WASHINGTON, February 22. /TASS/. Russian citizen Maria Butina’s passport has been handed over to the US immigration authorities to speed up the process of her expected deportation from the US to Russia, Butina’s attorney Robert Driscoll said in an interview with TASS.
The attorney expects that during the upcoming court hearing in Washington, the judge will appoint the date of Butina’s sentencing. Driscoll hopes that the judge will deliver the verdict in "2 weeks to 6 weeks" after the hearing set for February 26.
"Our hope would be that she’ll receive a sentence that will be equivalent to the time already served and that she will be released and deported soon after that," the attorney stated.
The release process
The lawyer explained that even if the court delivered such a verdict, Butina would not be able to go free immediately.
"What ‘free to go’ would mean in this context is, because she is pleading to a felony, that’s a deportable offence, and so at that point we’ll have to deal with ICE (US Immigration and Customs Enforcement - TASS). I’ve been talking to them in advance, obviously, trying to make that transition as smooth as possible so that we don’t have her in ICE detention for any significant length of time," Driscoll said.
"But hopefully, we can arrange it so that either she’ll go straight from Alexandria [jail] to a plane [to Russia] or maybe in a matter of a couple of days or a week. That’s something we got to work out, we’re working that out. ICE already has her [Butina’s] passport. We’re trying to make sure this happens as quickly as possible," he continued.
According to Butina’s attorney, the US government has been cooperative about this issue. "Everyone understands it’s up to the judge, but we say if the judge ends up agreeing, I hope the government will not see a problem with getting her out sooner rather than later," he stated.
Driscoll added that it is unclear whether Butina would return home via a commercial or a government flight. "It will be unclear, we don’t know yet, there is a lot of kinds of logistical things: will they allow her to take a commercial flight or will they fly her back on a government plane - I don’t know any of that yet," the lawyer noted. "Hopefully we can just buy her a commercial ticket from Dallas [Washington airport] to Moscow and be done with that. But we should know more about how it’s going to work as we approach the sentencing. That should become more clear," he concluded.
Conditions of the plea deal
Driscoll admitted that according to the plea deal that Butina made with the prosecution, US officials are free to decide when to release the Russian citizen.
"Under her plea agreement, the government has a right to keep her until she’s done with cooperation. We think she is done with cooperation now, but we need to make sure the government agrees with that. It depends on how long the government says they need, wherever there are any other cases that she needs to testify about," the attorney stated.
"In my mind, there’s no reason for there to be a long delay between the status conference and the sentencing. This should be just the matter of us getting the sentencing materials to the judge and giving the judge an adequate ability to read them," Driscoll pointed out.
Butina’s case
Maria Butina, 30, was arrested in Washington DC on July 15, 2018, right before the Helsinki meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his US counterpart Donald Trump. The US Department of Justice said that she was suspected of acting "as an agent of Russia inside the United States by developing relationships with US persons and infiltrating organizations having influence in American politics, for the purpose of advancing the interests of the Russian Federation."
On July 21, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov demanded in a telephone conversation with US Secretary of State Michael Pompeo that Butina be released as soon as possible. He also slammed all charges brought against her as fabricated.
On December 13, 2018, Butina pleaded guilty to conspiracy to violate the US law governing foreign agents operating in the country. The US officials refused to provide an exact date of the sentence hearing, adding that the cooperation between Butina and the prosecution may take some time.