Stahl’s feature with Butina started off with subjectively stacked talking points. The not so well substantiated mantra of Russian meddling in the 2016 US presidential election was harped on – something that Butina wasn’t accused of.

Stahl expressed astonishment that someone Butina’s age (23 at the time) had been doing the activity she was involved in. Butina said that remark was sexist. In actuality, Stahl was exhibiting age discrimination and possibly doing so in a hypocritical way. Consider Mark Zuckerberg’s age when he achieved far greater fame than Butina. Other early bloomers include Joshua Wong and Catherine Chumachenko. Now 23, the Hong Kong political activist Wong started getting noticed in his teens. Chumachenko (the wife of former Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko) headed the pro-Stepan Bandera Captive Nations Committee in her early twenties.

John Demers’ appearance on the 60 Minutes segment was for the purpose to mop up on Butina. No one was there to mop up on him. Demers’ US government office was involved with prosecuting Butina. He projected his deceptive manner to Butina. Demers belittled her comment on the anti-Russian biases evident in the US, while highlighting the image of Butina lobbying for a foreign government in the US, without being registered to do so.

BS aside, it’s fairly well known that numerous individuals in the US have in one way or the other, done the bidding for foreign countries/governments without being registered as a foreign agent. This very matter can be murky and with varying factors, which arguably go against taking the marching orders of a given foreign government.

Someone can independently have a pro-American and pro-Russian stance, without coordinating his/her views with a government. This observation doesn’t omit the possibility of such a person periodically interacting with government or government-connected people (American, Russian or other) – a point that concerns Butina.

Relative to Butina, is it too much of a stretch to characterize Alexandra Chalupa as a foreign operative? Butina is a guns rights advocate, who also seeks improved US-Russian ties. How horrible! We’re to believe that there was a grand Russian plan to takeover the US, with the infiltration of the National Rifle Association (NRA) as a stepping stone. If anything, the NRA was more on the verge of gaining influence in Russia than vice versa. To underscore this point, Butina sought NRA like influence in Russia.

In comparison, during the 2016 US presidential election, Chalupa interacted with Ukrainian government personnel to find dirt on Trump’s campaign for the benefit of the Democratic National Committee – specifically Hillary Clinton. At the time, the Kiev regime wasn’t pleased with what Trump said about Russian-Ukrainian issues. This was also true among US based neocons, neolibs and some others. The US mass media interest in Chalupa’s activity has been limited, when compared to Butina and the Russiagate hoopla.

On the subject of acting like a foreign agent, Michael Pillsbury has presented evidence indicating that Joe Biden (when he was vice president) adopted a more pro-Chinese position after his son received a lucrative arrangement in China.

Demers’ belittling of anti-Russian biases in the US runs counter to reality. A prime comparative example is evident with the hypocritical condemnations on CNN and MSNBC, over the second guessing of Alexander Vindman, the Ukrainian SSR born US army officer, who said that Donald Trump’s phone conversation with Volodymyr Zelensky was inappropriate. (Vindman was one of several individuals who listened in on that phone discussion.)

There was some pro-Trump backlash over Vindman, suggesting that he isn’t pleased with what the US president has said over the course of time regarding Russian-Ukrainian matters. Thereafter, CNN and MSNBC ran segments suggesting that the pro-Trump response to Vindman is discriminatory – in the form of questioning the loyalty of a foreign born person. Among those leading that charge are Brian Williams, Michael McFaul and Max Boot.

Relatively speaking, not much is known about Vindman’s views, unlike William Taylor, who (in articles and live appearances) is pro-Euromaidan Ukrainian and Russia unfriendly. (Taylor like Vindman had testified before the Adam Schiff led investigation of the Trump-Zelensky phone conversation.) A retired US army officer Jim Hickman, describes Vindman as a pro-Democratic Party leaning individual, lacking scruples. Noting Vindman’s Jewish background, the Alexei Bayer and Julia Ioffe pieces on Vindman are limited in scope. Regardless of ethnicity or religion, those of a former Russian Empire and/or former Soviet heritage aren’t monolithic.

Bayer takes a pro-Euromaidan Ukrainian/anti-Russian leaning slant, as evidenced by his frequent Kyiv Post appearances. His article at issue presents Trump as being more pro-Russian than pro-Euromaidan Ukrainian. Another way of reviewing Trump is to observe that he’s not anti-Russian, along the lines of Bayer, Taylor and the Kyiv Post, while having America’s best interests (as Trump sees it) at heart. (BTW, among the high profile of former Soviet based English language media, the Kyiv Post is better at promoting nationalist anti-Russian leaning views, when compared to The Moscow Times’ approach to patriotically reasonable Russian perspectives.)

