Russian agent Maria Butina said she believed her notes on U.S. politics would be “valuable” to Russian officials.
Butina was sentenced to 18 months in prison last month for conspiring with a senior Russian official to infiltrate conservative political circles in the U.S. and influence the country’s relations with Moscow.
She was the only Russian arrested amid special counsel Robert Mueller’s 22-month investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, though charges were not brought against her by Mueller’s team.
In an interview with NPR airing Friday, Butina said she knew Alexander Torshin, a longtime figure in Russian politics, was giving the information she passed on to him to Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
“I said that I would be honored because, well, I am a young woman and there you have people in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs would consider my notes, my analysis, as valuable,” Butina said. “It was very pleasant for me. So of course I said, ‘Of course, yes.'”
Butina, 30, has maintained that she was not a Russian spy and that she would have registered as a foreign agent if she had known she had to.
Federal prosecutors argued Butina was a national security threat who worked to find Americans who could eventually provide intelligence to the Kremlin. Her lawyers said she was simply a gun rights activist who came to study in the U.S. and wanted to improve relations between Washington and Moscow and loosen Russian gun laws.
“I came here as a peace builder,” she said. “I am embarrassed that instead of creating peace, by not registering [as a foreign agent], I created discord.”
Robert Anderson, the former assistant director of the FBI’s counterintelligence division and the Justice Department’s expert witness in the case, said the Kremlin will be able to use the information Butina passed on to Torshin about the individuals she had access to in Trumpworld and the National Rifle Association “for years to come in their efforts to spot and assess Americans who may be susceptible to recruitment as foreign intelligence assets.”
A federal judge gave Butina credit for the nine months she has already spent in jail, meaning she’ll spend nine months in prison before she’s deported to Russia.
Butina said she has no concerns about her safety when she returns to Russia because people “know as a matter of fact that I am not a spy nor do I have any secret information.”
“I don’t think I have any problems or I could have any concerns about my safety,” she said. “I don’t see that happening.”
[Related: Putin: US trying to ‘save face’ by imprisoning Russian agent]
