A conservative operative who tried to link alleged Russian spy Maria Butina -- who was also his girlfriend -- to Donald Trump's 2016 campaign is speaking out following his release from prison.
Paul Erickson was sentenced to seven years for his role in an unrelated fraud scheme, but he was released thanks to a Trump pardon in 2021 after serving two and half years, and he gave a series of interviews shortly afterward that are just now being released, reported The Daily Beast.
”The government’s charge against her was so flimsy,” Erickson said in the February 2021 interviews. “This is my opinion, [but] you can't fully appreciate the lunacy of the government's prosecution of her without directly refuting their premise for the prosecution.”
Butina arranged a 2015 visit to Moscow by members of the National Rifle Association and tried to set up a meeting between Trump and Russian president Vladimir Putin during the 2016 campaign, and the FBI alleges that she provided Russia with information that intelligence officers could use against the U.S., but Erickson agreed with her denials of being a spy.
“The ultimate insult of her travails in the United States was that not only was she not a spy until she was treated harshly by the justice system, she was once a potentially future ally to America in global relations in a post-truth world,” Erickson told Paul Glader and Mary Cuddehe, guest co-hosts of the podcast "Infamous."