WASHINGTON: A 29-year-old gun-rights activist served as a covert Russian agent while living in Washington, gathering intelligence on American officials and political organizations and working to establish back-channel lines of communications for the Kremlin, federal prosecutors charged Monday.
The announcement of the arrest of Maria Butina came just hours after President Donald Trump met with Russian President Vladimir Putin and just days after special counsel Robert Mueller charged 12 Russian intelligence officials with directing a sprawling hacking effort aimed at swaying the 2016 election.
Mueller didn’t file the charge against Butina, but court papers show her activities revolved around American politics during the 2016 campaign and included efforts to use contacts with the National Rifle Association to develop relationships with US politicians and gather intelligence for Russia.
Court papers also reveal that an unnamed American who worked with Butina claimed to have been involved in setting up a “private line of communication” ahead of the 2016 election between the Kremlin and “key” officials in an American political party through the NRA.
The court papers do not name the political party mentioned in the October 2016 message, but they contain details that appear to refer to the Republican Party. The documents don’t say whether the back channel was ever established.
The NRA, which has previously been connected to Butina in public reporting and information released by members of Congress, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Butina, a Russian national who has been living in the US, was charged with conspiracy to act as an unregistered agent of the Russian government. A federal judge in Washington ordered her jailed until a hearing set for Wednesday, according to a statement from the Justice Department and Jessie Liu, the US Attorney for the District of Columbia.
In a statement, Butina’s attorney, Robert Driscoll, called the allegations “overblown” and said prosecutors had criminalized mundane networking opportunities. Driscoll said Butina was not an agent of the Russian Federation but was instead in the US on a student visa, graduating from American University with a master’s degree in international relations.
“There is simply no indication of Ms. Butina seeking to influence or undermine any specific policy or law or the United States — only at most to promote a better relationship between the two nations,” Driscoll said in a statement. “The complaint is simply a misuse of the Foreign Agent statute, which is designed to punish covert propaganda, not open and public networking by foreign students.”
He said Butina’s Washington apartment was raided by the FBI in April, and said she had offered to answer questions from the Justice Department and Mueller’s team but the special counsel’s office “has not expressed interest.”
Court papers filed in support of Butina’s arrest accuse her of participating in a conspiracy that began in 2015 in which an unnamed senior Russian official “tasked” her with working to infiltrate American political organizations with the goal of “reporting back to Moscow” what she had learned.
The charging documents include several emails and Twitter direct message conversations in which she refers to the need to keep her work secret or, in one case, “incognito.”
Authorities did not name the Kremlin official accused of directing Butina’s efforts, but details in the court papers match the description of Alexander Torshin, a Russian official who has been publicly connected to her.
Torshin, who became an NRA life member in 2012, was among a group of Russian oligarchs and officials targeted in April with Treasury Department sanctions for their associations with Putin and their roles in “advancing Russia’s malign activities.” Torshin, who was listed as “State Secretary-deputy Governor of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation,” was designated under the sanctions as a Russian official.
The sanctions affect the targeted Russians by freezing all of their assets subject to US jurisdiction and banning Americans and US businesses from conducting transactions with them.
Prosecutors say Butina, at the official’s direction, met with US politicians and candidates, attended events sponsored by special interest groups — including two National Prayer Breakfast events — and organized Russian-American “friendship and dialogue” dinners in Washington as part of her work.
Court papers also show that after the 2016 election, Butina worked to set up a Russian delegation’s visit to the 2017 National Prayer Breakfast, describing it in an email as an effort to “establish a back channel of communication.” After the visit, Butina emailed the organizer of the breakfast thanking him for a gift and “for the very private meeting” that followed the breakfast.
“A new relationship between two countries always begins better when it begins in faith,” Butina wrote, saying she had “important information” that would further the new relationship.
Two days later, she emailed another American who had been involved in some of the email communication surrounding the prayer breakfast and her efforts to arrange several dinners between Russians and people involved in US politics.
