secret,” said one of Butina’s lawyers, Alfred Carry, also citing her cooperation with investigators and noting that she had “languished” in solitary confinement.

In a tearful voice, Butina asked the judge for mercy, saying she never intended to harm the American political process. “The United States has always been kind to me,” she said. “I just didn’t register because I didn’t know to.”

But Judge Tanya S. Chutkan of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia disagreed. “This was no simple misunderstanding by an overeager foreign student.”

“She was not simply a grad student,” Erik Michael Kenerson, an assistant U.S. attorney, said Friday. “Even though she did not transmit classified secrets,” he said, “the information that the defendant took back to Russia through the back channel she sought to establish was of extreme importance” and “had serious potential to harm the U.S. political process.”