(CNN) Maria Butina's defense team is fighting back against the prosecutors' sentencing memo in her case, which came in Friday night before her sentencing this week and unexpectedly asked for more jail time for her.

Prosecutors on Friday filed a pre-sentencing memo asking 18 months jail time for Butina, in a case where they've alleged scandalous actions and had to walk back some of them, yet where they still allege the Russian woman sought to hurt the US in her work as a foreign agent.

"Activities at issue in this case are part of Russia's broader scheme to acquire information and establish relationships and communication channels that can be exploited to the Russian Federation's benefit," prosecutors wrote in their pre-sentencing memo Friday.

They say she was not a traditional spy or "trained intelligence officer," but sought to help Russia at the expense of US national security.

In this strongly worded filing, her defense attorneys, who previously had asked the sentence to be the time she has already served, reiterated that she is not a spy or Russian intelligence agent and has helped both the Senate Intelligence Committee as it investigated her contact and former Russian central banker Alexander Torshin, and prosecutors extensively, while asking the judge to throw out some of the prosecutors' discussion of her activities for Russia.

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