"A couple of Facebook ads."“You look at what Russia did, buying some Facebook ads and trying to sow dissent. It’s a terrible thing,” Kushner, who is also one of President Donald Trump’s senior advisers, said at a Time magazine event in New York. “But I think the investigations and all of the speculation that’s happened for the last two years has a much harsher impact on our democracy than a couple Facebook ads.”
Politico
How many Republican Congress members - apart from those who were running for office - do you imagine are compromised by Russian influence or kompromat in some way?The Justice Department, however, is offering a starkly different assessment of the potential dangers of a Russian intelligence operation to U.S. national security — and argues that it doesn’t take a master spy to do serious harm.
In a little-noticed court filing on Friday, an expert witness for the government, Robert Anderson Jr., a former assistant director of the FBI’s counterintelligence division, outlined how the activities of Russian gun-rights activist Mariia Butina during the election contained all the hallmarks of a sophisticated intelligence operation.
[...]
[T]he filing also sheds light on how the Justice Department views the ongoing threat of Russian attempts to influence American politics and goes well beyond what Mueller’s team was able to say in its 448-page report.
Allowing Russia to “bypass formal channels of diplomacy, win concessions, and exert influence within the United States” by entertaining backchannel lines of communication could result in “commensurate harm to the United States, including harm to the integrity of the United States’ political processes and internal government dealings, as well as to U.S. foreign policy interests and national security,” Anderson wrote.
Butina created a plan called the Diplomacy Project in March 2015 aimed at cultivating Republican presidential candidates and their advisers and reporting her progress back to Alexander Torshin, a deputy governor of the Central Bank of Russia.
She also tried to connect members of the National Rifle Association with Kremlin officials in December 2015 during a trip to Moscow, prosecutors say, and held U.S.-Russia “friendship dinners” to “exert the speediest and most effective influence on the process of making decisions in the American establishment,” according to a document she wrote during the runup to the election.
So is there a slim chance that Kushner and Junior will yet be contained?Butina wasn’t the only Russian trying to make inroads outside formal diplomatic structures before and after the election, however. And she was arguably the least successful.
Mueller confirmed in his report that [...] Kushner suggested using Russian Embassy facilities to discuss Syria policy during the transition period, thereby evading detection from the U.S. intelligence community.
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Mueller had little to say about the broader national security implications of Russia’s efforts to cultivate Trump associates. But Andrew Weiss, the vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where he oversees research on Russia and Eurasia, noted on Twitter on Monday that, seen against the backdrop of Anderson’s declaration, “it’s clear that the conduct outlined in Volume I of the Mueller Report created enormous damage to US national security.”
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The special counsel’s counterintelligence findings could illuminate the extent to which people in Trump’s orbit — and the president himself — have been, or remain, compromised. But those findings were largely handed off to the FBI over the course of the 22-month probe and were not enumerated in the final report.
And, speaking of Maria Butina...
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.Butina pleaded guilty in December to one count of conspiracy to act as an agent of a foreign official. She admitted to using her contacts in GOP political circles, in the National Rifle Association and at the National Prayer Breakfast to influence US relations with Russia.
As part of her plea deal, Butina has cooperated extensively with the government. A source familiar with the situation said she primarily provided information about her boyfriend, GOP political operative Paul Erickson, who was allegedly involved in her scheme.
So far, Erickson has not faced charges in DC. Erickson was indicted in February on wire fraud and money laundering charges in a separate case in South Dakota. He pleaded not guilty to the federal charges.
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An assistant US attorney, Erik Kenerson, said Butina worked with a Russian official as a "conduit" to send information to the Russian government, and listed several examples that the defense had not disputed of her reports, including a list of potential US secretary of state nominees she had sent back.
Kenerson also described how Butina would organize dinners with influential Americans to practice and "adjust her pitch" to draw out useful information.
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Butina spoke for five minutes at Friday's hearing, her voice at times breaking, as she expressed regret for her crime and asked for forgiveness.
"I deeply regret this crime," Butina said. "Ironically it has harmed my attempts to improve relationships between the two countries."
"I came to the US not under orders but with hope," Butina said. "I sought to build bridges between my motherland and the country that I grew to love."
"Never did I wish to hurt anyone," Butina said.
While prosecutors have admitted that Butina is not a spy in the traditional sense, they argued that her crime still could have jeopardized national security.
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She is the first Russian citizen convicted of crimes relating to the 2016 election, though her efforts to infiltrate Republican circles appeared to be separate from the Kremlin's sweeping election-meddling campaign detailed in special counsel Robert Mueller's report.
The 30-year-old gun rights enthusiast has been incarcerated since her arrest in July and will receive credit for the nine months previously served. She will be deported to Russia after serving her sentence.
CNN
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