“Our delegation cannot stop chatting about your wonderful dinner,” Butina wrote. “My dearest President has received ‘the message’ about your group initiatives and your constructive and kind attention to the Russians.”
Butina has previously surfaced in US media reports related to her gun-rights advocacy.
In 2011, she founded a pro-gun organization in Russia, the Right to Bear Arms, and she has been involved in coordinating between American gun rights activists and their Russian counterparts, according to reports in The New York Times, Time and the Daily Beast.
Butina hosted several leading NRA executives and pro-gun conservatives at her group’s annual meeting in 2015, according to those reports. Among those who attended were former NRA President David Keene, conservative political operative Paul Erickson and former Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke, later a strong Trump supporter.
Butina also says she met with Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker at his presidential campaign launch event in 2015, according to a report by Mother Jones magazine earlier this year.
US arrests, accuses woman of acting as Russian agent
US arrests, accuses woman of acting as Russian agent
- Butina, a Russian national who has been living in the US, was charged with conspiracy to act as an unregistered agent of the Russian government
- The charging documents include several emails and Twitter direct message conversations
Muslims with tattoo regrets flock to a free removal service during Ramadan
- A growing number of people in Indonesia’s capital have signed up for free tattoo removal services offered by Amil Zakat National Agency
- Launched in 2019, the tattoo removal program is now held every Ramadan, a month of fasting, increased worship, religious reflection and good deeds
The 30-year-old guitarist got his back, arms and legs tattooed to “look cool” when he was performing in a band. But these days Septura has a newfound zeal for Islam, including the conviction that Muslims should not alter the body that God gave them.
“As humans, sometimes we make mistakes. Now I want to improve myself by moving closer to God,” Seputra said, as a health worker aimed the white laser wand at Septura’s skin, blasting the red, green and black pigments with its penetrating light. “God gave me clean skin and I ruined it, that’s what I regret now.”
Septura is among a growing number of people in Indonesia’s capital who have signed up for free tattoo removal services offered by Amil Zakat National Agency, an Islamic charity organization, during Ramadan to give practicing Muslims an opportunity to “repent.”
Launched in 2019, the tattoo removal program is now held every Ramadan, a month of fasting, increased worship, religious reflection and good deeds. Some 700 people have signed up for the services this year, and in total nearly 3,000 people have taken part.
“We want to pave the way for people who want to hijrah (to move closer to God), including those who want to remove their tattoos” said Mohammad Asep Wahyudi, a coordinator of the event. He added that many people cannot afford to remove their tattoos or know where and how they can do so safely.
Laser removal, which takes repeated treatment and may not be completely successful, could cost thousands of dollars for tattoos as extensive as Septura’s.
Tattooing remains strongly associated with gangs and criminality in some Asian cultures. In addition to the religious prohibitions in Muslim-majority Indonesia, ideas about tattoos also reveal oppressive attitudes toward women, who if tattooed can be labeled as promiscuous or disreputable and not worth marrying.
Sri Indrayati, 52, said she tattooed the name of her first daughter on her hand shortly after she gave birth to her at the age of 22. She said she regretted it when her two grandchildren kept asking her to erase it because it looked like dirty, thick marker writing.
“When I take my grandson to school, (the children) whisper to each other: ‘look at that grandma, she has a tattoo!” she said.
Another woman, Evalia Zadora, got a tattoo of a large star on her back and the words “Hope, Love and Rock & Roll” on her upper chest as a teen to gain acceptance into a gang. She wants to remove them now to move closer to God and out of consideration for her family.
“Bad image (against people with tattoos) is not a big deal for me, but it affected my husband and son,” said Zadora, 36. “They are not comfortable with my tattoos and I respect their feelings, so I want to remove it.
On Trump’s orders, thousands of JFK assassination documents newly public
- The archives’ Kennedy assassination collection has more than six million pages of records, the vast majority of which had been declassified and made public before Trump’s order
WASHINGTON: Thousands of pages of digital documents related to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy are now available for historians, conspiracy theorists and the merely curious, following orders from US President Donald Trump.
