Maria Butina, who pleaded guilty to attempting to infiltrate Republican political circles and influence U.S. relations with Russia around the 2016 election, will leave prison tomorrow and travel to Moscow accompanied by two Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, her lawyer said.
The red-headed Russian national will be released Friday morning from a low-security prison in Tallahassee, Florida, after completing her sentence. She has been behind bars since her arrest in July 2018.
The U.S. government has provided few details to Butina’s lawyer, Robert Driscoll, the Russian government, or the media about her release, citing security concerns.
“They tend to do these things like they’re moving a nuclear bomb, and they’re not,” Driscoll told the Washington Examiner.
Driscoll said he won’t know where Butina is or if she’s been released until she is allowed to make one phone call prior to the last leg of her trip. Driscoll said he expects a call early Saturday morning when she could be in Europe boarding a flight to Moscow.
“My thought would be that she’ll fly to Atlanta [from Tallahassee], bounce to Europe somewhere, and then fly to Moscow, and get there midday Saturday,” Driscoll said, adding that ICE agents would not accompany her if she were on a direct flight to Russia.
Butina, 30, will change from her prison uniform into an outfit she picked out from Amazon for the trip home, Driscoll said, though he did not have additional details as to what she will wear. She won’t bring any bags with her — ICE allows her to have one 40-pound bag — because “she didn’t want to deal with it,” the attorney said.
Once Butina tells Driscoll she is on her way to Moscow, the lawyer will email Butina’s father, Valery Butin, who will meet his daughter at the airport. Driscoll said Butina’s sister and mother could also be present, but someone may have to stay home with Butina’s elderly grandmother.
“She might stay in Moscow for a night,” Driscoll said, but then the family will travel home to the Siberian city of Barnaul.
The Russian Embassy in Washington said Tuesday, “There are no formal obstacles” to Butina’s return to Russia, and that her passport has been given to U.S. immigration authorities.
“As practice shows, the expulsion process can take several days or more,” the embassy wrote on Facebook. “As we understand, Maria will be sent through a deportation center where she will spend some time awaiting departure.”
Russian officials, however, do not have a precise itinerary.
“They have no idea, they’re calling me,” Driscoll said.
Butina was the only Russian national arrested in the U.S. government’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, though charges were not brought against her by special counsel Robert Mueller. Over the course of his nearly two-year investigation, Mueller charged 25 Russians, including 12 intelligence officers and three Russian companies.
Butina had been living in Washington, D.C., since 2016 while attending American University for a master’s degree. Butina’s lawyers said she was simply a gun rights activist who wanted to improve relations with the United States.
She pleaded guilty in December to failing to register with the Justice Department as a foreign agent while she acted at the direction of Alexander Torshin, a longtime figure in Russian politics, since at least 2015.
Federal prosecutors argued Butina was a national security threat who worked to find Americans who could provide intelligence to the Kremlin. At one point, prosecutors alleged she was a clandestine agent using sex to gain access to the conservative movement. Prosecutors later admitted they misunderstood her text messages.
“She is not a Russian spy,” Driscoll said. “If she were a spy, I would have cut a deal. If anyone knows she’s not a spy, it’s the Russians.
“If she were a Russian spy, she wouldn’t have hung around for the feds to come talk to her. They talked to her boyfriend first. That gave her a warning. If she were a spy, she would have taken her stuff and dumped it. She had the opportunity to do that. She could have gotten rid of it but she didn’t. Eleven FBI agents searched her apartment. They found nothing.”
She was assisted in her networking efforts by 57-year-old Republican operative Paul Erickson, with whom she had been in a long-term relationship and who is facing his own charges of wire fraud and money laundering in South Dakota.
Butina has said in court filings she does not expect torture or prosecution for cooperating with the U.S. government as part of her plea deal when she returns to Russia.
Her case recently made another splash when former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne, 57, claimed the FBI encouraged him to have a sexual relationship with Butina.
