How do you handle a spy like Maria? With someone who has broad experience in dealing with the complex laws involving arms deals … and some not-so-coincidental experience dealing with alt-right nationalists. Including members of the Trump team. As the Department of Justice ramps up to prosecute alleged Russian spy Maria Butina, the Department of Justice is bringing in someone with a very special set of skills, and as The Trace reports those skills involve an attorney with “expertise in weapons export and sanctions laws.”
Will Mackie is an assistant US attorney out of the Eastern District of Tennessee with a speciality in national security law and experience in looking at illegal arms dealing. The set of cases he’s handled, including a pair that happened right there in Tennessee, have earned Mackie praise and give him a unique background for making the case against Butina.
In 2008, Mackie was one of a pair of assistant attorneys who prosecuted a University of Tennessee professor who was accused of sending US military research to China and Iran. Mackie won a conviction on charges of “conspiracy, wire fraud, and 15 counts of exporting ‘defense articles and services.’”
In 2014, Mackie was recognized for his work in the successful prosecution of a militia leader who led armed followers in attempting to “arrest” political officials and take over a court house as part of the fringe “sovereign citizens” movement that’s woven into the nationalist right. However, the militia leader got word that law enforcement was waiting for him, and backed away from his plans before he could be arrested. Mackie then ”creatively employed an obscure, seldom-used criminal statute” to charge the leader with “transporting a firearm in interstate commerce with the intent to commit a civil disorder.” Mackie and another assistant US attorney landed a conviction.
And in 2016, Mackie was part of the team who prosecuted an Arizona arms dealer who set up a $534 million deal to “ship military weapons from Eastern Europe to rebel fighters in Libya’s civil war” in a scheme that involved multiple groups of terrorists and foreign arms manufacturers. It also involved an attorney who was a “foreign policy adviser in the Trump campaign” as well as a writer for “The Blaze.” One who accused Barack Obama of shipping guns to terrorists in coordination with Qatar.
So … Mackie knows arms dealers, right-wing loonies, and right-wing loony arms dealers who are part of the Trump campaign. In each of those previous cases, Mackie was successful. And now he’s part of the team prosecuting Maria Butina.
The reason for bringing Mackie onto the team is not some obscure thoughts about Butina’s relationship to her phony “Right to Bear Arms” cover organization. It’s something much more direct.
Court filings show that Mackie joined the Butina prosecution team days after Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, asked the Treasury Department to investigate possible U.S. sanctions violations by two Russian arms manufacturers. Those manufacturers, Kalashnikov Concern and Tula Cartridge Plant, have ties to Alexander Torshin, a high-ranking Russian official suspected of directing Butina’s spying activities in the United States.
One of the biggest reasons that Kalashnikov hasn’t expanded its sales in the United States—sanctions. In 2014, the Obama administration imposed sanctions against Russia for its invasion of Ukraine. Kalashnikov’s products were covered under those sanctions. So when Donald Trump Jr. was saying that the meeting at Trump Tower was all about those poor Russian orphans, he was leaving out the part where any discussion of those sanctions was also a benefit to rich Russian arms manufacturers who sell a gun that’s been used to kill American soldiers for decades.
Strangely enough, there was a group who were upset by the ban on Kalashnikov. The NRA called the ban a backdoor attempt by gun control supporters to eliminate a “popular” and “well-regarded” weapon.
The old adage goes: The only decent product ever produced by the USSR was the AK-47. After the breakup of the USSR and the end of Cold War, Russia has continued to produce well-regarded AK-pattern rifles that have become popular among American gun owners.
That article from the NRA came just months after NRA leadership traveled to Moscow with Maria Butina. A trip that also included a promotional video from John Bolton.
While the Department of Justice is hiring more people for the Butina case, it might also be useful to have an expert on poisons. Not in the case of prosecuting them. More in the sense that keeping the words “polonium” or “Novichok” out of this case would be a very good thing.