The president, shortly after taking office for his second term in January, signed an executive order directing national intelligence and other officials to quickly come up with a plan “for the full and complete release of all John F. Kennedy assassination records.”
The archives’ Kennedy assassination collection has more than six million pages of records, the vast majority of which had been declassified and made public before Trump’s order. Trump told reporters on Monday that 80,000 pages would be released on Tuesday. Justice Department lawyers got orders Monday evening to review the records for release. The digital documents did not start appearing until 7 p.m. (2300 GMT) Tuesday on a National Archives web page. As of 10:30 p.m. Tuesday (0230 GMT Wednesday), the National Archives had published 2,182 PDFs totaling 63,400 pages.
The archives did not immediately respond on Wednesday to a request for comment on whether more documents would soon be released in response to a January order from Trump.
Kennedy’s murder has been attributed to a sole gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald. The Justice Department and other federal government bodies have reaffirmed that conclusion in the intervening decades. But polls show many Americans still believe his death was a result of a conspiracy.
“There will be people who will be looking at the records and seeing if there is any hint of any confirmation about their theory,” Larry Schnapf, an environmental lawyer who has researched the assassination and pushed the government to make public what it knows about what led up to the shooting in Dallas on a November afternoon six decades ago, said on Wednesday.
Schnapf, who stayed up until 4 a.m. poring over the documents, said that what he found as he went through them was less illuminating about Kennedy’s assassination than about US spy operations.
“It’s all about our government’s covert activities leading up to the assassination,” he said.
Department of Defense documents from 1963 that were among those released Tuesday covered the Cold War of the early 1960s and the US involvement in Latin America, trying to thwart Castro’s support of communists in other countries. One document released from January 1962 reveals details of a top-secret project called “Operation Mongoose,” or simply “the Cuban Project,” which was a CIA-led campaign of covert operations and sabotage against Cuba, authorized by Kennedy in 1961, aimed at removing the Castro regime.
Trump promised on the campaign trail to provide more transparency about Kennedy’s death. Upon taking office, he also ordered aides to present a plan for the release of records relating to the assassinations in 1968 of Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.
Larry Sabato, head of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, said he advocates for transparency in Washington and noted previous administrations, including the Biden administration, have also released Kennedy assassination documents. But he added that even with the thousands of new documents, the public will still not know everything, as much evidence may have been destroyed throughout the decades.
The National Archives did not immediately respond to queries on Wednesday about whether plans for releasing documents on Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr had been developed or when such documents would be released.
Zelensky says discussed with Trump US idea of owning occupied nuclear plant
- The power station, Europe’s largest, was captured by Russian forces early in their invasion launched in February 2022 and since has been a flashpoint of concerns over a possible nuclear incident
KYIV, Ukraine: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Wednesday said that he and US counterpart Donald Trump had discussed possible US ownership of the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine.
His comments to reporters came after Trump told Zelensky on Wednesday that the United States could own and run Ukraine’s nuclear power plants as part of his latest bid to secure a ceasefire in Russia’s invasion.
“We talked only about one power plant, which is under Russian occupation,” Zelensky, who was on an official visit to Finland, said during an online briefing, referring to the plant in Zaporizhzhia.
The power station, Europe’s largest, was captured by Russian forces early in their invasion launched in February 2022 and since has been a flashpoint of concerns over a possible nuclear incident.
Zelensky said that it could take more than two years for the plant to be made operational again, and that its generation capacity was needed by both Ukrainians and Europe.
“Do we need it? For people, yes, and for Europe, too. To join the European electronic network — absolutely. We can do all this,” he said.
Since taking office in January, Trump has sought a speedy resolution to the more than three years of brutal fighting between Russia’s invading force and the Ukrainians.
Zelensky last week backed a US-led proposal for a complete and unconditional ceasefire in Ukraine, but the Kremlin refused and instead proposed a halt on strikes on energy infrastructure.
