ROSALIND S HELDERMAN, TOM HAMBURGER, SHANE HARRIS AND CAROL D LEONNIG Last updated 20:04, July 18 2018 1 NEWS Russian woman Maria Butina arrested in US on charges she acted as a Russian agent who developed close ties with the US Republican Party. For nearly five years, the young Russian political-science student was an unusual fixture at the most important events of the U.S. conservative movement.Maria Butina, who was indicted this week in the US on charges of being a covert Russian agent, struck up friendships with the influential leaders of the National Rifle Association and the Conservative Political Action Conference, touting her interest in US affairs and efforts to promote gun rights in Vladimir Putin's restrictive Russia. She sidled up to Republican presidential candidates, seeking first an encounter with Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and then, after his rising candidacy stumbled, with Donald Trump.But by August 2016, when she moved to the US on a student visa, the FBI was watching, according to US officials familiar with the matter. 
MARINA BUTINA/FACEBOOK The US government charged 29-year-old Russian woman Maria Butina with conspiracy to act as a Russian government agent while infiltrating political groups. Rather than question or confront her, they said, officials decided to track her movements to determine whom she was meeting and what she was doing in the US - the
Read more from our friends at the NRA
