Maria Butina & I, Part III: Betraying Maria

I will disclose nothing more than I disclosed in television interviews two months ago. However, I will tie things together in a way that will help the public comprehend what is going on in our country, and shift the dialogue from Stuck on Stupid to something more constructive. Readers should begin by reading these two parts of the story:

Maria Butina & I, Part I: Meeting Maria

Maria Butina & I, Part Deux: Romancing Maria

As we left things….In July of 2016 the Men In Black came back asking me to rekindle a romantic relationship with Maria Butina. As I have emphasized, they were aghast at having to make this request of me. They emphasized it had never been done in their experience, that the USA is the Good Guy, that we do not operate like the Bad Guys, and so on and so forth. But the request was coming from X, Y, and Z, federal officials of whom I had heard (incidentally, I initially misunderstood one detail, in that I thought the request was coming from all three: two months later they let me know that Z had added his signature to the request, and only then did I become aware of my slight misunderstanding of the original request). I emphasize again that there was no leering, no rubbing of hands gleefully, or laughing. Men in Black are honorable people, and they were extremely discomfited by the request they were communicating. They reminded me I had every right to say, “No” and no one would think worse of me.

I agreed to carry out the request, joking, “It’s not exactly hardship duty.”

Internally, meanwhile, I decided I would create the impression of romancing Maria for them, while in fact not laying a finger on her, and instead, focus on setting up X, Y, and Z for felony charges.

Why did I do that? First, let me stipulate that if I thought there were a legitimate law enforcement purpose to their request I would have complied without a second thought. I am patriotic, and no saint. But as I have described in the two previous essays on Maria, my alarm bells were going off in a big way. I knew I was being played in some way.

1. I was now certain they had been duping me all along in pretending to have no interest in Maria, and I figured there was some other scheme at work. Three months earlier they had told me (against all reasonable evidence and interpretation) that there was nothing unusual about her, but to get her out of my life. Now they were back with this insane request from X, Y, and Z: it all smelled like skunk. I cannot claim to have sussed it out, but one of my hypotheses was the one that I had formed in January 2016: they were creating a Can-O-Scandal that they were going to whip out some day in the future, shake up, and spray all over anyone they wanted to (including, possibly, me, though I am scandal-proof in ways they don’t understand). Again, I had little confidence in any hypothesis, but I had high confidence there was mischief afoot.

2. Second, they had also involved me in an operation having to do with a corrupt federal official, and that operation had ended in a way that was extremely disconcerting. As in: it made me wonder who was corrupt and who wasn’t, or if there was anyone on the scene who was not corrupt.

So when they came back with a request to rekindle a romance with Maria, I was determined to get to the bottom of it. Why did I take it as my job to get to the bottom of it? Because unbeknownst to the Men In Black, I had been instructed, by another party within the federal government, to investigate the federal government itself. I had been at it for over a decade. Maria Butina brought me the perfect opportunity to bring that investigation to its conclusion. So I took it.

Thus I responded to their request to rekindle a romantic relationship with Maria Butina by making a joke about it not being hardship duty, saluted, and went about rekindling a fake relationship with Maria. Why did I make it fake, and not just go through with it? Because I expected that someday, one way or another, everything was going to be exposed, and when it was, I was not going to have Maria Butina, the United States of America, or even the Russian people disgraced by committing what felt like it might have been sexual assault on their daughter. I do not know if it would have been in any legal sense, and like I say, if I thought it had some legitimate purpose I surely would have done it without a second thought. But the first period I dated Maria while also informing on her was problematic enough: however, because it was she who initiated that physical relationship, and because my intent throughout it was yenta-ing her in to foreign policy circles where her dreams of being a back-channel for peace might have come true, I was comfortable with what I was doing. But given that by July 2016 I had come to understand that I was being used in some kind of political espionage, both with regard to Maria and with regard to a corruption investigation of a federal official, I decided instead simply to play along, and set up X, Y, and Z for felony charges, in the hope that someday we would someone who could bring the criminals to justice.

Given the harshness with which I had ended things with Maria the first time, it took me awhile to win back Maria’s confidence through emails, texts, and phone calls. Eventually I did win her confidence back. I got her to visit me in Utah, I wined and dined her, I romanced her in front of 8,000 people at a corporate party.

