Mariia Butina's attorney insists the get-together was nothing more than a nice dinner out between two Russian expatriots | Press Service of Civic Chamber of the Russian Federation/EPA Accused Russian agent met with suspected Kremlin spy Mariia Butina’s attorney insists the get-together was nothing more than one dinner with a prominent Russian official.

Accused Russian sleeper agent Mariia Butina met in January with the head of a Russian government-affiliated cultural center that authorities have long suspected of being a front for recruiting young American spies.

Authorities believe the meeting with Oleg Zhiganov, the longtime director of the Russian Cultural Centre, was one of several pieces of evidence that Butina was a flight risk, and a judge recently agreed. But Butina’s attorney insists the get-together was nothing more than a nice dinner out between two Russian expatriots who had met a few times at the embassy, where Zhiganov serves as first secretary.

“As far as I know, they went out to dinner that one time,” Butina’s defense attorney, Robert Driscoll, told POLITICO. “And she might have known him from events at the embassy.”

Zhiganov’s identity, previously unreported, was confirmed to POLITICO on Friday by a source familiar with the investigation.

The revelation is just the latest twist in an ever-expanding backstory of Butina, who U.S. officials have charged with working from 2015 until at least February 2017 as a covert Kremlin agent under the direction of a top Russian government official and central banker. Butina’s efforts allegedly included offering sex in exchange for a job at an unnamed U.S. special-interest organization, and infiltrating the National Rifle Association and other influential conservative political organizations to push them toward more pro-Russia policies.

Zhiganov’s cultural center has for years been under scrutiny by U.S. counterintelligence officials concerned about its suspected involvement in espionage.

She has pleaded not guilty and denied any wrongdoing. Driscoll described her as a foreign student who wanted to make friends, just like hundreds of others attending American University.

In court filings, authorities have refused to disclose Zhiganov’s identity, or to reveal any details of his relationship with Butina or why they believe he was using his Russian government position as a cover for spying, citing at least one and potentially more ongoing investigations. They even introduced into evidence a photo of a very serious looking Butina listening intently to her dinner companion, but blacked out his face.

Zhiganov’s cultural center, which sits just a mile and a half from the White House, is officially part of the Russian Foreign Ministry, hosting a series of public events that often feature visiting Russian artists and musicians in an effort to foster better understanding and relations between the two countries.

But the organization has for years been under scrutiny by U.S. counterintelligence officials concerned about its suspected involvement in espionage. One former director of the cultural center left the country in 2014 after media reports disclosed that the FBI was investigating him for being a spy, and sending hundreds of early-career Americans on center-sponsored free trips to Russia where they are targeted for recruitment.

Butina's attorney argued that any assertion Butina was meeting with Zhiganov for nefarious purposes was part of an effort to taint the 29-year-old guns rights activist through innuendo.

Butina, who was charged last week with acting as an unregistered Russian agent in the U.S., met with Zhiganov after he called and invited her to dinner, according to the source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the ongoing investigation and prosecution. And when the two met up, federal agents were watching — and snapping surveillance photos.

Butina knew Zhiganov through her occasional attendance at events at the center, or at the embassy itself, said the source. “She had tickets for stuff there,” the source added. “Movie nights, things like that.”

The investigation to date does not indicate “that they were best friends or anything [or] that there was a longstanding relationship,” the source said, stressing that authorities were still going through as much as 12 terabytes of data found on Butina’s phones and computers during searches of her apartment. Prosecutors said her electronic devices contained an amount of information equivalent to as many as three million documents, and that they also seized her diary.

Driscoll confirmed Butina’s dinner with Zhiganov, but downplayed its significance. He confirmed the Russian official’s identify after POLITICO asked him for comment, and that Butina met with him at a French bistro at his invitation.

Any assertion that she was meeting with Zhiganov for nefarious purposes, Driscoll said, was part of a Justice Department effort to taint the 29-year-old guns rights activist through innuendo, false claims — like that she tried to trade sex for access — and guilt by association, he said.

During last week’s hearing, Driscoll also knocked down the government’s efforts to keep her detained until trial, and to impose a gag order in the case, because of her dinner with the then-unidentified embassy official.

Butina remains in protective custody in a Washington detention center.

