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The boyfriend is of course GOP operative Paul Erickson, who is currently facing an indictment in an unrelated South-Dakota case where he was charged with money laundering and wire fraud.
The indictment also showed Erickson withdrew $14k cash in laundered money at the time of the NRA delegation's trip to Moscow.
There have been previous reports about certain emails, notes, from Erickson that suggested he was very much involved as Butina's co-conspirator in covertly working for Russian intelligence.
Erickson is US Person 1 in Butina's guilty plea and statement of offense. When feds searched Erickson's home they also seized a cryptic note in which Erickson wrote "how to respond to FSB offer of employment?"

In this newly reported email however he talks about how Butina had "major sway" over the FSB officers that were "assigned to her", and described this to the then-incoming NRA president Pete Brownell. The email very clearly describes the FSB's (formerly the KGB) involvement in laying the groundwork for the trip. It also clearly suggests Butina is not only familiar with FSB officers but that she also has some degree of sway over them.

The Daily Beast has previously reported that Erickson received a target letter from the DOJ, which doesn't necessarily guarantee an indictment but it's certainly a strong indication, in which Erickson was warned he could be charged with secretly acting as an agent of a foreign government, as well a potential conspiracy charge. (relevant article further below)
https://www.thedailybeast.com/boyfr...sian-spy-agency-for-nra-trip?via=twitter_page
Boyfriend’s Email: Butina ‘Manipulated’ Russian Spy Agency for NRA Trip
According to her boyfriend, Russian agent Maria Butina had major sway with the FSB officers ‘assigned’ to her.

The boyfriend of confessed Russian agent Maria Butina wrote that she “manipulated” a Russian spy agency when arranging NRA bigwigs’ trip to Moscow, The Daily Beast has learned.

Paul Erickson, Butina’s boyfriend, made this claim on Nov. 25, 2015 in an email to a trip participant. The light-hearted, chummy tone of the email, which was subsequently read to The Daily Beast, contrasts significantly with how Erickson characterized Butina’s relationship with the FSB to The New Republic: tense, bordering on hostile.

It also shows that at least one trip attendee was led to believe that Russia’s FSB—whose predecessor was the KGB—helped lay the groundwork for the trip.

Erickson began the email, sent to then-incoming NRA President Pete Brownell, with florid language.

“Dear International Man of Mystery or should we just start calling you “Austin Powers” to your face??” he wrote, with a smiley face.

“Miss Butina has (apparently) moved heaven and earth and manipulated the Russian FSB (the current incarnation of the old KGB) and gotten you cleared for a tour of one (1) Russian arms factory the day before the NRA delegation arrives in Moscow,” he continued. “She found a way to shrink a normally 3-week process into about 3-days (probably because most of the FSB agents ‘assigned’ to her want to marry her).”
John Sipher, a former chief of Russia operations for the CIA, called the email alarming.

“The right thing to do would have been to inform the FBI and cancel the trip,” Sipher said. “Cavorting with those who claim to be at war with you is unpatriotic at best. Mr. Erickson’s actions are especially abhorrent.”

A spokesperson for Brownell, who runs a guns-and-ammo retail business, said he checked with the State Department before traveling to Russia.

“Pete accepted the invitation to join this trip with the understanding that it was an NRA-related event organized with the support of the organization,” the spokesperson said. “He welcomed the opportunity to meet with folks who share his passion for hunting, and to further understand how Brownells can continue to be successful in overseas markets. He had his company’s compliance team review the itinerary with the State Department ahead of time and carefully followed their guidance before, during and after the trip. He has made clear that he stands ready to assist with any bipartisan inquiries.”

Erickson’s email, which included logistics for Brownell’s Russia travels, maintained a cheerful tone throughout. It differs sharply from how Erickson and Butina—who started a Russian gun rights group and courted American conservatives—described her interactions with the FSB to journalist James Bamford for the New Republic piece. Those interviews are their only extensive on-record comments about the case since last summer, when Butina was arrested and charged with acting as a covert agent for the Russian government. In December, she pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges stemming from what federal prosecutors described as an effort to “establish unofficial lines of communication with Americans having power and influence over U.S. politics.” Butina is currently in jail awaiting sentencing.

But on the way to securing that guilty plea, the prosecutors targeting Butina have made at least one serious misstep: They had to retract an ugly accusation that she traded sex for access.

Erickson and Butina say the Russian authorities also scrutinized her.

“She was under constant FSB surveillance in Russia,” Erickson told Bamford. “They would go to all the public meetings of her group, and they would go to all the rallies. Sometimes just show up in her offices once a week.”

Butina also described a fraught relationship with the FSB.

“We were watched,” she said, “but unless you crossed the line, no one’s going to go to prison. The question becomes: Do you cross this line? Do you become dangerous to the regime at a certain point? I had a bag packed in my hallway at home in case I’m imprisoned, somebody can bring it to me. That’s my reality.”

