Inside the NRA by Joshua L. Powell

Author:Joshua L. Powell [POWELL, JOSHUA L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2020-09-22T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 5

From Russia with Love

After the election in 2016, media around the world found itself caught up in the spellbinding connection between an attractive twenty-seven-year-old Russian agent, Maria Butina, and her ties to the NRA. Tall, slim, seductive, Butina had grown up around guns, learning to hunt in southern Siberia with her father. Starting in 2013, she had become an advocate of liberalizing Russia’s gun laws, which strictly restricted handguns; she had made a splash in the Russian media three years before when she became the founder of a Russian gun rights group, Right to Bear Arms. It would gain her immediate notoriety. But then she brought her act to America, ingratiating herself with prominent conservatives and a coterie of NRA executives and board members, on whom she made an equally memorable impression.

And after the U.S. presidential election, she was accused of being a Russian agent, working to infiltrate and influence America’s political elections.

Crazy, right?

Suddenly we’re cozying up to the very people we’d fought the Cold War against? A gun rights activist from Mother Russia? Does a dictator like Putin really want to arm his citizens? I don’t need to take a poll of NRA members to know what they think of the Russians…

Honest to God, you cannot make this up.

The question on everyone’s mind: Was there a dark money connection between Russian-backed gun groups and the NRA, funneling money from Moscow to support Donald Trump’s election? It was an explosive narrative—guns, sex, espionage, and politics—that could have been dreamed up by a Hollywood screenwriter. And the media world ran with it.

And seriously, how could you blame them? This woman ran one of the oldest ops in the KGB playbook, Red Sparrow tactics that should have been obvious to all of us. But Butina worked her magic on a number of NRA board members, presidents, and others. She was incredibly appealing and coquettish and knew how to make these guys feel important.

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