Alleged Russian agent Maria Butina ordered to appear in court in December

Alleged Russian agent Maria Butina was ordered Friday to appear in court on Dec. 6 according to an order filed by District Judge Tanya Chutkan. 

Butina has been indicted on charges of conspiracy and acting as an agent of the Kremlin without notifying the attorney general. The FBI said she cultivated a network of U.S. contacts in order to help advance Russia’s interests politically. 

{mosads}However, lawyers for Butina said in a court filing Monday that the U.S. government is withholding evidence that could help their client, accusing the government of suppressing information discoverable under the Brady rule, which requires prosecutors to disclose exculpatory evidence it has to the defense. 

Butina’s attorneys, Robert Driscoll and Alfred Carry, said in the filing that the information “would undermine the allegations in the indictment, attack the credibility of the government’s case, impeach government witnesses, and demonstrate that Maria Butina was, in fact, nothing more than a student with lofty aspirations who was acting on her own and not as a foreign agent.”

“The fact that Maria Butina is Russian does not reduce the government’s Brady obligations,” they added.

Butina has been ordered to remain in federal custody while she awaits trial after federal prosecutors argued she poses a serious flight risk based on the nature of the charges, her history of deceptive conduct, the potential sentence she faces, the strong evidence of guilt, her extensive foreign connections and her lack of any meaningful ties to the United States.

“All of Butina’s known personal ties, save for those U.S. persons she attempted to exploit and influence, reside in the Russian Federation,” they said in a court filing.

“Because Butina has been exposed as an illegal agent of Russia, there is the grave risk that she will appeal to those within that government with whom she conspired to aid her escape from the United States.”