It would not be unusual for the FSB to scrutinize Butina’s gun rights group. Putin’s government generally opposes efforts to expand gun rights in Russia, in part due to fear of armed resistance. And it has long telegraphed hostility to civil society organizations. Despite that, the Kremlin green-lit outreach efforts by Butina’s group to the NRA, according to a report by a U.S. intelligence agency which The Daily Beast reviewed.

A source close to Erickson said his email and his statements to Bamford are consistent.

“To say that FSB agents were ‘assigned’ to Maria Butina is a polite way of saying that she was under constant government surveillance in Russia because of her gun rights activities,” that person said. “Never mistake polite interactions with potential jailers as anything other than a survival technique.”

The email came a few weeks before a host of NRA bigwigs and board members, including Brownell, ventured to Moscow. On the trip, they hobnobbed with Kremlin officials and enjoyed tourist attractions. A copy of the schedule reviewed by The Daily Beast shows they even had a meeting arranged with the Kremlin’s then-national security adviser, who just a few months prior had announced an arms sale to Iran. David Keene, a former president of the NRA, helped arrange the trip. According to another Erickson email, he wanted participants to impress their Russian hosts so he could score an interview for his newspaper with Vladimir Putin.

Erickson, an accused fraudster, is not necessarily a reliable narrator. Over his decades in the conservative movement, he developed a reputation for exaggerating his connections to political power-brokers and deceiving acquaintances about his business practices. Last week, a South Dakota grand jury charged him with wire fraud and money laundering. He pleaded not guilty. And last September, the U.S. Attorney for the district of Washington D.C. told Erickson’s lawyer he may face charges for covertly working for a foreign government.

The relationship between the NRA and Russians close to the Kremlin is a subject of intense interest on Capitol Hill as well. The Senate intelligence committee is investigating the December 2015 NRA trip, as is the Senate Finance Committee. In December, Oregon Democrat Ron Wyden, who sits on both committees, sent letters to three key NRA figures seeking their interviews ahead of a still-forthcoming report: Keene, Brownell, and former NRA president Allan Cors.

The investigations, alongside the prosecutions of Butina and Erickson, target a question of Russian influence over American politics beyond those concerning President Trump. The portrait prosecutors painted of Butina, Erickson, and Butina patron Alexander Torshin, a former deputy governor of the Russian Central Bank, alleges that the Kremlin cultivated the NRA as a lever with which to move the conservative movement and the Republican Party in directions convivial to Russian interests.

A lawyer for Butina declined to comment. The NRA did not provide comment for this story. In a statement provided to The Daily Beast for a previous story, a lawyer for the NRA noted that organization staff did not attend and said its CEO, Wayne LaPierre, privately expressed concerns about the trip.

Sipher, the former CIA officer, said there was “no excuse” for the NRA leadership to take the Moscow trip after Brownell was told one of his interlocutors was in close contact with the FSB.

“The NRA decision to travel to Moscow despite clear indications that Russian intelligence was involved suggests a twisted view of who are the good guys and who are the bad guys,” Sipher said. “Either the NRA leadership were engaged in willful ignorance or, worse, they had such an antagonistic attitude toward the U.S. administration [of Barack Obama] that they chose to engage with our enemies. At the end of the day, however, there is no excuse. There was no shortage of information suggesting that Vladimir Putin saw the U.S. as an enemy and that Russian intelligence was engaged in aggressive espionage and information warfare against the U.S.”
Click to expand...

https://www.thedailybeast.com/feds-target-butinas-gop-boyfriend-as-foreign-agent December 5 2018
Feds Target Butina’s GOP Boyfriend as Foreign Agent
Paul Erickson served as accused Kremlin spy Maria Butina’s guide as she penetrated the American conservative movement. Now he’s under investigation as a Russian agent, too.

Paul Erickson, a longtime Republican politico whose Russian girlfriend is in jail on charges she acted as a covert foreign agent, has been informed that he may face similar accusations. The Daily Beast reviewed a “target letter” that federal investigators sent Erickson’s lawyer, which said they are considering bringing charges against him under Section 951 of the U.S. code—the law barring people from secretly acting as agents of foreign governments.

The letter also said the government may bring a conspiracy charge against Erickson, who is the boyfriend of accused foreign agent Maria Butina. The letter, which was sent in September by investigators working out of the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, does not accuse Erickson of any crimes or guarantee that he will face charges.
If prosecutors bring the charges named in the letter, Erickson would be the first American embroiled in the 2016 Russia investigation charged under a statute that Justice Department lawyers describe as “espionage-lite.”

“Charging an American under 951 in the context of the Russia investigation is especially serious because that statute is generally reserved for espionage-like cases, such as intelligence-gathering on behalf of a foreign government,” said Ryan Goodman, a former Defense Department attorney who now teaches at the New York University School of Law.

“Essentially what it would say is that an American was acting to advance the interests of a foreign power, contrary to the interests of the United States of America,” said Renato Mariotti, a former federal prosecutor.