Whatever the case is with Vindman, the comments second guessing him, fall well short of the clearly stated anti-Russian bigotry, expressed by James Clapper, the former national security adviser, who was hired by CNN as an analyst. When discussing the CBS 60 Minutes feature on Butina, CNN’s Brian Todd belittles the otherwise clear anti-Russian bigotry, which his employer is casual about. Todd’s November 4 CNN bit muddies facts with questionable opinions. From that, a creative attempt is made to suggest something sinister. Butina didn’t do anything close to stealing or attempting to steal classified US government information.

Contrary to Todd, given the anti-Russian backdrop evident, it wasn’t unreasonable for Butina to (at one point) advocate a low profile Russian presence in the US. A thought that Todd spun as something underhanded.

As I previously noted, US sports legal politico Travis Tygart’s support for a collective ban on all Russian Olympic athletes is very much in line with the anti-Russian biases dominating the US mass media and body politic. A November 6 New York Times article gives credence to the belief that American University is too soft on Russia. Never mind doing an overall comparison with the anti-Russian biases evident in high profile situations. You’d be hard pressed to find any US mass media follow-up on the anti-Russian biases at numerous places, including the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies and Atlantic Council.

The Mueller Special Counsel inquiry is far from over even though a final report on its findings has been issued. Although the investigation had a mandate to explore all aspects of the alleged Russian interference in the 2016 US election, from the start the focus was on the possibility that some members of the Trump campaign had colluded with the Kremlin to influence the outcome of the election to favor the GOP candidate. Even though that could not be demonstrated, many prominent Trump critics, to include Laurence Tribe of the Harvard Law School, are demanding that the investigation continue until Congress has discovered “the full facts of Russia’s interference [to include] the ways in which that interference is continuing in anticipation of 2020, and the full story of how the president and his team welcomed, benefited from, repaid, and obstructed lawful investigation into that interference and the president’s cooperation with it.”

Tribe should perhaps read the report more carefully. While it does indeed confirm some Russian meddling, it does not demonstrate that anyone in the Trump circle benefited from it or cooperated with it. The objective currently being promoted by dedicated Trump critics like Tribe is to make a case to impeach the president based on the alleged enormity of the Russian activity, which is not borne out by the facts: the Russian role was intermittent, small scale and basically ineffective.

One interesting aspect of the Mueller inquiry and the ongoing Russophobia that it has generated is the essential hypocrisy of the Washington Establishment. It is generally agreed that whatever Russia actually did, it did not affect the outcome of the election. That the Kremlin was using intelligence resources to act against Hillary Clinton should surprise no one as she described Russian President Vladimir Putin as Hitler and also made clear that she would be taking a very hard line against Moscow.

The anti-Russia frenzy in Washington generated by the vengeful Democrats and an Establishment fearful of a loss of privilege and entitlement claimed a number of victims. Among them was Russian citizen Maria Butina, who has a court date and will very likely be sentenced tomorrow.

Regarding Butina, the United States Department of Justice would apparently have you believe that the Kremlin sought to subvert the five-million-member strong National Rifle Association (NRA) by having a Russian citizen take out a life membership in the organization with the intention of corrupting it and turning it into an instrument for subverting American democracy. Maria Butina has, by the way, a long and well documented history as an advocate for gun ownership and was a co-founder in Russia of Right to Bear Arms, which is not an intelligence front organization of some kind. It is rather a genuine lobbying group with an active membership and agenda. Contrary to what has been reported in the mainstream media, Russians can own guns but the licensing and registration procedures are long and complicated, which Right to Bear Arms, modeling itself on the NRA, is seeking to change.

Butina, a graduate student at American University, is now in a federal prison, having been charged with collusion and failure to register as an agent of the Russian Federation. She was arrested on July 15, 2018. It is decidedly unusual to arrest and confine someone who has failed to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938 (FARA), but she has not been granted bail because, as a Russian citizen, she is considered to be a “flight risk,” likely to try to flee the US and return home.

FARA requires all individuals and organizations acting on behalf of foreign governments to registered with the Department of Justice and to report their sources of income and contacts. Federal prosecutors have claimed that Butina was reporting back to a Russian official while deliberating cultivating influential figures in the United States as potential resources to advance Russian interests, a process that is described in intelligence circles as “spotting and assessing.”