Lest I sound any more of a cad than is absolutely necessary, let me repeat that Maria Butina is a spectacular woman: watch the interview on RussiaTV at the bottom of this essay, and you will see what I mean. She’s the proverbial woman that they don’t make many of any more. So I wish to emphasize that (unlike the first period I actually did date Maria) at no point throughout this period did I have a physical relationship with Maria. I knew we had to have a bright line on that, so if and when this all got unscrambled later, she would not be disgraced. As I have explained, Maria wants to run for President of Russia someday, and if she is known as the woman who had succumbed to an American shmuck like me playing games like this, her chances of being President of Russia would be hurt. To her credit, she told me, “I have boyfriend now, Patrick. Am not Russian prostitute. If you wish to date me you will court me, and I will decide if I wish to leave boyfriend, and be yours.” Whereas normally I would take that as an opening gambit from a European woman (who have not yet forgotten what “seduction” means), in this case, it played into my plans perfectly, and she only had to say it once.

Yet publicly I created publicly the impression that we were hot and heavy, and reported that this as the truth. In fact, once that was accepted, I started taking it farther and farther (in ways I will not reveal here), simply in order to incriminate further the people at the top of the chain of command who were sending me this request.

By November 2016 Maria was ready to leave her Republican boyfriend and move to Utah. I reported that, but was admonished not to let her do so, because X, Y, and Z wanted her to stay in DC doing…. precisely the shmoozing that two years later she was arrested and imprisoned for doing.

I wish also to state again how entirely inappropriate it would be if anything should happen to the Men In Black who were conduits for these orders. I deliberately kept them confused about what the hell was going on, and if there are any legal repercussions brought against them I hope their lawyers get in touch with me, because I can exculpate them. For all I care the people at the top of their chain of command can be hanged, but the agents who were involved in these activities were caught completely off guard by some of the things I said I was doing, by my design.

Maria and I discussed getting together over Christmas, 2016. I think she was going to be in Dakota with her Republican boyfriend, and my home in Utah was only a jaunt away. We could have made it work. If I remember correctly (and sometimes these things get a little fuzzy), we did not. That is because, while keeping the relationship warm at a distance, I began to beg off meetings with her. There were only so many times I could report, “Maria has now met with this Republican, and then this one, and now she is angling for a meeting with this other one… and she is making arrangements about meeting such-and such, and then the National Prayer Breakfast, and then she’s meeting so-and-so…”

In addition, I shudder to confess, I was beginning to have a pang of conscience about it all. The truth is, until then, while I admired Maria, and I respected her, and I thought it would be the greatest thing in the world if a liberal like her could go on and be President of Russia … I was still comfortable using her in my own designs. But somewhere along the way, I began to develop a fondness for Maria. Not romantic, but such as is characterized by Bill Murray towards Scarlett Johansson in Lost in Translation. It seems to be my lot in life (especially as the middle-aged bachelor into whom I have grown) to come across, from time to time, young women who develop an attachment to me. I have learned that the responsible thing to do in such circumstances is to use our times together to open their eyes a bit, to give them experiences which may enhance their lives and futures, to give them memories they can reflect on when they go on with their lives…. But to try not to possess. That is the understanding that Bill Murray brings to Scarlett Johansson in that fabulous movie. To the extent that my involvement with Maria was not completely cold-blooded on my part, that is what I was trying to do for Maria. I thought it would be a good thing for all concerned, and that I would be able to shield her from any harm.

But by late 2016 I realized things were going too far, and notwithstanding my own designs, I had more of a duty to protect her than I was respecting, especially as I became certain that there was no legitimate law enforcement or national security interest being served. Thus, I found ways to avoid following through on the opportunities that were cropping up to carry it farther with her.

So while we discussed getting together at Christmas, or in the months after it, and I found ways to dodge, simply because I wanted to freeze things where they were to reduce the damage to Maria. On balance I may be a total jerk for what I did, but I can claim that much honestly.

In late February, 2017, an article appeared in the Daily Beast about Maria Butina. It was the first such article to have appeared, and it laid out with perfect accuracy her entire story (as I knew it, anyway). I was summoned angrily by Men In Black, who wanted to know if I had had anything to do with the story. I had not, and was unaware of it until they brought it to my attention. It is important to know this: read that Daily Beast article from early 2017, and know that every piece of information in it was known to the United States Government by September, 2015. Everything. Read that, and ask yourself, “If the USG knew all this information from September, 2015, what are the chances that they were telling the truth when they were pretending to me to be ignoring Maria from September 2015 – March 2016?” I put the odds at 0%. Which means that by letting her swank around in political circles like they were, they were doing something other than whatever they were supposed to be doing.

