Russia's Plan to Buy Off the GOP Began Before the Rise of Trump
Republicans placed an anti-patriot in the Oval Office—just as the Russians bet they would.
MICHAEL TOMASKY
07.17.18 4:53 AM ET
There is no shortage of bombshell angles to this Maria Butina matter, announced by the Justice Department on Monday just hours after Donald Trump helped make Russia great again in Helsinki.
There’s the allegation that she was trying to arrange a meeting between Trump and Vladimir Putin in 2016, which the Times chose to emphasize. There’s the bit about her relationship with the National Rifle Association, and how she allegedly sought to use or work with the NRA to expand her influence in American politics (The Daily Beast was the first to report on all this in detail, back in early 2017).
There’s more. But I’ll tell you what popped out at me as I read through the affidavit filed by the FBI agent in charge of investigating her. It was in paragraph 18, bottom of page 5, stating that Butina wrote an email to “U.S. Person 1” to suggest a plan by which she would work herself into the good graces of “POLITICAL PARTY 1.” What popped out at me was the date. She wrote this email on March 24, 2015.
Why is this significant? Because Butina, being Russian and all, is normally thought of as being associated with Trump. But on March 24, 2015, Donald Trump was a private citizen. Nobody thought he was running for president (he announced his candidacy in mid-June).
In other words: Butina, working for a prominent Russian official with whom the affidavit says she conspired on all these moves, laid out this plan to her American contact to infiltrate “POLITICAL PARTY 1”—obviously, the Republican Party—before Trump was even in the picture.
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