True Left

Maria Butina, a Russian woman convicted of acting as an unregistered foreign agent before and after the 2016 election, is among the hundreds of Russian lawmakers facing new sanctions from the Biden administration.

Butina made headlines when she was charged in 2018 with scheming to infiltrate powerful conservative circles, including the National Rifle Association, to influence US policy in Russia's favor.

In 2019, Butina pleaded guilty to conspiring to act as an unregistered foreign agent in her attempts to forge ties with influential conservatives and gun rights activists.
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At her sentencing in 2019, Judge Tanya Chutkan noted that Butina came to the United States as a graduate student at American University but was "not simply seeking to learn about the US political system."

Chutkan described Butina's scheme as "sophisticated" and noted that it coincided with Russia's interference in US elections.