https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/senate-report-nra-russia-gun-foreign-asset-891859/?fbclid=IwAR2nLLQRHM-TUFhon7fPMutJuYG1MnRq9lg44aLXtqFNoPjUwQDAfVSjrHo
"A long-awaited Senate report into the connections between the National Rifle Association and Russia describes the NRA as a “foreign asset” and underscores the NRA’s connections to, and activities in, Russia could “jeopardize” the organization’s nonprofit status. The investigation, conducted by ranking member Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and the minority staff of the Senate Finance Committee, “confirms that the NRA, its officers, board members, and donors engaged in a years-long effort to facilitate the U.S.-based activities of Maria Butina and Alexander Torshin,” the report states. Butina and Torshin’s efforts to use the NRA as a conduit to influence top Republicans was the subject of an April 2018 Rolling Stone exposé, Inside the Decade-Long Russian Campaign to Infiltrate the NRA and Help Elect Trump, which is cited in the Senate investigation. Butina, arrested that July, is now serving time in federal prison for a conspiracy to act as an unregistered foreign agent. Torshin, a former Russian senator and central banker, was hit with U.S. sanctions, as the report describes, “for the Russian Federation’s global malign activity, including attempting to subvert Western democracies.” Torshin is a gun enthusiast who first spearheaded a connection with NRA executives nearly a decade ago. According to the U.S. government, he then acted as the “handler” of Butina, an ambitious, young Russian gun-rights leader, who leveraged and deepened the Russian relationship with the gun group, in furtherance of their ultimate goal of gaining access to top GOP influencers, politicians, and even the Trump family. The Senate report validates the DOJ’s conclusion that “the activity of those Russian nationals… amounted to an illegal conspiracy to gain access to American organizations through the NRA.” But it also makes clear that the effort was reciprocal, specifically that the NRA “was engaged in a years-long effort to facilitate Butina and Torshin’s domestic activity."."
