Accused Russian Agent Worked Botched Fuel Deals with Former NRA President’s Wife, Report Says
The story of accused Russian agent Maria Butina is becoming increasingly bizarre as more details of her life and dealings in the U.S. are revealed.
In a story published Sunday, The New York Times described a series of failed deals by Butina and her partner, Republican political operative Paul Erickson, to secure massive quantities of jet fuel from Russia. Clients in those deals—which never came to fruition—were recommended by former National Rifle Association president David Keene and his wife, Donna.
As described in the Times report, which was based on hundreds of pages of emails, Butina and Erickson’s efforts to broker nonsensical quantities of Russian jet fuel—“nearly double what all of Russia’s refineries export in a month,” according to the report—to the Keenes’ contacts approached the absurd.