Maria eventually pleaded guilty of not registering under FARA to mitigate any punishment, hoping that she would be allowed to return to Russia after a few months in prison on top of the nine months she has already served. She has reportedly fully cooperated the US authorities, turning over documents, answering questions and undergoing hours of interrogation by federal investigators before and after her guilty plea.

Maria Butina basically did nothing that damaged US security and it is difficult to see where her behavior was even criminal, but the prosecution is asking for 18 months in prison for her in addition to the time served. She would be, in fact, one of only a handful of individuals ever to be imprisoned over FARA, and they all come from countries that Washington considers to be unfriendly, to include Cuba, Saddam’s Iraq and Russia. Normally the failure to comply with FARA is handled with a fine and compulsory registration.

Butina was essentially convicted of the crime of being Russian at the wrong time and in the wrong place and she is paying for it with prison. Selective enforcement of FARA was, ironically, revealed through evidence collected and included in the Mueller Report relating to the only foreign country that actually sought to obtain favors from the incoming Trump Administration. That country was Israel and the individual who drove the process and should have been fined and required to register with FARA was President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. As Kushner also had considerable “flight risk” to Israel, which has no extradition treaty with the United States, he should also have been imprisoned.

Kushner reportedly aggressively pressured members of the Trump transition team to contact foreign ambassadors at the United Nations to convince them to vote against or abstain from voting on the December 2016 United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334 condemning Israeli settlements. The resolution passed when the US, acting under direction of President Barack Obama, abstained, but incoming National Security Adviser Michael Flynn did indeed contact the Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak twice and asked for Moscow’s cooperation, which was refused. Kushner, who is so close to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the latter has slept at the Kushner apartment in New York City, was clearly acting in response to direction coming from the Israeli government.

Another interesting tidbit revealed by Mueller relates to Trump foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos’s ties to Israel over an oil development scheme. Mueller “ultimately determined that the evidence was not sufficient to obtain or sustain a conviction” that Papadopoulos “committed a crime or crimes by acting as an unregistered agent of the Israeli government.” Mueller went looking for a Russian connection but found only Israel and decided to do nothing about it.

As so often is the case, inquiries that begin by looking for foreign interference in American politics start by focusing on Washington’s adversaries but then comes up with Israel. Noam Chomsky described it best “First of all, if you’re interested in foreign interference in our elections, whatever the Russians may have done barely counts or weighs in the balance as compared with what another state does, openly, brazenly and with enormous support. Netanyahu goes directly to Congress, without even informing the president, and speaks to Congress, with overwhelming applause, to try to undermine the president’s policies—what happened with Obama and Netanyahu in 2015. Did Putin come to give an address to the joint sessions of Congress trying to—calling on them to reverse US policy, without even informing the president? And that’s just a tiny bit of this overwhelming influence.”

Maria Butina is in jail for doing nothing while Jared Kushner, who needed a godfathered security clearance due to his close Israeli ties, struts through the White House as senior advisor to the president in spite of the fact that he used his nepotistically obtained access to openly promote the interests of a foreign government. Mueller knows all about it but recommended nothing, as if it didn’t happen. The media is silent. Congress will do nothing. As Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi put it “We in Congress stand by Israel. In Congress, we speak with one voice on the subject of Israel.” Indeed.

Whelan, a former US marine, was denied bail this week in a Moscow court after it emerged that he had been found in possession of state secrets while supposedly holidaying in Russia.

Western media widely aired the theory that the American man has been “set up” by Russian state security after he had received a USB computer stick from someone while staying in a Moscow hotel last month. The person whom he received the disk from has not been identified, but presumably he or she was known to the American, otherwise why would he have accepted the item?

Whelan claims he was in Russia as a tourist and that he didn’t check the contents of the computer mini-disk at the time because he assumed it contained “images of a cathedral he had visited”. He was reportedly arrested soon after receipt of the disk, on December 28, by Federal Security Service (FSB) officers.

This sounds eerily familiar. Remember the two Russian men who visited Salisbury in March last year at around the time of the alleged poisoning of former Kremlin spy Sergei Skripal? Months later, those two men were identified as “suspects” on British CCTV cameras whose images were broadcast by media. Both then promptly came forward to give an interview to Russian media in order to clear their names, which they confirmed as Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov.

Petrov and Boshirov claimed they were in Salisbury around March 4 as tourists, not as Kremlin assassins as the British media were sensationally alleging. Asked why they were in Salisbury, the pair said it was to visit the medieval English town’s “famous cathedral” and its 123-meter spire.

