Maria Butina was a covert agent sent to Washington by Moscow, she was pretty open about it.
The 29-year-old Russian, who appears in a Washington court Wednesday to face charges that she sought to "infiltrate" the US government, seemed to appear everywhere the Republican leaders and power brokers and shakers gathered.
In 2015, she was the first to get then-candidate Donald Trump to expound publicly about his Russia policy.
She posed for pictures with figures like Senator Rick Santorum, National Rifle Association chief Wayne LaPierre, and Republican governors Rick Scott and Bobby Jindal, posting the snaps on social media.
She told colleagues at the American University graduate school in Washington, where she was a student, that she had a nearly direct line to Russian leader Vladimir Putin -- which was true.
Displaying a flair with handguns and automatic rifles, she was a VIP at the NRA, arguably the most powerful conservative lobby in the United States. But according to a federal indictment, Butina's very public activities masked the work of a "covert Russian agent" with a plan to spearhead Moscow's influence in President Trump's Republican Party.
Her arrest was announced ON Monday shortly after Trump held a summit with Putin in Helsinki, where Trump pledged to improve bilateral relations and dismissed US intelligence allegations that Moscow interfered in the 2016 election on Trump's behalf.
She was charged with conspiracy and acting illegally as an agent for the Russian government without registering.
On Wednesday Moscow said her arrest aimed to undermine the gains made in the summit.
"This happened with the obvious task of minimizing the positive effect," of the Trump-Putin meeting, said foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova.
The indictment and an accompanying FBI affidavit describe an alleged secret plan for Butina, masquerading as a visiting student, "to conduct activities as an illegal agent of the Russian Federation in the United States through a Russian influence operation." She worked directly for close Putin ally Alexander Torshin, formerly a senior member of the upper house of Russian's parliament, and now deputy governor of the Russian central bank.
But in a court filing today, the FBI said she "was in contact with officials believed to be Russian intelligence operatives," including the FSB, Moscow's federal security service.
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