The Ukrainian leader told reporters from Finland that Putin was unlikely to agree to any ceasefire as long as Ukraine’s troops were still fighting for control of Russia’s Kursk region, where Kyiv launched an audacious but struggling offensive last year.
“He does not want a ceasefire while our troops are on the territory of the Kursk region,” Zelensky said.
Russian forces have been making steady gains in the Kursk region for weeks, thwarting what Kyiv hoped would be a bargaining chip in talks with Moscow.
The Trump administration’s speedy engagement with Russian officials, a sharp departure from the previous administration’s approach, has raised fears in Ukraine that it could be forced to make unpopular concessions, like ceding territory to Russia.
But Zelensky told reporters that Trump had not mounted any pressure on Kyiv to capitulate to the Kremlin demands.
“I want to be frank, very frank. Today I did not feel any pressure from Trump, there was none. And this is a fact. You know that I am an open person. If it was, I would have told you frankly,” he said.
His comments come just weeks after a shocking standoff between the two leaders in the White House which ended in the Ukrainian delegation, including Zelensky, leaving ahead of schedule.
During the briefing with reporters, Zelensky said that he spoke with Emmanuel Macron on a daily basis, after the French leader called him unexpectedly during the press conference.
“Yes, I have just spoken to President Macron, to Emmanuel,” Zelensky said after receiving a telephone call during the briefing. “We often talk a lot. Once a day. After our conversation, I will call him back.”
Zelensky also announced that he would visit France next week, without elaborating.
The Ukrainian leader has urged his Western allies to step up aid even in the event of a ceasefire, and announced on Wednesday that his country had recently received “several” more F-16 fighter jets.
“I’m not going to tell you how many,” Zelensky told reporters, without saying which country delivered them. Ukraine received its first deliveries of the US-made aircraft last year.
Trump to order a plan to shut down the US Education Department
- The Trump administration has already been gutting the agency through layoffs and program cuts
WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump plans to sign an executive order Thursday calling for the shutdown of the US Education Department, according to a White House official, advancing a campaign promise to eliminate an agency that’s been a longtime target of conservatives.
The official spoke on the condition of anonymity before an announcement.
Trump has derided the Department of Education as wasteful and polluted by liberal ideology. However, finalizing its dismantling is likely impossible without an act of Congress, which created the department in 1979.
A White House fact sheet said the order would direct Secretary Linda McMahon “to take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure (of) the Department of Education and return education authority to the States, while continuing to ensure the effective and uninterrupted delivery of services, programs, and benefits on which Americans rely.”
The Trump administration has already been gutting the agency through layoffs and program cuts. Its workforce is being slashed in half and there have been deep cuts to the Office for Civil Rights and the Institute of Education Sciences, which gathers data on the nation’s academic progress.
The department sends billions of dollars a year to schools and oversees $1.6 trillion in federal student loans.
Currently, much of the agency’s work revolves around managing money — both its extensive student loan portfolio and a range of aid programs for colleges and school districts, from school meals to support for homeless students. The agency also plays a significant role in overseeing civil rights enforcement.
Federal funding makes up a relatively small portion of public school budgets — roughly 14 percent. The money often supports supplemental programs for vulnerable students, such as the McKinney-Vento program for homeless students or Title I for low-income schools.
Colleges and universities are more reliant on money from Washington, through research grants along with federal financial aid that helps students pay their tuition.
Republicans have talked about closing the Education Department for decades, saying it wastes taxpayer money and inserts the federal government into decisions that should fall to states and schools. The idea has gained popularity recently as conservative parents’ groups demand more authority over their children’s schooling.
In his platform, Trump promised to close the department “and send it back to the states, where it belongs.” Trump has cast the department as a hotbed of “radicals, zealots and Marxists” who overextend their reach through guidance and regulation.
