Accused Russian Agent's Journey To Washington Began In South Dakota

Long before she became a fixture at NRA conventions, and years before she allegedly attempted to set up a back channel between the Kremlin and Republican officials, Maria Butina got her foothold in the US in South Dakota.

She was invited to family dinners of buffalo steaks, shot pheasants with local hunters, and established a track record of speaking to American students about gun rights. It would eventually become the blueprint for her outreach efforts to Washington and the NRA, where the FBI says she established connections “based on common views and a system of conservative values.”

Now a growing number of people in this sparsely populated state best known as the home to Mount Rushmore are flabbergasted to find themselves in photos or Facebook friends with an alleged Russian agent. Last month, Butina was arrested and jailed as an unregistered foreign agent for carrying out a years-long campaign to infiltrate US conservative organizations, which prosecutors say was directed by a high-ranking Russian official and funded by a Russian billionaire. She has pleaded not guilty.

“I met a Russian spy 3 years before she was outed,” reads the recently edited caption of an Instagram photo posted in 2015 by Nick Johnson, now an enlisted US Marine, who posed with Butina at a Young Republicans summer camp.

He is part of a growing group — the pilot who took her flying, the restaurant owner who introduced her to the Moscow Mule, the local hunters who counted trophies with her, the congressional candidate who invited her to speak to kids about gun rights — asking the same question: What was Butina doing in South Dakota?

Butina made Sioux Falls, the state’s largest city, her home base in the US for several stays in 2014 and 2015 before moving to Washington on a student visa. It was there that she got her first US cellphone, with a South Dakota area code, and wrote detailed observations of how American institutions worked, from local elections to college campuses. While the FBI has focused on “the groundwork that Butina and the Russian official laid to influence high-level politicians” in 2015, her time in South Dakota was mainly spent with average Americans.

That fits with what former intelligence officers told BuzzFeed News her likely purpose was — to gather information and develop access to influential US figures.

“When she was connecting on a very local level, she was getting information on how our society works and building her backstory,” said Alex Finley, a former CIA operations officer.

In that sense, Butina's time in the US was similar to that of Russians who traveled to several states in 2014 for the Internet Research Agency, a state-sponsored troll farm indicted for trying to meddle in the 2016 election — “she was figuring out how things work, what are the political divisions on the local level, what could you exploit,” Finley said.

Although her subsequent efforts to set up high-level meetings were often clumsy, and not always successful, her time in South Dakota seemed to prove that when it came to the issue of gun rights, Russians had found a valuable access point to US conservatives.

“[Sioux Falls] reminded me of my native Siberia.”

Butina first visited South Dakota in April 2014, accompanied by her US partner and eventual boyfriend, Paul Erickson, a 56-year-old South Dakota Republican political operative and businessman. She’d met him five months earlier in Moscow, where he was part of a group of American gun activists who attended her group's annual meeting. The US delegation was headed by David Keene, a former NRA president whom Erickson had known since 1995.

The first thing she noticed when she got off the plane in Sioux Falls was that it smelled like home — “the frosty air and even the smell of the local flora reminded me of my native Siberia,” she wrote in an article for a Russian magazine in 2016.

The other was the large orange banner — “Welcome Hunters!” — at the airport, which proudly notes it is named for a former governor who served as an NRA president.

It was the perfect entry point in the US for the then–25-year-old gun enthusiast, who in conversations with locals often brought up that she had a lot in common with South Dakota’s culture.

In Washington, she often came off as overly solicitous in her introductions, and her fervent offers to connect made some uncomfortable, people who met her told BuzzFeed News.

In South Dakota’s largest city — which at 150,000 is still a fraction of the size of her native Barnaul in Siberia — the stakes were lower, and people were friendly. Her stories of fighting for citizens’ access to weapons tapped into the fear — and sympathy — of avid Second Amendment supporters in a state where billboards on the highway read “Eat steak. Wear furs. Keep your guns. The American way.”

On her first visit, touring the state after attending the annual NRA convention in Indianapolis, she hit the main sights, from Mount Rushmore (“I thought the work was more ancient”) to bison (“looks terrifying, right?”)

