WASHINGTON – A 29-year-old Russian with links to the National Rifle Association who reportedly tried to broker secret meetings between President Trump and Vladimir Putin was charged Monday with acting as an agent of the Russian Federation within the US.

The Justice Department said that Maria Butina, a Washington, D.C., resident, was “developing relationships with US persons and infiltrating organizations having influence in American politics, for the purpose of advancing the interests of the Russian Federation.”

The announcement came just hours after Trump said at a joint press conference with Russian leader Vladimir Putin that there’s no reason Russia would have meddled in the 2016 US presidential election.

Butina is a known protege of Alexander Torshin, who McClatchy reported in January was being investigated by the FBI to see if he had been funneling money illegally to the NRA to help President Trump win the White House.

Butina twice tried to arrange meetings between Trump and Russian leader Vladimir Putin during the 2016 US presidential election, according to the New York Times.

Torshin was among the Russians sanctioned by the US in 2018.

He is not named in the Justice Department affidavit, which says Butina worked for a “Russian Official” described as being a former member of the Russian legislature, who later became a top official at the Russian Central Bank.

Torshin is an ex-senator who then went on to become state secretary of the bank.

The affidavit also describes two Americans in contact with Butina, as well as an unnamed “political party” and a “gun rights organization” with a strong relationship to that political party.

The documents say that Butina and Torshin tried to develop relationships with American politicians in order to establish “back channel” lines of communication that the Russians could use to “penetrate the U.S. national decision-making apparatus to advance the agenda of the Russian Federation.”

In one instance, investigators obtained an email written by one of the unnamed Americans connected to Butina in which the individual boasts that a “VERY private line of communication” has been secured between the Kremlin and a key American political party through the unnamed “gun rights organization.”

Butina started a Russian counterpart to the NRA, called the Right to Bear Arms, in 2011, which became associated with the NRA.

In 2013, in Moscow, she established contact with the unnamed American, who worked to arrange introductions to people in the US who were influential in American politics.

By 2014 she was making waves on the American right.

A 2014 TownHall.com article about Butina describes her as the “woman fighting for gun rights in Russia.”

In spring 2015, communications swept up as part of the investigation show Butina explaining how a change in U.S. foreign policy toward Russia could be pursued by influencing an American political party through a “gun rights organization, ” noting how it’s the “largest sponsor of the elections to the US Congress, as well as a sponsor to the [Conservative Political Action Conference] and others.”

Butina attended a number of political events in the run-up to the 2016 election and afterwards. She was at the National Prayer Breakfast in 2017 when President Trump spoke.

She attended the NRA convention in 2016.

At that same conference a GOP operative named Paul Erickson tried to get Torshin a meeting with Trump, the Washington Post reported.

She hosted a number of “friendship dinners” between influential Americans and Russians in both D.C. and New York, investigators said.

Butina had a student visa to live in the US, having enrolled in a graduate program at American University in Washington in 2016.

The affidavit says that Butina’s efforts to promote the Russian Federation’s political interests within the U.S. were “diverse and multifaceted.”

She was arrested Sunday.

Her lawyer, Robert Neil Driscoll, said in a statement after a hearing before a federal judge Monday that “Maria Butina is not an agent of the Russian Federation.”

At the hearing, according to the Washington Post, Driscoll pointed out that Butina had testified voluntarily before the Senate Intelligence Committee several months ago and had had her residence searched by the FBI in April.

“We have been offering to cooperate with the government the entire time,” Driscoll said.