WASHINGTON – If Maria Butina was a covert agent sent to Washington byMoscow, she was pretty open about it.

The 29-year-old Russian, who appears in a Washington court Wednesday toface charges that she sought to “infiltrate” the US government, seemed toappear everywhere the Republican leaders and power brokers and shakersgathered.

In 2015, she was the first to get then-candidate Donald Trump to expoundpublicly about his Russia policy.

She posed for pictures with figures like Senator Rick Santorum, NationalRifle Association chief Wayne LaPierre, and Republican governors Rick Scottand Bobby Jindal, posting the snaps on social media.

She told colleagues at the American University graduate school inWashington, where she was a student, that she had a nearly direct line toRussian leader Vladimir Putin – which was true.

Displaying a flair with handguns and automatic rifles, she was a VIP at theNRA, arguably the most powerful conservative lobby in the United States.

But according to a federal indictment, Butina’s very public activitiesmasked the work of a “covert Russian agent” with a plan to spearheadMoscow’s influence in President Trump’s Republican Party.

Her arrest was announced Monday shortly after Trump held a summit withPutin in Helsinki, where Trump pledged to improve bilateral relations anddismissed US intelligence allegations that Moscow interfered in the 2016election on Trump’s behalf.

She was charged with conspiracy and acting illegally as an agent for theRussian government without registering.

On Wednesday Moscow said her arrest aimed to undermine the gains made inthe summit.

“This happened with the obvious task of minimizing the positive effect,” ofthe Trump-Putin meeting, said foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova.

The indictment and an accompanying FBI affidavit describe an alleged secretplan for Butina, masquerading as a visiting student, “to conduct activitiesas an illegal agent of the Russian Federation in the United States througha Russian influence operation.”

She worked directly for close Putin ally Alexander Torshin, formerly asenior member of the upper house of Russian’s parliament, and now deputygovernor of the Russian central bank.

But in a court filing Wednesday, the FBI said she “was in contact withofficials believed to be Russian intelligence operatives,” including theFSB, Moscow’s federal security service.

Court documents and other records suggest she and Torshin developed plansto “infiltrate” US political society as early as 2011, when Torshin metthen-NRA president David Keene and Butina launched a mirror Russian gunrights group, “The Right to Bear Arms.”

In 2013 she befriended a well-known Republican operative, not identified inthe indictment but widely reported to be Paul Erickson. The two began aromantic relationship and he opened a wide door for her in Washington.

She became a “life member” of the NRA and, with its sponsorship, attendednumerous conservative and gun rights conferences. She addressed a camp foryoung Republicans in South Dakota, and stopped by at local US gun storesand shooting ranges.

Her social media accounts show the redhead at an NRA national convention inshort, tight cutoff jeans, and a black cowboy hat and cowboy boots, testinga range of powerful firearms.

In July 2015, Butina was selected to ask Trump a question about his plansfor ties with Russia at a rally in Las Vegas.

“I believe I would get along very nicely with Putin…. I don’t think you’dneed the sanctions,” he said, in possibly his first campaign trailpronouncement on the issue.

Her activities ramped up after she moved to the US capital on a studentvisa in 2016, when she lived with Erickson. She helped arrange a visit byTorshin and other Russian officials, as they sought to construct a “backchannel” network of sympathetic Americans with political influence.

She also sought, according to a court filing Wednesday to get a job with alobby group, and “offered….sex in exchange.”

The aim, her messages with Torshin expressed, was to turn around strainedUS-Russia relations.

“This is the battle for the future, it cannot be lost! Or everyone willlose,” Torshin told her in direct messages on Twitter, according to courtdocuments.

But by 2015 – well before Moscow’s meddling in the 2016 election wasexposed – FBI counterintelligence agents saw her as an espionage threat.

The indictment said Butina’s and Torshin’s aim was nefarious: “to penetratethe US national decision-making apparatus to advance the agenda of theRussian Federation.” – APP/AFP