The immediate reaction by British media in particular was to pour scorn and ridicule on the men’s story. The British government rubbished their claim as “obfuscation and lies”. Journalists and pundits lambasted the pair with guffaws and mockery.

Petrov and Boshirov denied they had any involvement in the alleged poisoning of Skripal – supposedly with a deadly Soviet nerve agent – and they said they were not Kremlin agents but rather worked in the sports nutrition business.

There is no indication thus far that the men’s story is false. Also, what really happened to Skripal and his daughter Yulia remains a mystery since the British authorities won’t reveal where they are – 10 months after the alleged poisoning incident.

The only follow-up media report on the Russian men’s alleged security service affiliation was by the dubious UK-based Bellingcat website, which has a history of fabricating anti-Russian propaganda, such as alleged chemical weapons attacks in Syria and the alleged shooting down by Russian-backed separatists of a Malaysian civilian airliner in eastern Ukraine in 2014.

In the case of Paul Whelan, a former US elite soldier who possesses four passports and who apparently visited Russia several times and had become familiar with the country, he is permitted by Western media to plead his innocence invoking an interest in cathedrals and churches. Not a wink of skepticism here.

However, in the case Petrov and Boshirov, who have no known background in military, they are immediately scoffed at for their declared interest in Salisbury’s medieval cathedral, which by the way is world famous and attracts thousands of visitors every year, including many Russian tourists.

What’s more, in the case of Whelan, the Western media has gone further to report that he is being set up by Russian agents, who planted the state secrets in the USB disk. It is speculated in the Western media that the Kremlin is using the American as a bargaining chip in a potential prisoner-exchange deal for Russian citizen Maria Butina. Butina was jailed at the end of last year in the US after she pleaded guilty to espionage charges, following months of isolated detention. The Kremlin said she had no association with its agencies.

Moscow categorically denies that there is an ulterior agenda for doing a prisoner swap. Russian authorities have said that Whelan was simply “caught red-handed” with state secrets and is being prosecuted accordingly. The classified information is believed to contain the names of individuals who work for Russian secret services.

Whelan’s family back in the US maintain he is innocent and that he was in Russia to attend the wedding of a friend. If found guilty, he could be facing up to 10-20 years in jail.

Who knows, maybe the American was set up in a dirty game of state intrigue.

The case of Maria Butina appears to be a disturbing one of the American state framing up a Russian citizen to bolster a political agenda of alleged Russian interference in US elections. Her pre-trial detention in solitary confinement certainly amounts to a form of psychological torture to pressure a confession. Butina is facing several years in prison, despite many observers considering her to be innocent.

But one thing seems glaringly obvious: the double standard being used by Western media which is borne out of its relentless Russophobia.

A former US marine is seen as a plausible tourist interested in viewing cathedrals whom, the Western media claim, is now being persecuted by despotic Russian authorities; while two Russian civilians are pilloried for plying a “ridiculous cover story” about Salisbury’s 123-meter spire.

The mainstream press is tipping its glasses in exultation over the latest regulatory conviction in the anti-Trump, anti-Russia brouhaha. This one comes in form of a upcoming guilty plea by a 28-year-old Russian woman named Marina Boutina. Her crime? Failing to register as a foreign agent of the Russian government.

The press is reporting how Butina has infiltrated the conservative movement by dating a GOP operative, making contacts with the Heritage Foundation, the NRA, the National Prayer Breakfast, CPAC, the Trump administration, and others conservative organizations and people.

This is obviously very scary stuff. I mean, just think about it: The entire conservative movement facing the danger of going Red, or at least pro-Russia. Then it’s just a matter of time before the U.S. government falls to the commies, or least the Russkies under former KGB officer Vladimir Putin.

Pardon the Red slip but all this anti-Russia brouhaha really does remind me of the Cold War, when the U.S. national-security establishment was warning Americans of the danger of communist infiltration within our nation. The main danger, the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA maintained, was that posed by the Soviet Union, of which the principal member was Russia. Yes,that Russia, the same country that Butina is alleged to be a secret, unregistered agent for! America, people were told, was faced with a worldwide communist conspiracy to take over the federal government and the rest of the world, a conspiracy that was supposedly based in Moscow. Yes, that Moscow! The capital of Russia!

In his famous Peace Speech at American University, President Kennedy announced an end to the Cold War racket and his intent to befriend the Russians. Of course, we all know what happened to him as a consequence. (See FFF’s ebook JFK’s War with the National Security Establishment: Why Kennedy Was Assassinated by Douglas Horne and my current ongoing series on the JFK assassination.)