Even if Butina did meet with “the supposed Russian intelligence official, that simply is a daisy chain of the government's speculating that someone is a Russian spy and therefore trying to cast aspersion on Ms. Butina for meeting with him,” Driscoll told Magistrate Judge Deborah Robinson. “By the same theory, any of the thousands of people that have met Ms. Butina during her time here have also met with a Russian intelligence officer.”

Butina, he added, “certainly is unaware if [Zhiganov is] any member of the Russian intelligence, as alleged by the Government. A Russian national having dinner with a Russian national is nothing unique at all.”

A federal prosecutor painted a different picture. The fact that they were enjoying “a private meal … just weeks before that suspected intelligence operative left the country,” he told the judge, was evidence that she might try to flee the U.S. before her trial if given the chance.

The judge sided with the government, and Butina remains in protective custody in a Washington detention center.

The expulsion was part of an ongoing tit-for-tat between Moscow and Washington in connection with Putin’s aggressive “active measures” campaigns in other countries.

The FBI and U.S. Attorney's Office had no comment, and Zhiganov did not respond to messages seeking comment. Several calls to the Russian Cultural Centre were answered by Russian speakers who promptly hung up when Zhiganov’s name was mentioned.

Zhiganov’s cultural center and its parent organization, Rossotrudnichestvo, have also popped up in special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe for possibly playing a small role in the Kremlin effort to sway the 2016 presidential election. Investigators have reviewed unverified claims made in the so-called Steele dossier that Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump’s former fixer and personal lawyer, met in Prague with “interlocutors from the Kremlin [who were] working under the cover of Russian ‘NGO’ Rossotrudnichestvo.”

Cohen has strenuously denied the allegation, but a congressional source said Democratic lawmakers remain interested in Cohen’s possible connections to the group.

The Russian Cultural Centre in Washington also has come up in Mueller’s probe as part of a broader inquiry into millions of dollars in payments involving the Russian embassy, former Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak and several Moscow businessmen linked to Putin, Buzzfeed reported in January — around the time Butina met with Zhiganov.

"I would like to emphasize that no one is panicking" — Oleg Zhiganov, the longtime director of the Russian Cultural Centre

According to Russian state-run media accounts, Zhiganov was one of the 60 unidentified Russian government officials in Washington and New York who were expelled in March, about the time the Justice Department prosecutor said that Butina’s dinner companion left.

The expulsion was part of an ongoing tit-for-tat between Moscow and Washington in connection with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s aggressive “active measures” campaigns in other countries, including the Kremlin’s meddling in the 2016 president election. The March expulsion came after several governments accused Putin of being behind the poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury, England with the nerve agent Novichok.

The U.S. decision to expel Russian diplomats over the Skripal case, “is deeply regrettable," Zhiganov told the Sputnik News Service on March 27, the day the expulsions were announced.

Zhiganov also told Sputnik that he was one of those affected, and that his staff would continue to work hard to develop cultural and humanitarian ties with the United States.

"We understand how important this work is for bilateral relations and improving dialogue as well as for preventing the deterioration of our relationship,” Zhiganov said. “It is a pity that not everyone shares this position. But I would like to emphasize that no one is panicking.”

Agents investigated Zhiganov's predecessor, Yury Zaitsev, for allegedly using the center’s cultural exchange programs to recruit young Americans as spies.

The Russian Cultural Centre, which bills itself as “the official home of Russian culture in the United States,” was established as part of a bilateral agreement in the enthusiastic aftermath of the 1985 summit between Presidents Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev.

Zhiganov isn’t the organization's first director to come under FBI scrutiny. In October 2013, agents investigated his predecessor, Yury Zaitsev, for allegedly using the center’s cultural exchange programs to recruit young Americans as spies.

FBI agents interviewed potentially dozens of Americans whom Zaitsev had sent to Russia on all-expenses-paid trips, and told them they were being targeted for potential recruitment, according to reports in Mother Jones, The Washington Post and other media outlets.

Zaitsev emphatically denied that, saying the trips — including meetings with Russian officials and lodging at luxury hotels — were a way to foster better relations and understanding between the two countries. Then he quietly left the country, after telling Russian state media that he didn’t want to refute the charges.

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