Liberals have been trying to tie the NRA to collusion by pointing to their meeting with gun enthusiast and spying enthusiast Maria Butina.
But as Ed Morrissey points out at Hot Air, that narrative is imploding after it was reported that the alleged spy also met with Obama officials.
Maria Butina allegedly tried to gain access to political activists in the GOP through the NRA, but Reuters now reports that she landed meetings with two senior officials during the Obama administration. That could change the entire dynamic of the Butina narrative, and perhaps more narratives than that.
Here’s what he quoted, from Reuters:
Maria Butina, accused in the United States of spying for Russia, had wider high-level contacts in Washington than previously known, taking part in 2015 meetings between a visiting Russian official and two senior U.S. officials.
The meetings, disclosed by several people familiar with the sessions and a report prepared by a Washington think tank that arranged them, involved Stanley Fischer, then Federal Reserve vice chairman, and Nathan Sheets, then Treasury undersecretary for international affairs.
Butina traveled to the United States in April 2015 with Alexander Torshin, then the Russian Central Bank deputy governor, and they took part in separate meetings with Fischer and Sheets to discuss U.S.-Russian economic relations during Democratic former President Barack Obama’s administration.
The two meetings, which have not been previously reported, reveal a wider circle of high-powered connections that Butina sought with American political leaders and special interest groups.
Morrissey points out that they have been slamming NRA for meeting with an alleged Russian spy, but shouldn’t they be also attacking the Obama admin for doing the same?
If the Obama administration was granting her and Torshin access to the Undersecretary for International Affairs, it’s tough to blame the NRA or the GOP for a lack of due diligence in engaging with either one of them. Torshin didn’t end up on a sanctions list until April of this year, long after the NRA distanced themselves from him.
Good point.