One of the interesting aspects of all this is how Russia’s strategy to supposedly take over America has shifted since the Cold War. Back then, the strategy was supposedly to conquer us by force by causing the dominoes to falling places like Korea, Vietnam, and Cuba. The final big domino was going to be the United States.

Today, on the other hand, the Russian strategy is obviously to try to make friends with the United States, just as Kennedy was trying to do with Russia when he was assassinated. In dating a GOP operative, making contacts with conservatives, and attending conservative conferences, Butina was clearly part of this nefarious plan on the part of Russia to befriend the United States.

But here’s my question: Why is dating a Republican, attending conservative conferences, and making contacts with conservatives and members of the Trump administration a criminal offense here in the United States. Aren’t such activities protected by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution?

After all, we are clearly talking about actions that involve freedom of speech and freedom of association. Before anyone says that Butina is a Russian and, therefore, isn’t entitled to exercise such rights here in the United States, let’s remind ourselves of what our Declaration of independence states: that all people, not just Americans, are endowed with fundamental, God-given rights with which no government can legitimately interfere, not even the U.S. government.

Okay, you might say, but Butina isn’t being convicted of doing those things. Why, she’s not even being convicted of spying, which is what the mainstream press continues to allege about her nefarious dating, contacts, and conference activities. She’s being convicted of failing to register as a Russian foreign agent.

Now, this might shock you and maybe even scare you, but under U.S. law it’s not illegal for Butina or anyone else to be an agent of the Russian government. It’s only illegal to fail to sign an official U.S. government registry disclosing that a person is acting as an agent for the Russia government (or any other foreign government).

Is that not sort of weird? In other words, it’s legal for a Russian to befriend the United States, including lobbying the president and the members of Congress. But the person doing the befriending is simply required to sign an official U.S. registry indicating that he or she is acting on behalf of the Russian government.

But given that everyone, including Butina and every other Russian, has the fundamental, natural, God-given rights to engage in freedom of speech and freedom of association, then why in the world must she register in order to exercise such rights? Doesn’t a registration requirement convert these rights into privileges rather than rights?

It turns out that this foreign-registration law, not surprisingly, was enacted in 1938 by the Franklin Roosevelt administration, no doubt as part of FDR’s welfare-warfare state revolution that he was implementing in the United States. At that time, federal officials were inculcating a fear of Nazi Germany into the American people and, ironically, a mindset of friendship toward Russia and the rest of the Soviet Union into the American people, who were strongly opposed to entry into World War II. Ironically, after FDR succeeded in pulling the U.S. into the war, his successor President Truman succeeded in making Hitler’s wartime enemy and America’s wartime partner, the Soviet Union, into America’s postwar official Cold War enemy.

Thus, that was what the Cold War was all about — keeping Americans afraid, very afraid, that the Russians were coming to get them. That deep fear lasted until 1989, when the Soviet Union unilaterally and surprisingly ended the Cold War, thereby depriving U.S. officials of their longtime scary bugaboo. After that, the official enemy became Saddam Hussein, and then terrorists, and then Muslims, and, to a certain extent, illegal immigrants.

But now we have come full circle, with Russia once again an official enemy of the United States. No, there has been no law enacted to that effect. And no, there has been no official declaration of war against Russia. But the Pentagon and the CIA have made it clear, especially through the mainstream press, that Russia is to be considered, once again, an official enemy of the United States. Maria Butina’s conviction for befriending the United States without having first registered her name with U.S. officials confirms that.

fff.org

Maria, who has pleaded not guilty to all charges, is now seeking donations to help pay for her legal defense as the Russian government renews demands that she be released from jail or be tried on whatever charges the Justice Department can come up with, but her release is unlikely as she is really a political prisoner.

The media has been silent about Maria Butina because the case against her is falling apart. In early September prosecutors admitted that they had misunderstood text messages used to support claims that she had offered to trade sex for access to information. Demands that she consequently be released from prison were, however, rejected. Her lawyer observed that "The impact of this inflammatory allegation, which painted Ms. Butina as some type of Kremlin-trained seductress, or spy-novel honeypot character, trading sex for access and power, cannot be overstated."

In an attempt to make the Butina embarrassment disappear from the news, the Justice Department has proposed an unprecedented gag order to prevent her attorney from appearing in the media in a way that could prejudice a jury should her case eventually come to trial. Currently there is no court date and Maria remains in jail indefinitely, but the press could care less – she is just one more Russiagate casualty in an ongoing saga that has long since passed her by.

