So the activist, Maria Butina, whom U.S. prosecutors now accuse of being a covert Russian agent, reached out to contacts in her homeland — and turned on the charm. In a July 2017 email, she told one man that his passport photo was “a handsome one.”

A year later, Butina, 29, is in a jail cell outside Washington, awaiting trial. Butina, supported by Russian intelligence, managed to infiltrate conservative groups and advance Moscow’s interests in the United States, prosecutors say.

In their telling, she used gun rights to gain a toehold in U.S. conservative circles, and then struck up a romance with a far older Republican operative to open doors further. She has denied the allegations.

Butina’s efforts to deal in Russian jet fuel, detailed in hundreds of pages of previously unreported emails, were notable not just for their whiff of foreign intrigue but for who they involved: David Keene, a former president of the National Rifle Association and a prominent leader of the conservative movement. They also involved Keene’s wife, Donna, a well-connected Washington lobbyist, and Butina’s boyfriend, Paul Erickson, who ran Patrick J. Buchanan’s 1992 presidential campaign.

Their attempt to secure the fuel deal illustrates a reality that investigators have had to navigate in bringing a federal case against Butina. During her time in the United States, she surrounded herself not only with high-profile American conservatives but also with dubious characters who seemed bent on making a fast buck — and it was not always easy to tell one from the other.

Butina had no experience in the oil business, yet jumped into a scheme that hinged entirely on her securing a supply of huge amounts of jet fuel — nearly double what all of Russia’s refineries export in a month.

Erickson did not respond to requests for comment. Neither did the Keenes.

Butina’s lawyer, Robert Driscoll, said the fuel deal was “just further evidence that she wasn’t here on any mission on behalf of the Russian Federation. She was essentially operating on her own account.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Matthew Rosenberg, Michael LaForgia and Andrew E. Kramer © 2018 The New York Times