The two meetings, which have not been previously reported, reveal a wider circle of high-powered connections that Butina sought with American political leaders and special interest groups.
The think tank, Center for the National Interest, had urged Donald Trump to improve US-Russian relations and to retreat from “Eurasian conflicts” in December 2016. In a report on its earlier activities to improve Russia ties in 2013-2015, CNI outlined meetings it had taken with Obama administration officials during a time when Barack Obama himself pursued a similar policy. The meeting took place near the end of that time, in April 2015. The meeting was ostensibly set up to discuss Torshin’s new appointment as deputy central bank governor.
The timing of this meeting seems significant. By this time, Russia had annexed Crimea more than a year earlier, and overtly invaded eastern Ukraine seven months prior to the meeting. Sanctions had already been applied to Russia, but Obama still wanted to pursue friendlier ties. Torshin’s meeting with Fischer could be explained as a way to coordinate banking systems, but sending an undersecretary of state to a meeting with Torshin signals something more significant.
However, the streak of presidential naïveté on Vladimir Putin didn’t start there, and it didn’t end there either. Butina’s presence as a potential spy is certainly interesting, but so is Torshin’s, who also figures into the “it was the NRA’s fault” narrative. If the Obama administration was granting her and Torshin access to the Undersecretary for International Affairs, it’s tough to blame the NRA or the GOP for a lack of due diligence in engaging with either one of them. Torshin didn’t end up on a sanctions list until April of this year, long after the NRA distanced themselves from him.
Lieu, a member of the House Judiciary Committee, sent a letter to NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre in March, expressing his concern with the NRA’s relationship to Torshin and noting that Torshin “acted as a liaison” during a December 2015 visit to Moscow by several NRA attended by board members.
How deeply disturbing is it, then, that the Obama administration had made itself available to Torshin eight months earlier? Or that it allowed a potential honey-trap spy like Butina to be in the same room as a high-ranking State Department official? The NRA is, after all, a private organization, while the State Department holds a vast store of classified information regarding our foreign policy.
This tends to emphasize just how much of a red herring the NRA thread is. The real story of the Russian disruption operation in 2016 was that it succeeded because the Obama administration failed to prevent it, including people like James Clapper and John Brennan who spend a lot of time on TV shows pointing fingers everywhere else. Obama put a higher priority on engagement with Putin than he did on stopping their hostile intelligence operations in the US, as demonstrated by this meeting and the several opportunities Obama turned down to fight fire with fire.
And now it looks as though they didn’t bother to vet Butina before allowing Fischer and Sheets to meet with her. Will these Obama-era officials be asked to explain themselves, or will they just appear on TV shows to opine endlessly on Trump’s naïveté about Putin?