Does it actually need to be said that UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES WHATSOEVER should Trump be permitted to send Maria Butina back to Moscow while she still has value to federal prosecutors as a participant in a conspiracy to establish a secret backchannel between Trump and the Kremlin?
2/ I just read a CNN article NEUTRALLY assessing this possibility as though such an act wouldn't be PUBLIC EVIDENCE of Trump's participation in the very conspiracy that will go down in American history as the worst act of treachery ever participated in by an American politician.
3/ Butina has continued value as a witness at future trials, before Congress or for impeachment; as an expert on a historic conspiracy involving Russia, the White House, GOP officials and the National Rifle Association; and broadly as an intel expert on Kremlin covert activities.
4/ If Trump overruled federal prosecutors working on the Butina case to return her to Moscow, it'd be a scandal—even taken on its own terms and exclusive of any other lines of inquiry in the Russia investigation—on the order of Watergate. Everyone in media should understand this.
5/ If Butina has already given intel to prosecutors, we can dispense with the fiction that she has any desire to return home to face the wrath of Putin's intel apparatus, which she'd have to betray to plead guilty. So yes, we should assume she wants to offer continued assistance.
