Butina, who was swept up in a national furor last year over her efforts to create unofficial channels of communication between Washington and Moscow, will be sentenced in a federal court in D.C. on Friday. She pleaded guilty in December to acting as an unregistered foreign agent.
The Russian national ultimately was not found to be connected to the Kremlin’s interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. But her attempts to persuade American officials and prominent groups including the National Rifle Association (NRA) to act in Moscow’s interests raised questions about the breadth of Russia’s attempts to influence U.S. politics.
View the complete April 25 article by Jacqueline Thomsen on The Hill website here.