Given the Maria Butina story and the hysteria over all things Russian it was perhaps inevitable that the tale of Kremlin interference in American elections would be resurrected and repeated. Federal prosecutors are now reporting that another Russian woman has illegally conspired with others to “defraud the United States” and interfere with the U.S. political system, to include plans for conducting “information warfare” to subvert the upcoming 2018 midterm elections.

The complaint was filed on October 19th at a federal court in Virginia which handles most national security cases. According to the court documents, Elena Alekseevna Khusyainova, a 44-year-old resident of St. Petersburg in Russia, has worked as the head accountant for “Project Lakhta,” a Russian influence operation backed by an oligarch close to President Vladi­mir Putin. According to the Justice Department, the operation “spread misinformation about US political issues including immigration, gun control, the Confederate flag, and protests by NFL players. It also used events including the Las Vegas mass shooting, and the far-Right rally in Charlottesville, to spread discord.”

Khusyainova, who is not likely to be extradited to the United States for trial, allegedly purchased advertising in social networks and also supported dissident groups. The accusation of the American authorities emphasizes the connection between Khusyainova and St. Petersburg businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin, who was previously identified by the media as the owner of a ‘Troll Factory’ in St. Petersburg. In the U.S., several charges have already been brought against him and his staff, including interfering in the presidential elections in 2016. 

The Maria Butina story reveals how there is a fundamental flaw in the justice system in the United States. When someone is found guilty by the media there is no way to right the wrong when the story shifts and starts to break down. The New York Times or Washington Post is unlikely to leap to the defense of the accused. Maria Butina has been raked over the coals in stories that were partly true but mostly false in terms of any criminal intent. She is still waiting for justice and will likely be doing so for some time.

The case of Elena Khusyainova is Maria Butina redux, only even more idiotic. No actual evidence is presented in the indictment and since Elena is in Russia and not likely to visit the United States, the entire affair is a bit of theater intended to heighten hysteria about the U.S. midterm elections. Is the U.S. electoral system really so fragile and what did Elena actually seek to do? The Justice Department is silent on the issue beyond vague accusations about trolling on the internet by Russians. One wonders who in the federal government ordered the investigation and signed off on the indictment.

Both Maria and Elena are victims of a politicized miscarriage of justice. Maria Butina should be released from prison now and allowed to pay her fine for being an unregistered agent before leaving the country. There is no justification for holding her in prison. And the indictment of Elena Khusyainova is not worth the paper it is written on. It should be torn up and thrown away.

During its short period in force, the prohibition spawned a popular saying in the Old Dominion: “Buy one gun a month – it’s the law!”

A similar attitude may be appropriate in light of an estimate that due to vague statutes and the proliferation of federal regulations – which have the force of law – we wake up in the morning, go to work, come home, eat dinner, and go to sleep  unaware we may have committed several federal crimes in the course of the day. The number varies but the average number of crimes per American seems to be about three.

The more important point is that every one of us is probably guilty of something. “There is no one in the United States over the age of 18 who cannot be indicted for some federal crime,” retired Louisiana State University law professor John Baker told the Wall Street Journal in July 2011. “That is not an exaggeration.”

• This means that if they want you, they can get you.

• That in turn means that who gets charged, prosecuted, and jailed is a matter of the relevant officials’ discretion.

• And that in turn means that discretion can and will be politicized.

Like the boychiks used to say in the good ol’ NKVD (People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs; Народный комиссариат внутренних дел): “Give Us the Man, and We Will Make the Case.” (I guess nowadays, we should say “person.”)

Let’s stipulate that the true Rechtsstaat, where justice is administered in a politically neutral manner is few and far between in human history. The norm is politicized justice where holders of power – in an elective system, the winners – use the justice system to harass and terrorize the losers.

But America today must be the only country that’s ever been so goofy that the losers are able to terrorize the winners. Whatever your feelings about the current administration, consider: the feds come in like gangbusters, breaking down doors, rousting targets from their beds, seizing their personal documents and devices, and subjecting them to piled-on charges and questioning designed to result in perjury, obstruction, and conspiracy charges – especially the phony crime of “lying to the FBI” – adding  up to decades in jail. Those accused are forced to plead guilty to a lesser charge or bankrupt themselves hoping they will be vindicated by a jury of sheep their peers, where the feds have a 90 percent-plus conviction rate. That’s treatment meted out to Paul Manafort, Mike Flynn, George Papadopoulos, Michael Cohen, and others.

