This report by the minority staff of the Senate Committee on Finance, issued in September 2019, has been professionally converted for accurate flowing-text e-book format reproduction. Senate Finance Committee Ranking Member Ron Wyden, D-Ore., in February 2018 began an inquiry of the NRA following public reporting of potential improper activities related to financial contributions and its role in the 2016 presidential election. He subsequently referred information he obtained and related communications with the NRA to the Federal Election Commission. On July 15, 2018, Maria Butina was arrested in Washington, D.C., and charged by the federal government with conspiracy to act as an agent of the Russian Federation within the United States without prior registration. Butina is a Russian national who traveled to the United States with Russian government official Alexander Torshin for NRA events beginning in 2014. She moved to the United States on a student visa in 2016. Butina's actions are alleged to be part of an effort to gain political access within the United States utilizing a "GUN RIGHTS ORGANIZATION," understood to be the NRA. In April 2019, she pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to act as a foreign agent in the United States without registering with the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and was sentenced to 18 months in prison.

In its case against Butina, the DOJ outlined a conspiracy in which she and her Russian government handler utilized the NRA to gain access to American conservative organizations on behalf of the Russian Federation. DOJ filings make clear 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 Russian official is widely understood to be Alexander Torshin, who served in the Russian Federation's legislature from 2001 to 2015 before becoming deputy governor of the Central Bank of Russia.

This compilation includes a reproduction of the 2019 Worldwide Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community.