Nothing I know about Butina indicates she is a real spy.
She was a famous gun rights activist back home. Not a kind of person intelligence would use.
“...expressed remorse for conspiring with a Russian official to infiltrate a gun rights group and influence U.S. conservative activists and Republicans.”
Spies, if you want to call them that, come in a variety of shapes, sizes, and uses. Their job is to accomplish their sortie and get out without tipping the trick. She openly admitted in her “mercy plea”to trying to persuade people within the electoral system to try to influence the vote in the next election with her actions and efforts by actually defining them by political stance and party. You were fooled by her just like others. But she got caught, and as I mentioned in my post, got a light sentence in comparison to other countries that find Americans guilty of the same to include Russia who she worked for.
Why is it so horrible the way we treat criminals, whether federal or civil, when other countries that complain about it are normally much worse with their treatment of American criminals? And espionage is just as illegal in our country as it is in theirs. This is why Uncle Sugar doesn’t talk about it but has numerous agencies that are capable of the same. So do they. And that’s the real world, not Marvel Comics.
rwood