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Peak buffoon
John Sipher, a former chief of Russia operations for the CIA, called the email alarming.
“The right thing to do would have been to inform the FBI and cancel the trip,” Sipher said. “Cavorting with those who claim to be at war with you is unpatriotic at best. Mr. Erickson’s actions are especially abhorrent.”
A spokesperson for Brownell, who runs a guns-and-ammo retail business, said he checked with the State Department before traveling to Russia.
“Pete accepted the invitation to join this trip with the understanding that it was an NRA-related event organized with the support of the organization,” the spokesperson said. “He welcomed the opportunity to meet with folks who share his passion for hunting, and to further understand how Brownells can continue to be successful in overseas markets. He had his company’s compliance team review the itinerary with the State Department ahead of time and carefully followed their guidance before, during and after the trip. He has made clear that he stands ready to assist with any bipartisan inquiries.”
Erickson’s email, which included logistics for Brownell’s Russia travels, maintained a cheerful tone throughout. It differs sharply from how Erickson and Butina—who started a Russian gun rights group and courted American conservatives—described her interactions with the FSB to journalist James Bamford for the New Republic piece. Those interviews are their only extensive on-record comments about the case since last summer, when Butina was arrested and charged with acting as a covert agent for the Russian government. In December, she pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges stemming from what federal prosecutors described as an effort to “establish unofficial lines of communication with Americans having power and influence over U.S. politics.” Butina is currently in jail awaiting sentencing.
But on the way to securing that guilty plea, the prosecutors targeting Butina have made at least one serious misstep: They had to retract an ugly accusation that she traded sex for access.
Erickson and Butina say the Russian authorities also scrutinized her.
“She was under constant FSB surveillance in Russia,” Erickson told Bamford. “They would go to all the public meetings of her group, and they would go to all the rallies. Sometimes just show up in her offices once a week.”
Butina also described a fraught relationship with the FSB.
“We were watched,” she said, “but unless you crossed the line, no one’s going to go to prison. The question becomes: Do you cross this line? Do you become dangerous to the regime at a certain point? I had a bag packed in my hallway at home in case I’m imprisoned, somebody can bring it to me. That’s my reality.”
It would not be unusual for the FSB to scrutinize Butina’s gun rights group. Putin’s government generally opposes efforts to expand gun rights in Russia, in part due to fear of armed resistance. And it has long telegraphed hostility to civil society organizations. Despite that, the Kremlin green-lit outreach efforts by Butina’s group to the NRA, according to a report by a U.S. intelligence agency which The Daily Beast reviewed.
A source close to Erickson said his email and his statements to Bamford are consistent.
“To say that FSB agents were ‘assigned’ to Maria Butina is a polite way of saying that she was under constant government surveillance in Russia because of her gun rights activities,” that person said. “Never mistake polite interactions with potential jailers as anything other than a survival technique.”
The email came a few weeks before a host of NRA bigwigs and board members, including Brownell, ventured to Moscow. On the trip, they hobnobbed with Kremlin officials and enjoyed tourist attractions. A copy of the schedule reviewed by The Daily Beast shows they even had a meeting arranged with the Kremlin’s then-national security adviser, who just a few months prior had announced an arms sale to Iran. David Keene, a former president of the NRA, helped arrange the trip. According to another Erickson email, he wanted participants to impress their Russian hosts so he could score an interview for his newspaper with Vladimir Putin.
Erickson, an accused fraudster, is not necessarily a reliable narrator. Over his decades in the conservative movement, he developed a reputation for exaggerating his connections to political power-brokers and deceiving acquaintances about his business practices. Last week, a South Dakota grand jury charged him with wire fraud and money laundering. He pleaded not guilty. And last September, the U.S. Attorney for the district of Washington D.C. told Erickson’s lawyer he may face charges for covertly working for a foreign government.
The relationship between the NRA and Russians close to the Kremlin is a subject of intense interest on Capitol Hill as well. The Senate intelligence committee is investigating the December 2015 NRA trip, as is the Senate Finance Committee. In December, Oregon Democrat Ron Wyden, who sits on both committees, sent letters to three key NRA figures seeking their interviews ahead of a still-forthcoming report: Keene, Brownell, and former NRA president Allan Cors.
The investigations, alongside the prosecutions of Butina and Erickson, target a question of Russian influence over American politics beyond those concerning President Trump. The portrait prosecutors painted of Butina, Erickson, and Butina patron Alexander Torshin, a former deputy governor of the Russian Central Bank, alleges that the Kremlin cultivated the NRA as a lever with which to move the conservative movement and the Republican Party in directions convivial to Russian interests.
A lawyer for Butina declined to comment. The NRA did not provide comment for this story. In a statement provided to The Daily Beast for a previous story, a lawyer for the NRA noted that organization staff did not attend and said its CEO, Wayne LaPierre, privately expressed concerns about the trip.
Sipher, the former CIA officer, said there was “no excuse” for the NRA leadership to take the Moscow trip after Brownell was told one of his interlocutors was in close contact with the FSB.
