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To some she was the flame-haired Russian face of their country’s gun lobby. To others she was a journalist. Some saw her as a mere student. But to the US government, she was a suspected spy. Now Maria Butina, 29, is facing federal conspiracy charges, appearing in court on Wednesday in Washington DC. Butina’s lawyers acknowledge that she has been intensively questioned by the Senate intelligence committee, but insist that she is just a student. Yet she has been on the FBI’s radar since at least 2015. "It's psychosis. A witch hunt," her father, Valery Butin, was quoted as saying Wednesday by the Altapress website in her hometown of Barnaul. Maria Butina Born in Barnaul, in Siberia, to an engineer mother and entrepreneur father, she was interested in politics from an early age and studied political science at Altu State University.  Her father and grandfather were hunters, she said in a 2016 interview, and she founded a group called The Right to Bear Arms in 2012 to promote liberalisation of gun ownership laws in Russia. Initially on graduating she followed in her businessman father’s footsteps, launching and running a furniture store in Siberia. This courtroom sketch depicts Maria Butina, in orange suit, a 29-year-old gun-rights activist suspected of being a covert Russian agent Credit: AP But in 2011 she sold the store to move to Moscow to pursue a career in politics, and maintain her gun rights activism. She took up an unpaid role as a special assistant to a well-connected Russian senator, Aleksandr Torshin, and worked for him from 2011 to 2015 while he was serving on the Russian federal council as first vice chairman. He shared her passion for guns, being declared a life member of the NRA and travelling to the US for conferences - until he was stopped by sanctions in April of this year. By 2015 she was frequently in the US, and attended a Trump rally in Las Vegas a month after his candidacy was declared and asked him about his views on Vladimir Putin. “I know Putin, and I’ll tell you what, we get along with Putin. I believe I would get along very nicely with Putin, OK? I don’t think you’d need the sanctions. I think we would get along very, very well,” Mr Trump said. She also briefly met Donald Trump Jr. The following year she was studying for a Master's in international relations at the American University’s Kogod School of Business, but her gun activism in Russia remained strong. “We and gun rights advocates in many other countries have learned important lessons from the American NRA,” Butina said at the time. “The power of average citizens steadily seeking ever greater gun rights through the power of persuasion and smart communication.” Maria Butina In February 2016, Butina set up a company in South Dakota with Republican veteran strategist Paul Erickson, with whom, according to the Washington Post, she was in a romantic relationship. In November, after the election, she held a fancy dress party in Washington DC attended by Mr Erickson and Trump campaign aides - reportedly bragging about being part of the Trump campaign’s communications with Russia. She then attended Mr Trump’s inauguration, the Washington Post reported, with Mr Erickson by her side.

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