WASHINGTON _ Federal investigators have traced a number of suspicious financial transactions involving Maria Butina, a Russian gun rights activist who was arrested July 15, a Republican operative and several obscure companies, people familiar with the matter say.
The transactions could help explain why FBI counterintelligence agents kept a close watch over the last two years on Butina, a 29-year-old graduate student who was taken into custody in Washington when investigators suspected she was preparing to leave the country. She is charged with conspiring to covertly serve as a Russian agent seeking to influence the National Rifle Association and other U.S. political groups.
McClatchy reported in January that the FBI was investigating whether Butina's mentor, Alexander Torshin, had funneled money to the NRA in an effort to bolster the group's financial support for Donald Trump's presidential campaign. The nation's leading gun rights lobby was Trump's biggest financial backer, spending more than $30 million on his behalf and in opposition to Trump's Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, an advocate for tougher restrictions on firearms sales.
