The nature of the federal investigation being carried out in Washington, which is separate from the ongoing special-counsel probe into Russia’s election interference and a potential conspiracy between President Trump’s campaign and Russia, is not entirely clear. At Thursday’s hearing, several key questions about her relationship with the Russian government and activities to influence powerful politicians were left unanswered. Was her alleged handler, the high-level Russian banker Alexander Torshin, acting on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s orders, or was he freelancing? Did she and Torshin use their connections to the NRA to funnel money from Russia to Trump’s campaign? And were there any Americans, aside from her Republican-operative boyfriend Paul Erickson, involved in the efforts to set up a so-called back channel to Russia?

It would be a striking coincidence if Butina’s efforts to make inroads with Republican policy makers during the election were completely divorced from the broader interference campaign under way by Moscow at the same time. That is why Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who is investigating that interference, is “likely” to question Butina now that she has agreed to cooperate with the government, says Barbara McQuade, the former United States attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan.

“In particular, they would want to know about her asking Trump a question about sanctions at an event in 2015,” McQuade says, referring to Butina’s attendance at a public event in Las Vegas, where she asked Trump from the audience what he thought about Russia and sanctions. “Was his calling on her as random as it appeared, or was it coordinated to give Trump an opportunity to start talking about Russian sanctions?” The special counsel’s office did not return a request for comment about whether they would question Butina.

Russian nationals and Kremlin officials were eager to see lifted punishing sanctions imposed by Barack Obama’s administration in response to Russian corruption, human-rights abuses, and the annexation of Crimea. According to Mueller’s office, Trump’s former national-security adviser Michael Flynn promised the former Russian ambassador during the transition period that the Trump White House would revisit the sanctions policy.

One of the biggest unknowns is whether Butina has information that could incriminate the NRA, whose unprecedented, $30 million push to elect Trump is reportedly being examined by Mueller for evidence of illicit Russian involvement. The high-level Russian banker who allegedly served as Butina’s handler, Alexander Torshin, is an NRA “life member” who repeatedly asked the Trump campaign for meetings with the candidate—requests he made through Butina’s boyfriend, Paul Erickson. Erickson is of interest to federal prosecutors, who reportedly sent him a letter in September warning that they may charge him with acting as a secret foreign agent. Butina may be useful in that respect as well; she and Erickson met five years ago in Moscow and began dating shortly thereafter. They co-founded a limited-liability company in 2016 in South Dakota, whose business purpose is unknown.