After that article appeared, I was instructed angrily to get to Washington, DC and get to the bottom of it. A mistake they made was the disparity between their anger at the appearance of this article, and how they had treated in a nonchalant manner all the same information when I had provided it from September 2015 (and their lackadaisical nonchalant-ness about further information I developed up through March, 2016, when they had had me break up with Maria for the first time). Now completely convinced I was being manipulated in a game unrelated to anything to do with law enforcement or national security, I agreed to go to DC and get them the information they requested, but used the opportunity to set a trap of sorts. I won’t go into the details, but I did manage to learn the source of the article, how the information had leaked from Maria to the press (via some fellow students and a professor), and everything else for which they had asked.

They were satisfied with my results but I believe they sussed out that I had some hidden agenda I was not exposing. In any case, in March of 2017 was I told, once again, to get Maria Butina out of my life. I did. It was in the course of that conversation that I was told that what was going on was that Putin had a campaign that was designed to get all of America chasing our tails, and that whoever had won the 2016 election, he was going to pull a trigger and create an enormous shit-storm that would engulf the USA…. Precisely as was already happening. They said it had nothing to do with Trump, and the same thing would be happening if Hillary had won, or Cruz or Rubio. The national security apparatus had reached that conclusion by March, 2017.

In any case, I was told to get Maria out of my life again, and to have no further contact. I complied. While there may have been an incidental text between us over the next year, there was nothing of substance, no phone calls, no meetings.

About 15 months later, in May or June, 2018, I was speaking in Washington, DC in a public forum. I received a text from Maria: she had been tracking me, and was aware that I was in DC. She told me that she had finished her Master’s Degree at American University, and wondered if she could come by my hotel and show me her diploma and transcript. Although for those 15 months I had complied with the request of Men In Black to have no further contact with Maria Butina, that day I said, “Yes.” Why? Partially I did not have a good answer to refuse such a benign request. Partially I was a little soft-hearted. But partially it was…. Because fuck them.

I told Maria to come to my hotel. Maria came, and we spent about 40 minutes together. After an initial few minutes, the warmth slowly returned, and eventually she pulled out her cell phone and showed me a photograph of her transcript. As I expected, it was more or less straight A+, all the way down.

Clever girl that she is, Maria waited until I was studying the photograph of the transcript for a moment…

Then she swiped the screen. I was staring at a subpoena she had received from the Senate Intelligence Committee a few weeks earlier. She told me about being questioned by Senate Intel, about how the forces of the USG were closing in on her. All along, she was studying my face for a reaction. I gave her none: I was still in the mode of needing to let things play out, so I would have the answers I sought. But finally, probably crossing some lines, I told her that I thought she was dreaming if she thought she was going to skate from everything. We were 18 months into a Russian espionage scandal that was engulfing Washington, DC and the Trump administration. I asked her if she could go home to Russia safely. Maria replied, “Patrick, they have destroyed my group with all the liberals of Russia. If I go home I will go to prison for 15 years. “ I told her that the headquarters of the Federal Bureau of Investigations was about six blocks away, and she should walk over there that very moment, knock on the door, and simply say, “You must have read about me and have some concerns. I would like to speak to someone and explain who I am and what I am doing here, and allay any concerns.” She told me that as a loyal Russian she could not do that, and even if she could, they would not believe her.

I told her that she was what we called in English, “a loose end,” and that she should not expect things to end well. She was either going to get whacked by some FSB goons, or she would be arrested by the FBI. The look on her face told me she knew I was right. Sadly, she kissed me goodbye for the last time, studying my face for answers I could not provide. I told Maria not to forget our North Star, the principles of liberalism, and that maybe things would work out.

About four weeks later I was in Atlantic City, and my iPad served up some YouTube clips with a man named “Peter Strzok” being grilled by Congress. His testimony gave me the missing pieces I needed to put everything together. The next day I was in Washington, DC trying to explain to the right parties what was going on behind the curtains regarding Maria Butina and a great many other matters.

Days later, however, before anything could be done, Maria was arrested and put in solitary confinement (“Solitary Housing Unit” or “SHU”), and was ultimately sentenced to 18 months in a box the size of a typical shower stall. I read that she was let out every morning at 2 a.m. for 30 minutes, so she could brush her teeth and take a shower.