Yet even some of Trump’s allies have questioned his power to close the agency without action from Congress, and there are doubts about its political popularity. The House considered an amendment to close the agency in 2023, but 60 Republicans joined Democrats in opposing it.
During Trump’s first term, former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos sought to dramatically reduce the agency’s budget and asked Congress to bundle all K-12 funding into block grants that give states more flexibility in how they spend federal money. It was rejected, with pushback from some Republicans.
Judge is ‘offended’ at DOGE’s tactics but does not pause its takeover of the US Institute of Peace
- The institute and many of its board members sued the Trump administration Tuesday, seeking to prevent their removal and to prevent DOGE from taking over its operations
A federal judge allowed Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency to remain in control of the US Institute of Peace, an independent nonprofit created by Congress, but expressed concern about their conduct.
US District Judge Beryl Howell said Wednesday she was offended by DOGE staff’s use of threats and law enforcement to gain access to the USIP headquarters and to remove the institute’s president, George Moose, from the building on Monday.
But she declined to immediately restore the former board members, who filed the lawsuit late on Tuesday, to their positions. Howell also declined to bar DOGE staff from USIP’s headquarters, which they gained access to on Monday in part with the help of the police.
Trump last month in an executive order targeted USIP and three other agencies for closure in an effort to deliver on campaign promises to shrink the size of the federal government.
The institute and many of its board members sued the Trump administration Tuesday, seeking to prevent their removal and to prevent DOGE from taking over its operations.
USIP is a think tank, which seeks to prevent and resolve conflicts. It was created and funded by Congress in 1984. Board members are nominated by the president and must be confirmed by the Senate.
The suit is the latest challenge to the Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle US foreign assistance agencies, reduce the size of the federal government and exert control over entities created by Congress.
Among the board members who filed suit is former US Ambassador to Russia John Sullivan, who was nominated to the ambassadorial role in Trump’s first term and continued to serve as ambassador under President Joe Biden and then was picked by Biden for the board.
The lawsuit accuses the White House of illegal firings by email and said the remaining board members — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and National Defense University President Peter Garvin — also ousted Moose, a former ambassador and career diplomat at the State Department.
In his place, the three appointed Kenneth Jackson, an administrator with the US Agency for International Development, according to the lawsuit.
In response, government lawyers raised questions about who controlled the institute and whether the nonprofit could sue the administration. It also referenced other recent court rulings about how much power the president has to remove the leaders of independent agencies.
DOGE staff tried multiple times to access the building Monday before successfully getting in, partly with police assistance.
The institute’s staff had first called the police around 3 p.m. Monday to report trespassing, according to the lawsuit. But the Metropolitan Police Department said in a statement that the institute’s acting president — seemingly a reference to Jackson — told them around 4 p.m. that he was being refused access to the building and there were “unauthorized individuals” inside.
“Eventually, all the unauthorized individuals inside of the building complied with the acting USIP President’s request and left the building without further incident,” police said.
The lawsuit says the institute’s lawyer told DOGE representatives multiple times that the executive branch has no authority over the nonprofit.
A White House spokesperson, Anna Kelly, said, “Rogue bureaucrats will not be allowed to hold agencies hostage. The Trump administration will enforce the President’s executive authority and ensure his agencies remain accountable to the American people.”
To the top Democrats on the foreign affairs committees in Congress, New York Rep. Gregory Meeks and New Hampshire Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, the “hostile takeover” of the institute was one more sign that Trump and Musk want “to recklessly dismantle historic US institutions piece by piece.”
The leaders of two of the other agencies listed in Trump’s February executive order — the Inter-American Foundation, which invests in businesses in Latin American and the Caribbean, and the US African Development Foundation — also have sued the administration to undo or pause the removal of most of their staff and cancelation of most of their contracts.
A federal judge ruled last week that it would be legal to remove most contracts and staff from the US-Africa agency, which invested millions of dollars in African small businesses.
But the judge also ordered the government to prepare DOGE staff to explain what steps they were taking to maintain the agency at “the minimum presence and function required by law.”
