Maria Butina, a Russian graduate student at American University and gun rights activist, was arrested and accused of “acting as an agent for a foreign government.”
One of the most striking elements of Butina’s case was the venue she allegedly chose to exert influence: the National Prayer Breakfast. At the 2016 and 2017 events, Butina allegedly met with unnamed American officials and “very influential” Russians, and seems to have successfully attempted to broker meetings between figures in these groups.
The National Prayer Breakfast is organized by "The Family," also known as "C Street." It is a powerful right wing organization that claims to be Christian, but who have an erroneous view of Jesus as the ideal “strongman,” an idea they've also referred to as "Totalitarianism For Christ." (The founders of this group were great admirers of the European Fascism of the 1930's).
In strongman-sympathetic President Trump, The Family has found an ideal vessel for their beliefs.
The Family frequently uses the National Prayer Breakfast, and the week surrounding it, as a backdoor recruiting and diplomacy tool, often using the events around the breakfast as a means of back-channel engagement with lobbyists and foreign governments that organizers feel share its “strongman” approach, without formal government oversight.
The Family's distorted belief that Jesus was a strongman guides their understanding that if you're in power, it's because God puts you there. Their efforts to work with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin are going on in the context of a growing U.S. Christian Right admiration for Putin over the past decade.
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