Yulia Latynina: Maria Butina/Anna Chapman comparison doesn't give justice to Butina

I have read the court papers regarding Maria Butina that were given to the grand jury. They contained very unpleasant emails. In these emails, this benefactor of hers explains to her who she should meet and establish contacts with, and what has to be done in order to accomplish that. On the one hand, it makes a very dirty impression. However, it can’t be said that this papi of Butina is close to Trump. He tried to get closer, but in reality, he’s just an average lobbyist-slash-conman, not unlike many people surrounding the American president. A «wannabe» is the word that best describes many of those who are quite close to Trump like George Papadopoulos and Carter Page.

I don’t want to whitewash Maria Butina in any way but, judging by what I’ve seen so far, she hardly managed to inflict any damage on the US, although I have no doubt that she really was a lobbyist and didn’t register with the DOJ as a foreign agent. But she didn’t have any influence on American politics, even if she met some senior official in the Federal Reserve a couple of times.

Of course, Butina/Anna Chapman comparison doesn't give justice to Butina. Chapman was nobody. She and other people arrested and exchanged for four men accused of spying in Russia were real clowns. They made things up. It is enough to say that one of them provided Russian Intelligence Service with, I quote, «the travel schedule of the American president for five years in advance». Apparently, Russian Intelligence doesn’t know that American presidents are elected for four years, not to mention occasions on which they make unscheduled trips if some emergency happens. Butina, at the very least, met with someone, tried to infiltrate somewhere and even almost got to the level of the senior aide of the junior janitor.

On the other hand, let’s consider, for comparison, a woman called Huma Abedin. She was deputy chief of staff to Clinton, her right-hand woman. I’m interested in her more than in Butina. Abedin grew up in Saudi Arabia. Her mother still lives there and, being a really devout Muslim, she used to publish a journal that can only be described as Islamist. Abedin had been on the editorial board of that journal for quite a long time. Clinton gave a speech in Saudi Arabia, her Foundation received money from this country. And somehow it coincided with the disappearance of all words related to Islam and racial profiling of Islamic terrorists from FBI’s working manuals.

Besides, let’s remember the horrible incident in Libya when the American ambassador was murdered. One of the first things that the State Department headed by Clinton at the time said was that Americans are responsible for what happened themselves and it was just the spontaneous people’s reaction to the horrible, offensive film about the Prophet Muhammad. In view of the absence of evidence, I can’t say that all these things are related to Huma Abedin. We don’t know whether she used her natural channels with Saudi Arabia, whether she was registered as a foreign agent of influence or not. However, her role in all this could be the object of investigation.

Unpleasant things that Butina did would hardly have become the object of such passionate scrutiny if not for their usefulness in getting to Trump. And some people try to get to him by all ways and means. If Butina had chosen another path and, let’s say, become an intermediary in the strange Uranium One deal approved by Clinton, I doubt that she would have become the object of these people’s investigation. But she could have been the object of investigation by Republicans in the US Senate.

Some people declared war on Trump on the basis that he’s unsuitable for office and can’t be allowed to rule America. I agree with some of their arguments. He’s not very suitable for this role, but he was elected by American people. Those who declared war on him take it upon themselves to speak for all Americans. And I don’t like people who want to decide for others what’s good and what’s bad for them as well as the methods that the so-called deep state resorts to. Regardless of how destructive Trump appears to be for the United States, these methods turn out to be even more so. It’s not right that FBI uses an obviously fake dossier in order to de facto decide who’s going to govern America. It’s nothing more than an interference of security services in the democratic process, and it’s a much more troubling sign than the fantastic sight of Trump taking the side of Putin against his own intelligence services.