Thread by @gavinsblog

So Maria Butina's FB account is still up. She was arrested, and the FBI affidavit is here justice.gov/opa/press-rele…

she is nearly at the limit for the number of friends you can have on FB (5k)...

we already knew of the connection to Paul Erickson, but the WaPo ties her to him as the US political operative from the affidavit

So when did they become friends on Facebook? November 2013.

they have 6 mutual friends. Anyone with nearly 5k friends tends to be not many degrees away from lots of people. (5k people w/ 180 friends on average = nearly 1m friends of friends) ..

one of the six mutual friends appears to have served aboard the USS Seawolf fast attack submarine, and is now Command Master Chief at the Strategic Weapons Facility Pacific (SWFPAC) facility in Silverdale, Washington.

what do they do there? "assembly, storage, check-out, on-load, and off-load of Trident D-5 strategic missiles". So of the nearly 5k friends, and 6 mutual connections between Butina and Erickson ... given this number of friends though, this could easily be coincidence.

also they could have just shared an interest in gun rights / NRA stuff. But you always wonder. She became friends with the US Navy officer in Dec 2015. That officer became friends with Erickson in January 2017. Small world. (it really is)

Anyways, a sidenote. SWFPAC is at Naval Base Kitsap in Washington. It is the third largest naval base in the US, and also one of two strategic nuclear weapons facilities. It's home to US SSBN submarines that carry Trident nuclear missiles. Here you see a sub in dry dock

Anyways, the comms as released are interesting between her and Torshin (it seems clear it's him). SWFPAC guy is only one of two of her friends from US Navy. The other is retired.

Addendum: Butina became FB friends with @juliaioffe in Dec 2014. @philipindc in Oct 2016, @SebGorka in Feb 2015, @dr_ariel_cohen in Sep 2014. Fair to say that Butina was a prolific FB user and friended everyone! (and being friends on FB doesn't imply anything untoward either)

And most of her friends listed as living in DC are people she went to university with

so before people go mad on conspiracies... anyone with ~5k friends and is *networking as a strategy* is going to have tonnes of mutual connections with all sorts of people (inc me). Because Facebook.