The Disgrace of Maria Butina's Prosecution

[AZJoe]

Ron Paul Institute: The Disgrace of Maria Butina's Prosecution

Some anti-Russianites and Trump critics are saying that the guilty plea by 30-year-old Russian citizen Maria Butina confirms that the Russian government was meddling in the 2016 presidential election. … that doesn’t necessarily mean that Butina’s guilty plea to agreeing to fail to register as a foreign agent establishes that she was knowingly part of a conspiracy within the Russian government to meddle in the presidential election.

Anyone who believes that has a genuinely naïve … of … the federal criminal justice system, which is akin to how sausage and congressional laws are made, which many people would rather not see or know about. …

When the feds decide to target someone, they charge them with every conceivable crime that even remotely relates to the targeted person’s conduct. The potential time in jail, if convicted on all counts, usually adds up to several decades or even to life in prison. The reason the feds do this is to coerce a plea … to plead guilty to one count of the indictment in return for a dismissal of all the other counts. …

The feds make it clear that if the deal is rejected, they will go to trial on all the counts … and … ask the judge to impose the maximum possible punishment, which could be decades in jail. Federal judges go along with this vicious game by severely punishing defendants who exercise their right of trial by jury but then lose. …

There is another factor … the exorbitant costs of attorney’s fees to go to trial. Federal … have virtually unlimited funds to finance their prosecution. … on the government dole. … … the defendant could easily compile several hundreds of thousands of dollars in attorney’s fees … If the defendant is using a public attorney … he knows that he is probably not getting the type of first-class legal defense …

Maria Butina … was a graduate student who clearly loves politics and who spent an inordinate amount of time befriending people in the conservative movement, making contacts, and attending conferences sponsored by such organizations as the Heritage Foundation, CPAC, the NRA, and Freedom Fest. In the process, she supposedly was providing updates on her activities to some bank official within the Russian government.

…
Was Butina serving as an actual official secret agent of the Russian government has she made contacts and attended conferences of conservative think tanks and foundations? … Or … more likely that she was like any other young person who happens to be passionate and enthusiastic about politics and was just striving to just improve relations between her country and the United States …

My hunch is that Butina would have been able to beat the rap for supposedly violating the FDR-era 1938 law that requires foreign agents to register with the federal government. [Even if she were] advising Russian officials of what she was doing to improve relations with the United States or asking for input from them on what else she could do improve relations would not make her an official secret agent of the Russian government… she could have beat any spy charge.

But my hunch also is that she finally realized that she couldn’t take a chance. Being 30-years-old and facing the possibility of spending the next 30 years in jail in an American jail … Pleading out to a failure-to-register charge, with a sentence probably equal to the time she has served in jail, would seem to be the prudent thing to do, especially given the attorney’s fees that could be saved.

Of course, Butina shouldn’t have been charged with anything. First, she clearly wasn’t a spy. Second, her prosecution stems from the severe anti-Russia animus of the US national-security establishment that stretches back to its Cold War need for an official enemy to justify its ever-growing expenditures and largess. …

It’s also a disgrace the way that feds have treated Butina in captivity. For months they have kept her solitary confinement, which is a form of severe mental torture. … People will often say or do anything to stop torture …

 

[AZJoe]

Judge Tanya S. Chutkan's handling of case is a disgrace.
The US charged Maria Butina with enough counts to put her away for several decades to life.
Judge Tanya S. Chutkan denied any bail.

Prosecutors falsely accused Maria of trading sex for position in a public interest, leaked tit to publicized it all over the media. After humiliating her with the false sexual allegations, the prosecutors were forced to admit they had no such evidence and were force to withdraw those accusations.

The judge allowed and the US then placed her in solitary confinement for over two months – 67 days. That is more than four times longer than what is permitted for prisoners under United Nations law, and the UN defines anything beyond that as torture.

Solitary confinement is the severest form of prison punishment for inmates in US prisons. An avalanche of studies consistently document the severe psychological effects of extended solitary confinement - the severe detrimental psychological effects caused by prolonged deprivation of human contact include anxiety, depression, anger, cognitive disturbances, perceptual distortions, obsessive thoughts, paranoia, and psychosis. Many Psychiatrists classify it as torture.

This graduate student was still not convicted of anything. Maria was person that was still legally innocent –who had still not been convicted of any crime at all. They placed her in “enclosed in a steel door cage the size of a parking space, deprived of any meaningful human contact or sensory stimulation for 22 hours a day, every day, with no release date in sight."

Despite the motions filed and arguments made, Judge Tanya S. Chutkan kept her under solitary conferment.

Only after they broke her, and the prosecutors informed the judge that they obtained a tentative plea agreement did the judge release her form solitary.