“The NRA decision to travel to Moscow despite clear indications that Russian intelligence was involved suggests a twisted view of who are the good guys and who are the bad guys,” Sipher said. “Either the NRA leadership were engaged in willful ignorance or, worse, they had such an antagonistic attitude toward the U.S. administration [of Barack Obama] that they chose to engage with our enemies. At the end of the day, however, there is no excuse. There was no shortage of information suggesting that Vladimir Putin saw the U.S. as an enemy and that Russian intelligence was engaged in aggressive espionage and information warfare against the U.S.”
If prosecutors bring the charges named in the letter, Erickson would be the first American embroiled in the 2016 Russia investigation charged under a statute that Justice Department lawyers describe as “espionage-lite.”
“Charging an American under 951 in the context of the Russia investigation is especially serious because that statute is generally reserved for espionage-like cases, such as intelligence-gathering on behalf of a foreign government,” said Ryan Goodman, a former Defense Department attorney who now teaches at the New York University School of Law.
“Essentially what it would say is that an American was acting to advance the interests of a foreign power, contrary to the interests of the United States of America,” said Renato Mariotti, a former federal prosecutor.
A person familiar with the investigation told The Daily Beast that federal law-enforcement officers have interviewed people in Erickson’s orbit, some of whom provided statements to the FBI. Law-enforcement officials asked those sources about the former political insider’s business dealings and his reputation in conservative political circles, according to that person. As The Daily Beast previously reported, several of Erickson’s former business partners have claimed he defrauded them. The U.S. attorney’s office in South Dakota is leading an investigation into those claims.
Justice Department investigators aren’t the only ones interested in Erickson. Staffers with the Senate intelligence committee, which is probing Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential elections, have also asked to speak with him. But a lawyer for Erickson told them he would plead the Fifth Amendment if subpoenaed to testify, a source familiar with those communications confirmed to The Daily Beast. Investigators will not force Erickson to appear just to take the Fifth. William Hurd, who is representing Erickson on the Senate intelligence committee matter, declined to comment.
According to The New York Times, Erickson wrote an email to the Trump campaign in May 2016 offering to set up a back-channel meeting between the candidate and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“Putin is deadly serious about building a good relationship with Mr. Trump,” Erickson wrote, the Times reported. “He wants to extend an invitation to Mr. Trump to visit him in the Kremlin before the election.”
By then, Erickson had known Butina for years. Butina, a gun-rights activist from Russia, attended grad school at American University while building relationships in the U.S. conservative movement, with Erickson often serving as her guide.
The pair made no secret of their affinity for Russia. As The Daily Beast previously reported, at her birthday party, she dressed as a Russian empress and he dressed as Rasputin. Guests drank vodka from a bottle emblazoned with a hammer and sickle.
And as Butina built relationships with conservative leaders, Erickson didn’t exactly keep his role under wraps. According to court documents filed by the prosecutors charging Butina, someone called “Person 1” and widely believed to be Erickson boasted that he was involved in “securing a VERY private line of communication between the Kremlin” and the Republican Party.
The two also worked together on various other projects, including a deal to secure Russian jet fuel for an American middleman. Erickson and Butina worked on the failed business venture with Donna Keene, the wife of former NRA President David Keene, in 2017.
William Hurd of Troutman Sanders, a lawyer for Erickson, declined to comment. A spokesperson for the U.S. attorney’s office in D.C. declined to comment as well.
The U.S. Attorney’s Manual recommends that prosecutors send target letters to alert people they are in the feds’ sights.
“At the least, it’s a preliminary determination that they’re going to proceed to indictment,” said Sol Wisenberg, the co-chairman of the white-collar practice at Nelson Mullins.
Wisenberg said that while people can generally expect to be indicted within a few months of receiving a target letter, there’s no firm rule on how quickly any indictment should follow, if at all.
If investigators charge Erickson under Section 951, he could be the first American publicly accused of acting (or trying to act) as an agent of a foreign government in connection with Russia’s 2016 interference. Other Americans roped up in Russia investigations—including former Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort and lobbyist Sam Patten—have faced charges for illegal lobbying, in violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act. But 951 is different. It’s a rare charge, and the Justice Department’s inspector general wrote in 2016 that prosecutors in its elite National Security Division describe it as “espionage-lite.”
“[A] Section 951 case generally involves espionage-like or clandestine behavior or an otherwise provable connection to an intelligence service, or information-gathering or procurement-type activity on behalf of a foreign government,” the inspector general wrote.
Prosecutors in the D.C. U.S. attorney’s office charged Butina with violating Section 951.
Butina said on several occasions that she helped facilitate communications between the Trump campaign and Russia, multiple sources told The Daily Beastfor a February 2017 story. In July, the D.C. U.S. attorney’s office charged her with acting as a covert foreign agent and conspiring to commit a crime. Both those charges are also identified in the Erickson target letter.
Special counsel Robert Mueller is not handling Butina’s prosecution. A spokesperson for his office declined to comment on why that is.
Butina is currently in an Alexandria, Virginia, jail. Erickson visits her there regularly, two individuals with knowledge of the meetings told The Daily Beast.
Peak buffoon
I'm happy we have at least one person willing to stand and defend due process in this soyboy echo chamber.We don't know his intent so due process and civility must run its course. The constitutionality of his declaration will be an interesting legal fight but our President Elect will prevail.
I'm happy we have at least one person willing to stand and defend due process in this soyboy echo chamber.
Ann Coulter is really out here ****ting all on Trump