A US grand jury has indicted a Russian woman on charges of acting as an agent of the Russian government, the Justice Department said.
Maria Butina, who studied at American University in Washington and is a founder of the pro-gun Russian advocacy group Right to Bear Arms, was arrested on Sunday and is scheduled to appear in federal court in Washington tomorrow, the department said.
The 29-year-old is accused of operating at the direction of a high-level official who worked for the Russian Central Bank and was recently sanctioned by the US Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control, the Justice Department said.
The court records did not name the official.
Ms Butina has appeared in numerous photographs on her Facebook page with Alexander Torshin, the deputy head of Russia's Central Bank who was sanctioned by the US Treasury Department in April.
A person familiar with the matter told Reuters that Ms Butina worked for him as an assistant. Other media reported on a business relationship between Ms Butina and Mr Torshin.
Mr Torshin did not reply to a request for comment. The Russian Central Bank declined to comment.
Robert Driscoll, a lawyer for Ms Butina, said she was not a Russian agent.
He said she was cooperating with US authorities and had previously appeared voluntarily behind closed doors for eight hours before the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Her apartment was raided by the FBI in April, he said.
"Ms Butina intends to defend her rights vigorously and looks forward to clearing her name," Mr Driscoll said.
The Justice Department complaint was made public on the same day President Donald Trump met Russia's Vladimir Putin at a summit in Helsinki, at which Mr Trump refused to blame the Russian leader for meddling in the 2016 US presidential election.
Before the summit, Mr Trump took to Twitter to blast Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into whether his campaign colluded with Russia, calling it a "rigged witch-hunt".
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The investigation into Ms Butina's efforts to influence US politics was overseen by the Justice Department's National Security Division and the US Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia, and not by Mr Mueller's office.
Democrats on the US House Intelligence Committee investigating any ties between Mr Trump's campaign and Russia previously highlighted Ms Butina as a person of interest and sought permission from the committee's Republican leadership to bring her in for questioning.
Republicans declined that request and later issued a report along party lines that found there was no collusion between Mr Trump's campaign and Russia.
The Justice Department said in its complaint that Ms Butina worked with two unnamed US citizens and the Russian official to try to influence American politics and infiltrate a pro-gun rights organisation.
The complaint did not name the group, however photos on her Facebook page showed that she attended events sponsored by the National Rifle Association. An NRA spokesman did not reply to requests for comment.
Ms Butina allegedly arranged dinners in Washington and New York City and tried to develop relationships with American politicians to establish "back channel" lines of communication to "penetrate the US national decision-making apparatus," the complaint said.
The complaint did not specifically mention Mr Trump's campaign.
The source who said Ms Butina worked for Mr Torshin said that she was a Trump supporter who bragged at parties in Washington that she could use her political connections to help get people jobs in the Trump administration after the election.
In a December 2016 class project at American University, Ms Butina gave a presentation titled "What Might President Trump's Foreign Policy Be Toward Russia?" and listed several of Russia's key policy objectives, according to a copy reviewed by Reuters.
American University spokesman Mark Story said Ms Butina was enrolled as a student there in the summer of 2016 and graduated in the spring of 2018 with a Master of Arts degree.
In a video posted on YouTube from the Freedom Fest event in Las Vegas in July 2015, Ms Butina can be seen asking then-candidate Trump if he would continue to support sanctions against Russia if he were elected president.
The Justice Department's complaint also referenced an email written by Ms Butina in March 2015, which discussed the prospect of a major political party winning the 2016 election which was "traditionally associated with negative and aggressive foreign policy" toward Russia.
She went on to say in the email that they should build a relationship with a major gun rights organisation that is the "largest sponsor of the elections to the US Congress" and a sponsor of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in order to improve US-Russia relations.
On her Facebook page, Ms Butina is featured prominently photographed alongside a number of US politicians and other high-profile figures, including Wisconsin Governor and former Republican presidential candidate Scott Walker and David Keene, the former president of the NRA.