As I indicated in a previous essay, both the prosecutor and the judge were Obama second term appointments.

About the judge, U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, a courtroom observer has noted that she is known as “a defendant’s judge,” always taking the side of leniency for defendants in her courtroom. Maria’s case is the only case in her career that this judge demanded more punishment be meted out than the prosecutor requested.

About the prosecutor, Assistant U.S. Attorney Erik Kenerson, I know several things. I know that his marriage to another Assistant U.S. Attorney Kathryn Leigh Rakoczy was covered in the New York Times and got me all verklempt (“First, Due Diligence, Then Romance“). I know that they were married in Whittemore House, the home of the Woman’s National Democratic Club in Washington, DC. And I know that Kenerson’s wife, Assistant U.S. Attorney Kathryn Leigh Rakoczy, worked for Robert Mueller on his Special Counsel Investigation (“Inside Mueller’s New Army“, Daily Beast, July 11, 2018).

Of the appointment of Assistant U.S. Attorney Kathryn Leigh Rakoczy to Robert Mueller’s Special Counsel Investigation, the Daily Beast noted:

Rakoczy’s role on Mueller’s investigation—made public in a June 22 court filing—has raised some questions in Washington legal circles. An assistant U.S. attorney in the district of D.C., Rakoczy is best known for her work on violent crime cases. She focused on misdemeanors until about eight years ago, and then shifted to primarily prosecuting D.C. street crime. A Washington criminal defense attorney familiar with her work, who spoke anonymously to prevent tension between himself and Rakoczy, said her work for Mueller has generated some head-scratching, since Mueller isn’t investigating any violent street crimes.

Head-scratching indeed. But interestingly enough, Kathryn Leigh Rakoczy was also a second term appointment of President Obama.

If only there were a pattern….

It has been reported that it was Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team who insisted on Maria Butina’s isolated confinement. Here are some curious things to know about Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.

* Robert Mueller knows all about me. In a previous post I revealed that I helped the FBI indict 200 Wall Street players from 2009-2011. Mueller was FBI director that entire time. I received his personal thanks and congratulations from back in those days. I promise, Bob Mueller knows who I am.

* The Mueller Special Counsel Investigation was formed to investigate Russian spying in the 2016 election. Maria Butina is the only “Russian spy” that has show up through this entire charade.

* Maria Butina and I had an on-and-off affair for the three years she was here and in play. I am all over the Maria Butina file.

* The Mueller Commission never contacted me.

Therefore I ask: was Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation supposed to get to the bottom of anything? Or was its purpose to obfuscate the bottom of everything?

Today, as I wrote this, the news brought word that the DOJ has opened a criminal investigation into the origins of the Russian probe. I think I know just a small fraction of what the DOJ is going to turn up, and what I have revealed is a sliver of what I know. All I can say is, “It is about time.” For the last three years our country has been put through the ringer as the organs of law enforcement and national security got hijacked by some traitorous psychopaths, and they have nearly destroyed the United States of America. If it had not been the eventual appointment of an Attorney General who seems determined to return Rule of Law to our country and wrestle it back from the criminals who almost destroyed it, they might have succeeded.

I do not expect those criminals to go down quietly. Today it has been amusing to watch The New York Times (Official Publication of the Deep State) going to work to discredit Durham’s newly criminal investigation. They are digging themselves a deeper hole, and to them I say: “Keep at it fellows!” They have no idea yet how stupid they are going to look. I hope they bet the last ounce of their credibility on the proposition that Durham’s investigation is just a political witch-hunt: Americans will all finally become conversant with the concept of “gaslighting”, which will render The New York Times impotent.

I hope that as Maria Butina flies home to Russia in the hours ahead, she can take some satisfaction in the fact that she did stay true to the North Star of the principles of liberalism. It is our country that has lost its way. Maria is the finest Russia has to offer. And I hope that President Putin may look past some of his philosophical differences with Maria long enough to understand she does not deserve 15 years in Siberia. In fact, he might consider getting to know her himself.

I do not know what that prosecutor and federal judge knew about the background of Maria Butina and the events which landed her in their courtroom. But I can guess. And I think that with a little luck, both that prosecutor and the judge, and maybe Andrew Weissmann and Robert Mueller, and perhaps even X, Y, and Z, are going to find out what it is like to be in a SHU unit somewhere brushing their teeth at two o’clock in the morning, standing on cold tile.

Res ipsa loquitur.