Oct. 26 (UPI) -- Russian political operative Maria Butina arrived in Moscow on Saturday after release from a U.S. prison.
Butina, 30, was deported after release from a federal prison in Tallahassee, Fla., Friday. She was released early for good behavior after serving most of an 18-month sentence for improperly infiltrating U.S. political circles as a foreign agent for Russia before the 2016 election.
She had been in custody since being charged in July 2018. Butina used her activism as a founder of the Right to Bear Arms, Russia's equivalent of the National Rifle Association, and ties with boyfriend Paul Erikson, a former Trump adviser, to infiltrate political groups at the direction of Alexander Torshin, deputy of Central Bank of Russia.
Erikson was indicted on wire fraud and laundering in a separate case in South Dakota. In December, Butina pleaded guilty to conspiracy to violate the law governing foreign agents operating in the United States, NBC News reported.
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After landing in Moscow, Butina told reporters that the FBI had questioned her for 52 hours total, with questioning centering around her relationship with Torshin, who had also backed Butin's Right to Bear Arms, which is now defunct.
"They started by asking if I worked for the Russian government, and I straight up said no," Butina said. "They kept asking: well, why you and Torshin did this and that? They still could not believe that sometimes people just do good things because they believe in friendship between states, because people have common moral principles and they, for example, are fighting for the right to self-defense."
A Senate Judiciary Committee report cited documents suggesting Russia used the NRA to secretly fund Trump's 2016 campaign. It also stated that Butina, Torshin and intermediaries "repeatedly offered the campaign back channels to Russia and relayed requests from President [Vladimir] Putin to meet with Mr. Trump."
Butina, a former American University graduate student and a Russian national, admitted that she worked with Torshin to use NRA contacts to collect information for Russia about U.S. conservative politics during then-candidate Trump's 2016 presidential campaign.
Her lawyers have disputed allegations that she was a spy or attempted election interference.
