NEW: Maria Butina's time in South Dakota has mainly been ignored, but it would become the blueprint for her later efforts in DC and the NRA.
It's there, interacting with average Americans, that she learned what makes US conservatives tick. buzzfeednews.com/article/verabe…
It's there, interacting with average Americans, that she learned what makes US conservatives tick. buzzfeednews.com/article/verabe…
Former intelligence officers say that like the Russians who traveled to the US for the IRA in 2014, while she was in South Dakota Butina "was getting information on how our society works" on a very local level buzzfeednews.com/article/verabe…
A growing number of people in South Dakota are flabbergasted to find themselves in photos or Facebook friends with an alleged Russian agent.
"I met a Russian spy 3 years before she was outed" - teen who posted a photo with Butina at a Young Republicans summer camp in 2015
"I met a Russian spy 3 years before she was outed" - teen who posted a photo with Butina at a Young Republicans summer camp in 2015
Paul Erickson's neighbors, some of whom remember seeing Maria Butina around, are...kind of freaking out. buzzfeednews.com/article/verabe…
The Republican candidate for South Dakota’s lone US House seat has found himself having to explain to critics how an alleged Russian agent ended up speaking to kids at his Young Republicans summer camp.
His tweet from 2015:
His tweet from 2015:
“Expecting that people at a summer camp would sniff out a Russian spy as part of a 25-minute speech about freedom is probably expecting more than any rational person could." buzzfeednews.com/article/verabe…
“When we got there, we were told a Russian model was going to join the hunting group,” one of the guys who was there that day told BuzzFeed News. buzzfeednews.com/article/verabe…
In South Dakota, Butina wrote often detailed observations of how US institutions worked. Once she wrote about local school board elections in Sioux Falls - how IDs and tablets were used to vote - and said she was “fortunate to observe how local self-government is realized here.”
After her arrest made news, people in South Dakota realized that Maria Butina had spent a lot of time there talking to kids - high school, college, summer camp. It wasn't even always about gun rights - once she spoke to a HS class about entrepreneurship buzzfeed.com/verabergengrue…
Before Maria Butina became the red-haired leader of the Russian gun rights group (established with a Russian official), she looked quite different
