Last week, the mainstream media was up in arms about an alleged Russian spy, Maria Butina, who met with conservative groups like the National Rifle Association.
But before she was making friends with the right, she had a number of high profile meetings with the Obama Administration.
According to Reuters, Butina had at least two meetings with high-profile government officials in 2015.
Along with Alexander Torshin, the former Russian Central Bank deputy governor, Butina met with Stanley Fischer, who was then the vice chair of the Federal Reserve. She also met with Nathan Sheets, who served as the Treasury Department’s Undersecretary for International Affairs under Obama.
The purpose of Butina’s meetings appear to be Obama’s sanctions on Russia, which were put in place after Russia invaded both Crimea and Ukraine.
Butina was indicted last week for violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act–basically, acting as a secret agent for a foreign government without the permission of the U.S. government.
But even more shockingly, investigative reporter John Solomon is claiming that he personally notified the FBI under Obama to alert them that Butina was a Russian spy.
Solomon told Lou Dobbs on Wednesday night, “In March of 2015 I observed her at several events and really cozying up to conservatives and making what I thought was a weak-handed case that she was this courageous gun rights activist going up against Putin and there would one day be a Second Amendment in Russia. There’s never going to be a Second Amendment in Russia.”
“I became very perplexed by her behavior and her efforts of going up to presidential candidates and congressional candidates,” he added. “So I started to do some reporting and I called FBI and US intelligence sources and very quickly I learned, ‘Yeah, we know that she’s somebody here as an agent of influence. She’s connected to this guy [Torshin] and we know what she’s trying to do.’ And I thought, that’s really interesting. Are they going to tell the people she’s meeting with and it doesn’t appear they ever did.”
“I thought the role of FBI counter-intelligence was to prevent contacts from occurring that are not in the interest of the United States,” said Solomon. “It sounds like they sat around and watched this for three or four years until it was convenient to create a headline.”
