https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/16/us/politics/trump-russia-indictment.html?recp=4
According to the NYT, Butina tried to establish a "back channel" for a meeting between Putin and Trump. If the NYT is correct, why would Russia authorize an operation to get a back channel to someone who is already one of their agents?
This is just supposition on my part, but we've seen several attempts to create a backchannel to Russia from the Trump administration. We see the Butina/NRA situation. We have the Kushner trying to convince the Russians to use one of their facilities to do so, and we have Erik Prince's Seychelles meeting. One could also easily argue that Flynn was a backchannel himself. We also, of course, have Manafort. When speaking of a "backchannel" in covert operations, it's often actually comprised of many such "avenues" and this is done, at least often, on purpose. If one channel becomes compromised, one has alternate communication abilities. Also, the aim of any covert operation is to secure informants, and often it's advantageous to have multiple informants available, as each will have access to different types of information. There's a balance there too, too many informants increases the risk of the entire operation going belly up.
What we appear to be seeing is a multi-pronged attack on the GOP, preying on their weaknesses. Butina, remember, not only worked through the NRA, but the National Prayer Breakfast. Securing informants, backchannels and trust is much easier if you convince your target that you are supporting their ideology. You have something in common. In this case, and this is another reason I think we see Trump humper support for Russian activities, Russian and GOP attitudes are similar. Putin uses the Orthodox church in Russia to support him, and he, in turn, supports their aims as well, mostly in the realm of Christian Dominionism (as long as it's not a threat to Putin's state) and hatred of homosexuals. Christian dominionists are authoritarian bigots, and so their aims are naturally aligned. Now, Russia isn't doing this because of these things they have in common, they are doing it to establish some degree of control over the Republican party in order to control US behavior in foreign policy. So far, this is paying off pretty well for them, although they haven't completed some of their main objectives, like elimination the Magnisky act. Even if they have de facto control the White House to a degree, they do not control Congress (yet) who has still voted in sanctions against Russia and so on. Now, who is most influential on the GOP Congress? Who do they fear and respect? the NRA. Think about it. Why would Russians give two purple monkey shits about the American 2nd Amendment?
Now, what complicates this whole thing, and also goes to show you how successful Russia has really been playing the GOP, is that our intelligence services warned Trump, Congress and virtually the entire GOP about Russian efforts to infiltrate them long before the election. Instead of heeding the warning, they have now turned against our intelligence services, disrespecting them, subjecting them to hearings, calling them corrupt and inept, and trying to reduce their influence and control their behavior and derail their investigations. This has been done mostly through the GOP house, which also is supposed to have oversight of our intelligence services, that is their function, and they are abusing this power to defend Trump. So, intelligence services like the FBI, CIA, Secret Service and NSA are all walking a very careful tightrope right now, trying to do their job while Congress abuses those oversight powers to the detriment of the nation. I'm usually quite skeptical of our intelligence services, since they themselves often abuse their power, but I have to say I'm rooting for them on this one, it's my hope that they won't continue to so easily roll over for the House GOP.
