Espionage - Feds Target Butina's GOP Boyfriend as Foreign Agent

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Feds Target Butina’s GOP Boyfriend as Foreign Agent

Paul Erickson served as accused Kremlin spy Maria Butina’s guide as she penetrated the American conservative movement. Now he’s under investigation as a Russian agent, too.


Paul Erickson, a longtime Republican politico whose Russian girlfriend is in jail on charges she acted as a covert foreign agent, has been informed that he may face similar accusations. The Daily Beast reviewed a “target letter” that federal investigators sent Erickson’s lawyer, which said they are considering bringing charges against him under Section 951 of the U.S. code—the law barring people from secretly acting as agents of foreign governments.
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If prosecutors bring the charges named in the letter, Erickson would be the first American embroiled in the 2016 Russia investigation charged under a statute that Justice Department lawyers describe as “espionage-lite.”

“Charging an American under 951 in the context of the Russia investigation is especially serious because that statute is generally reserved for espionage-like cases, such as intelligence-gathering on behalf of a foreign government,” said Ryan Goodman, a former Defense Department attorney who now teaches at the New York University School of Law.

“Essentially what it would say is that an American was acting to advance the interests of a foreign power, contrary to the interests of the United States of America,” said Renato Mariotti, a former federal prosecutor. The Daily Beast

[Hermit-The-Prog]

1. cast that net wide enough to get all the rotten fish

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2. It's even juicier than that. An expionage conviction means that others who did similar deeds

could also get swept up in such charges, i.e. Kushner and Don Jr. Remember, they had meetings at Trump Tower to get dirt on Hillary Clinton in coordination with Russian operative Natalia Veselnitskaya.

This is moving into treason territory.