Conversely, clear evidence of crime, such as mishandling classified material, is a freebie: “No reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case.” Oh, some of the emails are “personal?” That’s OK, you decide what’s what – we trust you! There’s a claim a foreign power hacked a computer server, which some compare to an act of war demanding retaliation – no, we don’t need to see the server itself, your contractor’s report is good enough for us! And while you’re at it, go ahead and purge your electronic records (even material you’re obligated to preserve) and smash up your smart phones and pull out SIM cards. Oh, hey, does anyone need immunity? No need to bargain, we’re happy to provide! That’s the treatment accorded to Hillary Clinton, Huma Abedin, Cheryl Mills, Tony Podesta, and their ilk.

It’s no coincidence, Comrades, that this disparity is the work of denizens of a law enforcement and intelligence apparatus that is focused like a laser on two closely linked objectives: One, get Donald Trump. Two, at all costs, make sure that he cannot in any way move forward on his stated objective to improve ties with Russia. Those objectives are the two sides of the coin called Russiagate. All else, including the disparity of treatment given those close to Trump versus his opponents, is a function of Russiagate. Three other things also follow:

• Trump’s powerlessness, even within his own administration. What kind of Chief Executive is reduced to tweeting what his subordinates ought to do – for example, providing Congress with documents demanded from the Department of Justice – versus ordering them to do it?

• Trump’s personnel. People wonder, especially on foreign policy, why has Trump surrounded himself with a swarm of neoconservatives and Bush-retread Republicans? Maybe he is one of them. Or maybe anyone who dissented from the established warmongering line would be putting his head through a noose.

• Flipping the “Russians did it” narrative: Among the President’s defenders, on say Fox News, no less than among his detractors, Russia is the enemy who (altogether now!) “interfered in our elections” in order to “undermine our democracy.” Mitt Romney was right! The only argument is over who was the intended beneficiary of Muscovite mendacity, Trump or Hillary – that’s the variable. The constant is that Putin is Hitler and only a traitor would want to get along with him. All sides agree that the Christopher Steele dossier is full of “Russian dirt” – though there’s literally zero actual evidence of Kremlin involvement but a lot pointing to Britain’s MI6 and GCHQ.

The Russia! Russia! Russia! hysteria is sometimes called a new McCarthyism, but that’s unfair – to Tailgunner Joe. In his day, whatever his excesses, there really were Stalinist agents at the State Department. This new panic is nothing we’ve seen before, except maybe during the Salem witch frenzy of the 1690s.

Which brings us to Maria Butina, a Russian grad student and Second Amendment advocate jailed (and refused bail) on thin allegations of unregistered lobbying. As Phil Giraldi observes: “If you are a Russian and you are caught talking to anyone in any way influential, there is potentially hell to pay because the FBI will be watching you. You are automatically assumed to be part of a conspiracy. Once ‘evidence’ is collected, you will be indicted and sent to prison, mostly to send a message to Moscow. It is the ultimate irony that how the old Soviet Union’s judiciary used to function is now becoming standing operating procedure in the United States.”  Butina has been portrayed as some kind of honey pot femme fatale, a cross between Anna Chapman and Natasha from “The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle,” using her Slavic charms to bewitch the naïve ΜOΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ crowd at the National Rifle Association. Among Butina’s nefarious activities: networking at the National Prayer Breakfast. If they arrested everyone with foreign government connections schmoozing at the Prayer Breakfast, they’d have to shut the thing down.  Honestly, I doubt even the investigators believe Butina is guilty of anything, and if she were any other nationality but Russian she wouldn’t be facing years in jail. [ATTENTION: A legal defense fund for Butina has now been formed!]

Which brings us to the biggest threat to what’s left of our liberties as Americans. (No, not the yanking of the security clearance of former CIA Director John Brennan.) As is well known, we are facing an unprecedented, coordinated campaign of deplatforming, shadowbanning, flitering, and other foul means of putting dissenting voices into a digital GULag. While the glove belongs to tech giants and their executives, the hand inside is the government’s. Using Russian meddling as a pretext, companies that do billions of dollars of business with the federal government are only too happy to police the web of “suspected Russian-linked accounts.” And since, as Hillary says, Putin is the leader of the worldwide “authoritarian, white-supremacist, and xenophobic movement” who is “emboldening right-wing nationalists, separatists, racists, and even neo-Nazis,” anything and anybody that fails Virginia Senator Mark Warner’s or Mark Zuckerberg’s sniff test is now fair game. We are told that to sow discord and chaos Russian troll farms and social media ads target “divisive” issues related to race, Black Lives Matter, and Ferguson, absent which we’d all be holding hands singing Kumbaya. Connecting Putin and Russia with racism feeds into a cockamamie phantasmagoria of Crimethink concepts that increasingly are considered outside the protection of what was once quaintly known as free speech: hate speech, fake news, conspiracy theories, white nationalism, white supremacy, white privilege, patriarchy, “cisgenderism,” and many more. The idea of “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it” is out the window.  Instead we have: anyone to the right of me gets what he deserves.

