The US Justice Department has formally requested a “judicial removal” of Maria Butina, once smeared as a “Russian spy” by US media, after she is sentenced in April. The lawyer for Butina hopes she will get a time-served sentence.
The motion by United States Attorney Jessie K. Liu asking the court to send Butina back home once she is convicted was submitted to the district court for the District of Columbia on Friday.
In a statement accompanying the request, the prosecution notes that Butina should be kicked out of the US since she is not a US citizen and entered the country on a now-expired student visa. She pled guilty to one count of conspiring to act as a foreign agent without government registration.
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The offence for which Butina will be sentenced on April 26 carries a maximum term of five years in prison and/or a $250,000 fine, the statement notes. The woman's defense, however, has been working to have the judge count the time she has already spent in custody towards her future sentence so she could be deported to Russia as soon as possible after the verdict is handed down.
The request also stipulates that Butina pledge not to return to the US for 10 years after her sentence is up.
Butina's attorney, Robert Driscoll, reaffirmed that the Russian national's defense team is "trying to make sure that everything is in place so that she can return home quickly when she has completed any sentence."
Also on rt.com Butina’s lawyer ‘confident’ she will return to Russia ‘in a matter of days’ after sentencingThe request by the prosecution has been widely expected and is in line with the plea deal Butina signed in December. The deal stated that it is "very likely" that Butina's deportation would be "mandatory" after court proceedings are over.
Driscoll told RT last month that the defense would be asking for a sentence of up to six months for Butina, which, if deemed reasonable by the judge, would see her walking free out of the courtroom.
The quiet end to the Butina case, once seen as another 'aha!' moment in the now-fizzled out 'Russian collusion' saga, comes as the US establishment and media struggle to come to grips with the conclusion of the two-year Mueller investigation. The probe found no nefarious link between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin, dampening the hopes of the anti-Trump resistance crowd that it would set the stage for the president's impeachment.
So far, only a four-page summary of the investigation has been released, prompting Democrats to grasp at straws and allege that Attorney General William Barr, who prepared the brief, is concealing the truth from the public. Barr said on Friday that the report, which is nearly 400 pages long, would be released in full by "mid-April, if not sooner." The delay, as he explained in a letter to the House and Senate judiciary committees, is due to the Department of Justice combing through sensitive data that might compromise the "personal privacy and reputational interests of peripheral third parties." The report will not be submitted to the White House for a preview, he said.
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