This is a police state run amok. They arrested her on charges they lacked sufficient evidence for. Nevertheless the judge denied her any bail. They falsely humiliated her in the public media with false sexual claims. They spared no expense to make an example of her and let it be known. The threatened her with charges to imprison her for life. They put her in extended solitary confinement to remain isolated from all but the briefest human contact until trial. This is a modern day Spanish Inquisition. Torquemada in a suit. “We will punish you until you confess.”

The prosecution and the Judge Tanya S. Chutkan’s roles here were utterly disgraceful.

 

[RJB]

I found it to be strange when they accused her of "infiltrating" the NRA. The only thing you have to do to infiltrate is to pay the $35 annual dues. However the media got two boogities out of it. Russia and guns.

 

[AZJoe]

Daniel McAdams interview

 

[AZJoe]

Ron Paul

 

[phill4paul]

Thomas Massie....

Unfortunately, what began as only Russophobic rhetoric seems to have turned into a witch hunt, as President Trump calls it.

For example, the current hysteria may have motivated the recent arrest and indictment of Maria Butina, a former Russian graduate student at American University in Washington, D.C. Unlike many accused of violent crimes, Butina (who has not been accused of harming anyone) was denied bail, and is now reportedly being held in solitary confinement in federal prison until her trial. The indictment claims she acted as an unregistered agent of the Russian government. Thin on substance, it oddly suggests, for example, that attendance at a National Prayer Breakfast is something nefarious.

My colleague Dana Rohrabacher and I met with the Russian delegation that attended the prayer breakfast last year. Congressman Rohrabacher, a former speechwriter for President Reagan during the Cold War, was once on the front lines with the mujahedeen when they fought the Soviets, yet even he now faces criticism for seeking better relations with Russia.

While our justice system has always upheld the presumption of “innocent until proven guilty,” the relentless negative press surrounding Butina’s arrest presumes her guilt. So far, the evidence mostly shows that she is simply a strong supporter of the right to bear arms, has advocated for this right in Russia, and genuinely hoped for improved Russia-U.S. relations. These are not crimes.

What if Russia decided to indict and imprison an American student in Russia based upon thin evidence and charges of acting as an “unregistered U.S. agent”? The Golden Rule applies to nations, not just individuals.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/a...BLFg5GCaHt8no_fDPgeADJcEhU2h0m7qpdo10WLUCXqLo

 

[AZJoe]

Dr. Ron Paul: Why is Maria Butina in Prison?

Russian gun rights activist and graduate exchange student Maria Butina was sentenced to 18 months in prison last week for “conspiracy to act as a foreign agent without registering.” Her “crime” was to work to make connections among American gun rights activists in hopes of building up her organization, the Right to Bear Arms, when she returned to Russia.

She was not employed by the Russian government nor was she a lobbyist on Putin’s behalf. In fact the Putin Administration is hostile to Russian gun rights groups. Nevertheless the US mainstream media and Trump’s Justice Department are treating her as public enemy number one in a case that will no doubt set the dangerous precedent of criminalizing person-to-person diplomacy in the United States. …

The Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA) was passed in 1938 under pressure from the FDR Administration partly to silence opposition to the US entry into World War II. While a handful of cases were prosecuted during the war, between 1966 and 2015 the Justice Department only brought seven FARA cases for prosecution.

Though very few cases have been brought on FARA violations, one of them was against Samir Vincent, who was paid millions of dollars by Saddam Hussein to lobby for sanctions relief without registering. He got off with a fine and “community service.” Millions of dollars in unregistered payments from Saddam Hussein gets no jail time, while Butina gets 18 months in prison for privately promoting a cause most Americans support! How is this justice?

The US Justice Department is not even as tough on illegals who commit capital crimes in the US!

Unfortunately Maria Butina was in the wrong place at the wrong time. With the rise of the “Russiagate” hysteria, Butina’s case was seen as a useful tool by Democrats to push the idea that President Trump was put into office by the Russians. Plus, many of them are also hostile to our Second Amendment and to the National Rifle Association. So it was a perfect storm for Butina.

Sadly, conservatives are mostly silent on this miscarriage of justice. They are also caught up in the idea that America can only be great if it goes abroad seeking monsters to destroy.

Also, a new Cold War is very profitable to the military industrial complex and Butina serves an important propaganda purpose. The media is an all-to-willing participant in this farce.

Even though Trump has been exonerated by a Mueller investigation that didn’t even view the Butina case as worth investigating, the President has been silent on her persecution. This is similar to his sudden silence on Wikileaks now that Julian Assange may be facing an eternity in a US supermax prison.

As author James Bamford wrote recently in an excellent New Republic article on the Butina case, the national security agencies are also eager to get another notch in their belts and the Russian gun activist was low-hanging fruit for their ambitions.

