SD-AL: Republican House nominee met with Butina in South Dakota

[RandySF]

Before a Siberian woman was arrested and charged for acting as an agent for the Russian Federation in the United States, she peddled a message of support for freedom across the state of South Dakota.

In 2015, Maria Butina spoke to students at the University of South Dakota, at a Sioux Falls school and in the Black Hills, where teenage Republicans met for a week-long summer camp.

After Paul Erickson, a Sioux Falls businessman, vouched for Butina, the organizations agreed to host her for conversations about oppression in Russia and entrepreneurship.

On Sunday, Butina, 29, was arrested and charged in Washington, D.C., with conspiracy to act as an agent of the Russian Federation. She is believed to have attempted to infiltrate American political organizations and the National Rifle Association. She was ordered held without bond.

Those who hosted Butina in South Dakota said they were frustrated to learn this week that she was alleged to be in the United States with a more nefarious motive.

“I’m angry that instead of being a freedom fighter that she promised she was, it seems as though instead she’s a scam artist and a liar,” Dusty Johnson said.

Johnson organized a week-long summer camp for teenage Republicans in July 2015. Johnson, now a Republican candidate for the U.S. House, said Erickson offered to bring in Butina for a speech on the value of freedom that he felt would provide the campers some important perspective.


"What she did do is describe in pretty stark terms what it was like to live in a country without the same freedoms that we enjoy in the U.S.," he said.


https://www.argusleader.com/story/news/politics/2018/07/17/russia-conspiracy-suspect-maria-butina-south-dakota-speaker-circuit/791592002/

[Algernon Moncrieff]

1. But wait. Don't buy now! There's more!

Dusty Johnson won the Republican nomination for U.S. House this past June, but in July 2015, he was directing the Teen Age Republicans Leadership Camp at Camp Rimrock near Rapid City in the Black Hills.

Johnson said he was contacted that summer by Paul Erickson, a longtime Republican political operative who grew up in Vermillion and has an apartment in Sioux Falls. Erickson offered to bring Maria Butina to speak at the camp, and described her as an advocate for expanded gun rights in Russia who was on an American speaking tour, Johnson said.

Johnson was so impressed that he tweeted a picture that day of Butina speaking at the camp. Johnson wrote in the tweet that Butina “was incredible” and that the campers “loved her stories of working for freedom in Russia.”

That three-year-old tweet is being widely retweeted this week after federal prosecutors announced Monday that they had arrested Butina and charged her with conspiring to act as an unregistered foreign agent for the Russian government.

[link:https://rapidcityjournal.com/news/local/sd-candidate-under-fire-for-hosting-possible-russian-agent-in/article_9a941515-da12-5a4c-8c8a-8ea5733c3904.html|
From: "SD candidate under fire for hosting possible Russian agent in 2015" ]rapidcityjournal.com