Maria Butina just brought the house down on Donald Trump, the GOP, the NRA, and Russia
After weeks of signs that it was coming incrementally closer to happening, alleged Russian spy Maria Butina has officially moved today to withdraw her “not guilty” plea – meaning she’s cut a plea deal. We don’t yet know what details are spelled out in her deal, but we don’t necessarily need to, because we already know a lot about who and what she’s giving up.
First, let’s be clear here: when people cut plea deals in these kinds of multi-level criminal conspiracies, they always cooperate, whether their deal specifically requires cooperation or not – and it always helps blow the lid off things. Even in the case of Michael Cohen’s lack of an initial cooperation agreement and subsequent partial cooperation, it was enough to ring up Donald Trump on two felonies. So even as the pundits spend the day debating whether or not Butina’s deal will include a cooperation agreement, let’s instead focus on what she will in fact give up.
First, there’s the easy part: Butina will give up the NRA for having taken Russian money and distributed it to the Trump campaign and the Republican Party. She’ll also give up the specific Republican politicians she was conspiring with along the way. She has no inherent loyalty to any of them, and this is an easy way to reduce her sentence. The big question is whether she’ll also give up dirt on the specific Kremlin government officials she was conspiring with on the Russia end, as she could feel loyal to them (she’s a Russian citizen), or simply fear them. But that part may not matter as much.
Maria Butina just brought the house down on the American side of the Trump-GOP-NRA-Russia conspiracy. People like Dana Rohrabacher and John Bolton have to be panicking right now. The NRA is toast. And if Donald Trump is already having a hard time trying to spin last week’s two campaign finance felonies, just wait until it’s confirmed that Russia was funding his campaign through the NRA. Update, 6:45pm: it’s now being widely reported that Butina’s deal is officially a cooperation deal.