Non-interventionists believe strongly in citizen-to-citizen diplomacy as a way of avoiding war and conflict overseas. Exchange students, international business ventures, tourism, and just communicating with others is such an important way to thwart the plotting of the warmongers who lurk in all governments.

I am saddened to see that the United States has made such a hostile move toward peaceful foreign citizens seeking friendship with Americans. When citizens are no longer allowed to engage in diplomacy we are left with only the state. And the state loves war.

 

[Swordsmyth]

If what you already know about the FBI’s investigation into President Donald Trump’s campaign and Russia has you wondering what can come next, “make sure you are sitting down because it’s about to get worse,” said Patrick Byrne, the philanthropist and CEO of the mega online retail chain Overstock.com.
Byrne revealed never published details about his intimate relationship with the Russian gun right’s activist and libertarian, Maria Butina, who is now serving out her sentence after pleading guilty in 2018 to working as a foreign agent in the U.S. without registering.
In an interview several weeks ago, Byrne recanted first meeting Butina at Freedom Fest 2015. He described the relationship that developed between the two and revealed that he had initiated contact in July, 2015 with the FBI after his first meeting with Butina. He also disclosed that he met twice with attorney’s from the Department of Justice in April, giving a total of seven hours of interviews on the separate occasions. A source directly familiar with the interviews, confirmed those meetings took place.
Butina’s lawyer, Robert Driscoll, also confirmed the relationship between Byrne and Butina. Driscoll stated that he also had relayed the information to the FBI and prosecutors earlier during his trial, and asked repeatedly about any Brady material -exculpatory information – that the bureau may have collected from Byrne on Butina, to no avail. The bureau denied it had any information regarding Byrne and Butina’s relationship, Driscoll’s letter stated.


On Thursday, Driscoll sent a letter to United States Attorney for the District of Connecticut John Durham, who was appointed by Attorney General William Barr to investigate the FBI’s handling of the Russia investigation; Inspector General Michael Horowitz, who is conducting an investigation into the bureau’s origins of the Trump probe and Corey Amundson, with the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Professional Responsibility.
“In writing, the government denied the existence of any such Brady material,” Driscoll stated in his letter. “Orally, during debrief sessions with Maria, I directly told the government that I believed Patrick Byrne, Chief Executive of Overstock.com, who had a sporadic relationship with Maria over a period of years prior to her arrest, was a government informant. My speculation was flatly denied. My associate Alfred Carry made similar assertions in a separate debrief that he covered and was also rebuffed.”
“Mr. Byrne has now contacted me and has confirmed that he, indeed, had a ‘non-standard arrangement’ with the FBI for many years, and that beginning in 2015 through Maria’s arrest, he communicated and assisted government agents with their investigation of Maria. During this time, he stated he acted at the direction of the government and federal agents by, at their instruction, kindling a manipulative romantic relationship with her. He also told me that some of the details he provided the government regarding Maria in response was exculpatory—that is, he reported to the government that Maria’s behavior and interaction with him was inconsistent with her being a foreign agent and more likely an idealist and age-appropriate peace activist.”

“As an adjunct university professor and CEO of a public company, Mr. Byrne is a credible source of information, who from my view has little to gain but much to lose by disclosing a sporadic relationship with Maria. His claims are worthy of investigation. Indeed, he has much to say about the government’s handling of Maria’s case that go far beyond the Brady issue I raise in this letter. Regardless of these other issues, which I suggest you pursue directly with him, I was told the following by Mr. Byrne,” Driscoll’s letter states.[h=5]Overstock.Com[/h]But Byrne’s decision to come forward didn’t come lightly. However, he said it was necessary after watching what had transpired between the FBI, the intelligence community and the probe into President Trump’s campaign over the past several years.
“It was something I knew I had to do,” he told this reporter. “Those running the operation were not honest and in the end I realized I was being used in some sort of soft coup.”

More at: https://saraacarter.com/russia-prob...ar-ceo-a-convicted-russian-agent-and-the-fbi/

 

[Swordsmyth]

Maria Butina is due to be released from prison Friday — and immediately escorted back to the Motherland, according to her lawyer.

More at: https://nypost.com/2019/10/24/russi...-be-released-from-prison-sent-back-to-moscow/

 

[Swordsmyth]

[h=1]Rejecting a $1 Billion Bribe[/h]

 

[Origanalist]

What happened to AZ Joe?

 

[Swordsmyth]

[h=1]Maria Butina & I, Part III: Betraying Maria[/h]

 

[Origanalist]

Maria Butina is due to be released from prison Friday — and immediately escorted back to the Motherland, according to her lawyer.

More at: https://nypost.com/2019/10/24/russi...-be-released-from-prison-sent-back-to-moscow/

I would get the hell out of Dodge too.