The FBI has arrested a 29-year-old Russian woman in the U.S. on charges of working as a Kremlin agent. According to the charges, Maria Butina has spent the past three years—going back to months before Donald Trump announced his run for the presidency—trying to build connections in the upper circle of the National Rifle Association as a way to covertly develop relationships with Russia and the Republican Party. It's the first time the Justice Department has claimed that a spy has deliberately tried to influence the 2016 presidential election, and aided by at least one American. As ABC News reports:

Maria Butina, the cofounder of the mysterious Russian gun-rights group called “Right to Bear Arms” who recently graduated with a master’s degree from American University, “took steps to develop relationships with American politicians in order to establish private, or as she called them, ‘back channel’ lines of communication,” according to an affidavit attached to a criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Washington on Saturday.

“These lines could be used by the Russian Federation to penetrate the U.S. national decision-making apparatus to advance the agenda of the Russian Federation,” the affidavit reads, using Russia’s official country name.

Considering how low-profile-averse Butina seemed to be, it's not hard to fill in some of the gaps in the charges against her. While there's an unnamed gun-rights group that makes major donations to Congressional campaigns, as well as an unnamed major political party that is historically acrimonious toward Russia and aggressively anti–gun control, it's a short logical leap from there to the NRA and the Republicans. The case is so far unconnected to Robert Mueller's investigation, and it's unknown how much substantial progress, if any, Butina's efforts produced. But we do know that she was a "lifetime member" of the NRA and that she was extremely active in the U.S., meeting many NRA and Republican officials over the past three years. All of this was driven by an effort to set up a "back channel" between the Kremlin and U.S. officials, and that's made for some now-embarrassing photo ops:

There's also footage of Butina asking candidate Trump a question about a campaign event:

The Daily Beast actually reported on Butina back in February of last year, explaining at the time that Butina alternately "presented herself as a Russian central bank staffer, a leading gun rights advocate, a 'representative of the Russian Federation,' a Washington, D.C., graduate student, a journalist, and a connection between Team Trump and Russia. She used each role to help her gain more high-level contacts in the nation’s capital." In a follow-up report after news of her arrest, the Daily Beast called her activities "as close as it gets to collusion."

An interesting detail that crops up is Butina's correspondence with organizers for the National Prayer Breakfast to organize a potential visit from Vladimir Putin. Jeff Sharlet, who covers religion and the right (and has written for GQ), has written about the Prayer Breakfast before, calling it an opaque event for religious fundamentalists in government:

Butina is currently in custody until a hearing later this week. There's currently no reason to suspect that this is part of some elaborate Sacha Baron Cohen set-up, but, then again, there's no reason to not think that either.