A Point on the Maria Butina Indictment and Don Jr. by Josh Marshall

A Point on the Maria Butina Indictment and Don Jr.

By Josh Marshall

Here’s what’s in the background of the Maria Butina indictment.

The Butina indictment refers to “others known and unknown, including an official of the Russian Federation” with whom she collaborated in her crimes. That official is clearly Alexander Torshin, a Russian central banker and senator. His courtship of the NRA is deeper and more longstanding than Butina’s. In fact, she appears to be a creature of Torshin, who is reputed to have deep ties to Russian intelligence and organized crime.

Torshin’s name has come up repeatedly in the broader Trump/Russia probe. He reached out to Kushner to set up a meeting at the NRA convention in Louisville, Kentucky in May 2016. Kushner declined but also failed to reveal the contact to investigators. Torshin eventually did meet at the convention with Donald Trump Jr. That is about a month before Don Jr. had his notorious Trump Tower meeting in June 2016.

These were among many other contacts Torshin had had with other American political figures in recent years.

In May of this year, Michael Isikoff reported that the Special Counsel’s office had received from a top Spanish prosecutor copies of wiretaps of Torshin and a convicted Russian launderer. Asked whether he was concerned about meetings between Torshin and Donald Trump, Jr., the prosecutor Jose Grinda told Isikoff: “Mr. Trump’s son should be concerned.”

Each of the points I note above are old news. But they appear in a different light with Butina’s indictment.

Another point: this indictment isn’t from the Special Counsel’s office. It comes from the DOJ’s National Security Division, where you’d expect such a charge to come from if there were no Special Counsel. Why is this? A Russian national trying to infiltrate US conservative political groups on behalf of Russia during the 2016 election – it’s hard to see what could more clearly fall under Mueller’s purview.

So why isn’t this from him?

There are a few possibilities. One is simply that the investigation and indictment arose independently, though that seems unlikely. Another possibility is that Mueller decided to hand this prosecution off to regular DOJ prosecutors to spread the investigation out among a number of offices, making himself less of a conspicuous or at least sole target of political attack. Yet another possibility is more mundane: Mueller doesn’t want to be at this forever and he’s handing off peripheral cases so he can finish more quickly and maintain his focus on core matters. My best guess is some mix of options two and three. But this is a bit of a mystery.

All that seems clear from this indictment is that the US is saying that the NRA was infiltrated by at least one Russian agent and likely more.