A person familiar with the investigation told The Daily Beast that federal law-enforcement officers have interviewed people in Erickson’s orbit, some of whom provided statements to the FBI. Law-enforcement officials asked those sources about the former political insider’s business dealings and his reputation in conservative political circles, according to that person. As The Daily Beast previously reported, several of Erickson’s former business partners have claimed he defrauded them. The U.S. attorney’s office in South Dakota is leading an investigation into those claims.

Justice Department investigators aren’t the only ones interested in Erickson. Staffers with the Senate intelligence committee, which is probing Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential elections, have also asked to speak with him. But a lawyer for Erickson told them he would plead the Fifth Amendment if subpoenaed to testify, a source familiar with those communications confirmed to The Daily Beast. Investigators will not force Erickson to appear just to take the Fifth. William Hurd, who is representing Erickson on the Senate intelligence committee matter, declined to comment.

According to The New York Times, Erickson wrote an email to the Trump campaign in May 2016 offering to set up a back-channel meeting between the candidate and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“Putin is deadly serious about building a good relationship with Mr. Trump,” Erickson wrote, the Times reported. “He wants to extend an invitation to Mr. Trump to visit him in the Kremlin before the election.”

By then, Erickson had known Butina for years. Butina, a gun-rights activist from Russia, attended grad school at American University while building relationships in the U.S. conservative movement, with Erickson often serving as her guide.

The pair made no secret of their affinity for Russia. As The Daily Beast previously reported, at her birthday party, she dressed as a Russian empress and he dressed as Rasputin. Guests drank vodka from a bottle emblazoned with a hammer and sickle.

And as Butina built relationships with conservative leaders, Erickson didn’t exactly keep his role under wraps. According to court documents filed by the prosecutors charging Butina, someone called “Person 1” and widely believed to be Erickson boasted that he was involved in “securing a VERY private line of communication between the Kremlin” and the Republican Party.

The two also worked together on various other projects, including a deal to secure Russian jet fuel for an American middleman. Erickson and Butina worked on the failed business venture with Donna Keene, the wife of former NRA President David Keene, in 2017.

William Hurd of Troutman Sanders, a lawyer for Erickson, declined to comment. A spokesperson for the U.S. attorney’s office in D.C. declined to comment as well.

The U.S. Attorney’s Manual recommends that prosecutors send target letters to alert people they are in the feds’ sights.

“At the least, it’s a preliminary determination that they’re going to proceed to indictment,” said Sol Wisenberg, the co-chairman of the white-collar practice at Nelson Mullins.

Wisenberg said that while people can generally expect to be indicted within a few months of receiving a target letter, there’s no firm rule on how quickly any indictment should follow, if at all.

If investigators charge Erickson under Section 951, he could be the first American publicly accused of acting (or trying to act) as an agent of a foreign government in connection with Russia’s 2016 interference. Other Americans roped up in Russia investigations—including former Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort and lobbyist Sam Patten—have faced charges for illegal lobbying, in violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act. But 951 is different. It’s a rare charge, and the Justice Department’s inspector general wrote in 2016 that prosecutors in its elite National Security Division describe it as “espionage-lite.”

“[A] Section 951 case generally involves espionage-like or clandestine behavior or an otherwise provable connection to an intelligence service, or information-gathering or procurement-type activity on behalf of a foreign government,” the inspector general wrote.

Prosecutors in the D.C. U.S. attorney’s office charged Butina with violating Section 951.

Butina said on several occasions that she helped facilitate communications between the Trump campaign and Russia, multiple sources told The Daily Beastfor a February 2017 story. In July, the D.C. U.S. attorney’s office charged her with acting as a covert foreign agent and conspiring to commit a crime. Both those charges are also identified in the Erickson target letter.

Special counsel Robert Mueller is not handling Butina’s prosecution. A spokesperson for his office declined to comment on why that is.

Butina is currently in an Alexandria, Virginia, jail. Erickson visits her there regularly, two individuals with knowledge of the meetings told The Daily Beast.
Click to expand...
 
Potentially more information on the Mueller investigation coming today.
The Mueller team will be filing their Manafort sentencing recommendation today.


Judge Amy Jackson has also unsealed a few words in the Manafort hearing transcript, though we didn't really learn anything new. The topic was Kilimnik's communications with former high-level State Department officials. This appears to be in connection with the Ukraine peace plan discussions, which we don't know much about other than it being a pro-Russian plan that involves lifting sanctions in some way. That's clear from the response from Manafort's attorney in which he says that "this narrative of a [redacted]" was nonsense because sanctions were going to continue no matter who was elected, at least according to the Manafort attorney.
We know that Trump associates almost immediately after the election explored lifting sanctions, even before Trump was officially sworn in as president. Prosecutors in this hearing also stated that in spite of the intense scrutiny of contacts between Trump associates and Russia, as well as Russia's election interference, the Ukraine peace plan discussions actually went forward.
 
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