Her trial in the court of public opinion remains ongoing, however, and though a tidal wave of misleading and critical reporting on Butina has been published since her arrest, it was Butina's attorney the government sought to gag Wednesday.
Assistant US attorney Thomas Saunders refused to issue discovery to defense attorney Robert Driscoll until a protective order is secured on it, thereby gagging Driscoll on its subjects. Discovery is the process in criminal proceedings wherein the prosecution turns over its evidence to the defense. The government took objection to Driscoll's media appearances and argued that he could leak evidence to the media.
Butina has been pictured with Kislyak in a selfie, which the government put forth as evidence of the inability of law enforcement to make sure Butina wouldn't flee to the embrace of the Russian embassy in DC. But it was taken in passing, Driscoll said at the pretrial hearing, at "a movie screening hosted by a Russian Cultural Center in Washington."
Chutkan alluded to the District of Columbia's news erudition, saying that DC has a "limited jury pool." Calling potential jurors "unfavorable to Russia" would be to "put it lightly," Radio Sputnik's Loud & Clear host Brian Becker said Wednesday.
The government said that it has four to six terabytes of evidence in its first round of discovery, and that another round roughly the same size will be ready to be released to the defense in the next few weeks.
The defense is seeking records of eight hours of testimony Butina made before the US Senate Intelligence Committee in April. According to her attorney, she has turned over records of her communications with Alexander Torshin, the Russian official whom she is alleged to have been coordinating with. Butina is also accused of having solicited some $125,000 to finance her operations in the US, while CNN reports that she informed the Senate Intelligence Committee of her backing from Russian billionaire Konstantin Nikolaev.
After Driscoll said Wednesday that the government was being "coy" over whether or not they had reviewed that evidence, Saunders stated they had but did not have it in their possession. Chutkan offered to have the government issue the "substance" of that bit of discovery — eight hours of closed-door hearings — "orally" to the defense.
At the heart of the case are messages to and from Butina which on their face appear damning. However, their context is unknown. At Butina's pre-trial detention hearing, Driscoll noted that she had exchanged "hundreds of thousands" of messages with her "mentor" Torshin, but that the government was focusing only on those which could be viewed as evidence of guilt when decontextualized. Driscoll said the "pictures of dogs and questions about picking up American toothpaste" exchanged by the two have been ignored.
Another piece of evidence raised by the government was a selfie Butina took in front of the US Capitol Building on Inauguration Day 2016. Torshin told her that she was a "daredevil," to which she replied "good teachings." Driscoll argued that every other student of international relations in Washington, DC, has taken that same selfie.
The most cited comment in the Torshin and Butina's catalogue is one which came a few days after the 2016 election, in which Butina said she was "ready for further orders." According to the FBI affidavit in the case, the remark was made via a Twitter direct message.
Loud & Clear host John Kiriakou, a 15-year veteran of the Central Intelligence Agency, said on Wednesday that "Spy-to-spy communications are not done over Twitter. I can guarantee you that. This was either a joke, or it was taken completely out of context."
Driscoll said he will issue a motion to dismiss the indictment against Butina as the process of discovery furthers and will issue a motion appealing Butina's pre-trial detention, during which she sits in solitary confinement, in two weeks. The next status hearing is scheduled for September 10.
Meanwhile, Chutkan gave the government until August 8 to submit another protective order on the discovery, giving the defense until August 15 to state any objections.
"We remain confident that Ms. Butina will be vindicated in this process and that everyone will realize the truth of the matter," Driscoll told reporters after exiting the courthouse Wednesday.