While we hear a lot about the “input” end – violation of free speech rights, a deadly, valid concern – even more worrisome is the “output”: limiting what Americans can see and hear that differs from the official media line, itself largely a bulletin board for government sources. Unsurprisingly, that line is unfailingly for war and intervention. As Patrick Armstrong puts it, maybe the censors could just buy some old Soviet jamming equipment.

It is hard to escape the notion that we are approaching the edge of some profound historical moment that will have far-reaching, literally life and death consequences, both domestically and internationally. In the period preceding World War I how many Europeans suspected that their lives would soon be forever changed – and, for millions of them, ended? Who in the years, say, 1910 to 1913, could have imagined that the decades of peace, progress, and civilization in which they had grown up, and which seemingly would continue indefinitely, instead would soon descend into a horror of industrial-scale slaughter, revolution, and brutal ideologies?

Whether opposition to the gathering darkness can be effective is uncertain. But what is not uncertain is our duty to oppose it, even at the risk of committing three felonies a day. “Fellow Thought criminals – unite!”

[A version of the foregoing was delivered to the Ron Paul Institute Media & War 2018 Conferenceon August 18, 2018.]

Maria Butina, a graduate student at American University, is now in solitary confinement in a federal prison, having been charged with collusion with Torshin and failure to register as an agent of the Russian Federation. It is unusual to arrest and confine someone who has failed to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938, but she has not been granted bail because, as a Russian citizen, she is considered to be a “flight risk,” likely to try to flee the US and return home. It is to be presumed that she is being pressured to identify others involved in her alleged scheme to overthrow American democracy through NRA membership.

Indeed, in any event, it would be difficult to imagine why anyone would consider the NRA to be a legitimate intelligence target. It only flexes its admitted powerful legislative muscles over issues relating to gun ownership, not regarding policy on Russia. In short, Butina and by extension Torshin appear to have done nothing wrong. Both are energetic advocates for their country and guns rights, which they appear to believe in, and Butina’s aggressive networking has broken no law except not registering, which in itself assumes that she is a Russian government agent, something that has not been demonstrated. To put the shoe on the other foot, will every American who now travels to Russia and engages in political conversations with local people be suspected of acting as an agent of the US government? Once you open the door, it swings both ways.

One might dismiss the entire Affair Butina as little more than a reflection of the anti-Russia hysteria that has been sweeping the United States since Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 election, but that would be unfair to those remaining honest FBI agents who may have investigated Butina and Torshin and come up with what they believed to be a plausible case for an indictment. There were possibly suspicious money transfers as well as email intercepts that might be interpreted as incriminating.

But two important elements are clearly missing. The first is motive. Did the Kremlin seriously believe that it could get anything substantial out of having a gun totin’ attractive young Russian woman as a life member in the NRA? What did the presumed puppet masters in Moscow expect to obtain apart from the sorts of group photos including Butina that one gets while posing with politicians at the annual NRA convention? Sure, the photo might even evolve into a cup of coffee together, but what is the end game?

Second is the lack of any of the hallmarks of an intelligence operation, which is referred to in the business as tradecraft. Spies meet secretly or at least outside the public eye with prospective agents whereas Maria operated completely in the open and she made no effort to conceal her love for her country and her desire that Washington and Moscow normalize relations. Spies also communicate securely, which means that they use encrypted systems or various cut-outs, i.e. mis-directions, when maintaining contact with those who are running them. Again, Maria did none of that, which is why the FBI has her emails. Also spies work under what is referred to as an “operating directive” in CIA-speak where they have very specific information that they seek to obtain from their contacts. There is no indication that Maria Butina in any way sought classified information or intelligence that would relate either to the security of the United States or to America’s political system. And finally, Maria made no attempt to recruit anyone and turn them into an actual controlled Russian agent, which is what spies eventually seek to do.

It has come down to this: if you are a Russian and you are caught talking to anyone in any way influential, there is potentially hell to pay because the FBI will be watching you. You are automatically assumed to be part of a conspiracy. Once “evidence” is collected, you will be indicted and sent to prison, mostly to send a message to Moscow. It is the ultimate irony that how the old Soviet Union’s judiciary used to function is now becoming standing operating procedure in the United States.