Alleged Russian agent Maria Butina wants to change her not-guilty plea in a pending criminal case, setting the stage for her to plead guilty soon, a court filing Monday shows.
Butina, who is charged with conspiracy and failing to register as a foreign agent, and federal prosecutors filed a joint motion in U.S. District Court in in Washington to ask a judge to set a date for a change-of-plea hearing as soon as possible. Both sides noted they are available for such a hearing in the next several days.
“The parties have resolved this matter,” that motion says. It is not clear if Butina has reached a cooperation agreement with prosecutors from the District of Columbia.
The gun activist Butina, who remains in custody, was arrested in July. She is a accused of plotting with her former boss to infiltrate American political organizations, including the National Rifle Association, to promote Russia’s agenda. Butina had lived with a man identified as Paul Erickson, a Republican activist and NRA member.
During a bail hearing last summer, prosecutors said Butina has a “history of deceptive conduct,” and “extensive foreign connections.
The FBI, in a court document, said Butina had connections to an unidentified “high-level official in the Russian government,” and that she had acted at the behest of that official.
Butina came to the United States in the summer of 2016 on a student visa.
The New Yorker last July, in an article about Butina, said that she “will go down in history as perhaps the first person to publicly ask” Donald Trump “what his policy toward Russian sanctions would be if he were President.” That was question was posed to Trump at a public event in 2015.
