On Monday, suspected Russian agent Maria Butina lost her bid to get out of jail pending trial, and US District Judge Tanya Chutkan told both sides of the case to stop talking to the press.
A federal judge in Washington rejected Butina’s request to reconsider her current pretrial detention, agreeing with findings over the summer by another judge that there were no release conditions that would assure the court that Butina wouldn’t try to flee the country.
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In agreeing to enter an order restricting what lawyers in the case can say in public, Chutkan pointed out that Washington, DC, has a relatively small pool of potential jurors, making it more likely that inappropriate comments about the case could make it harder to seat a jury and have a fair trial.
NPR:
"There comes a point where your work defending this client needs to happen in this courtroom and not on the public airwaves," she said. Accordingly the judge ordered both parties in the case to stop talking about it in public.
Undaunted, defense lawyers signaled they would file motions to dismiss the case and other briefs in the coming weeks.
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... [T] judge also had a warning for prosecutors in the case, who recently acknowledged they had misinterpreted messages between Butina and a friend to make the false claim that she was trying to trade sex for a job.
Actually, as Butina's lawyer has argued, it was a lighthearted exchange.
"It took me approximately five minutes to read those emails and tell that they were jokes," Chutkan said. "It was apparent on its face."
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Butina sat impassively throughout most of the 30 minute hearing, wearing a green Alexandria, Va. jail shirt and pants, squeezing her hand into a fist. Her attorneys brought her a change of clothes in a dark garment bag in the event she won release.
Two representatives from the Russian consulate attended the proceeding but they declined comment when reporters approached.
Prosecutors have pointed out the Russian government has visited Butina a half dozen times since her incarceration in mid-July, and that foreign minister Sergey Lavrov twice spoke with his U.S. counterpart, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, about her case.
In the original charging documents filed in July, prosecutors claimed that Butina worked at the direction of "a high-level official in the Russian government who was previously a member of the legislature of the Russian Federation and later became a top official at the Russian Central Bank."
The official, whose description matches Alexander Torshin, had been sanctioned by the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control in April 2018.
NPR's Tim Mak adds Butina's next status hearing is November 12th.
Judge Orders Gag, Chides Prosecutors In Case Of Accused Russian Agent Butina (NPR)
Alleged Russian Agent Maria Butina Will Stay In Jail And Her Lawyer Can’t Talk To The Press Anymore (BuzzFeed News)
Accused Russian agent Maria Butina to remain in jail, judge puts gag order on both sides (USA Today)