Half a year later, she was back again, going pheasant hunting with a local outdoor group.

Photos of her posted by Missouri River Outdoors that November refer to her as “our guest hunter, Maria, from Moscow, Russia,” with Erickson never far from her side — rare glimpses of the duo together.

“When we got there, we were told a Russian model was going to join the hunting group,” Kevin Connelly, who lives in Elk Point and was part of the group that day, told BuzzFeed News. In the company of men, Butina often brought up that she had been featured in Russian GQ, posing with guns.

“It was perfect for her mission.”

In the words of local blogger Cory Allen Heidelberger, “Boy, there’s gotta be a promo for South Dakota tourism in here somewhere.”

Heidelberger, who runs the liberal Dakota Free Press, has been crowdsourcing photos to find Butina’s hunting companions and not been surprised to get comments like “no way, that’s my boss!”

“South Dakota doesn’t make the news much, so now there’s so much intrigue because it really does intersect with almost every one of our lives,” he said. “People thought, ‘Here’s a girl who grew up shooting, she’s like my sister,’ and that’s all you needed to get a foot in the door."

“It was perfect for her mission.”

In the words of local blogger Cory Allen Heidelberger, “Boy, there’s gotta be a promo for South Dakota tourism in here somewhere.”

Heidelberger, who runs the liberal Dakota Free Press, has been crowdsourcing photos to find Butina’s hunting companions and not been surprised to get comments like “no way, that’s my boss!”

“South Dakota doesn’t make the news much, so now there’s so much intrigue because it really does intersect with almost every one of our lives,” he said. “People thought, ‘Here’s a girl who grew up shooting, she’s like my sister,’ and that’s all you needed to get a foot in the door."

While the later years of Butina’s work have been in the headlines, described by the FBI as a “calculated, patient” influence operation that left a trail of $300,000 in financial transactions, Erickson’s neighbors have been dissecting the time she spent in South Dakota.

“It’s so freaking crazy and surreal, I feel like there are now almost zero degrees of separation between myself and the most fascinating yet frightening true story of my lifetime,” said Nicole Allen, who said seeing news coverage of an alleged Russian agent living in her complex was “wild af” and that neighbors have been joking about the common areas being bugged. “It’s a rural, gun-loving state so I believe that’s why it was perfect for her mission.”

It was to that Sioux Falls apartment that Butina’s lawyer, Robert Driscoll, says she was planning to move with Erickson when she was arrested last month. He told BuzzFeed News the recent American University graduate was planning on starting a business there.

“Maria Butina was incredible”

Erickson used his local connections to give Butina a platform that would build a reputation in US gun activist circles.

Her local speaking engagements over the course of a few months in 2015 show how she used these low-key events, which were carefully documented on social media and written up on her blog, to establish herself.

“Maria Butina was incredible,” the organizer of a weeklong summer camp for teenage Republicans tweeted in July 2015, with a photo that shows Butina speaking, with Erickson standing behind her holding a map. “The kids *loved* her stories of working for freedom in Russia.”

Now that organizer, Dusty Johnson, is the Republican candidate for South Dakota’s lone US House seat and has found himself having to explain to critics how an alleged Russian agent ended up speaking to kids at his event.

“Expecting that people at a summer camp would sniff out a Russian spy as part of a 25-minute speech about freedom is probably expecting more than any rational person could,” he told the Argus Leader newspaper.

Johnson’s defense — that he had looked up Butina online before inviting her, and had been reassured because she had previously spoken at local schools and universities — shows that Butina and Erickson’s strategy of establishing a track record had been successful. Johnson didn't respond to a request for comment from BuzzFeed News.

Earlier that year, in April 2015, Butina had spoken at the University of South Dakota, Erickson’s alma mater in his hometown of Vermillion.A flyer for the event featured a professional headshot of Butina and a biography that portrayed her as the face of Russia’s gun rights movement. She hit all the now-familiar points, according to an outline of her speech posted on her website, telling students that South Dakota reminded her of Siberia, praising US gun laws, and ending with a Bible verse. In a Russian-language blog, she recounted that they had asked good questions and she had not found the stereotype of “dumb” American college students to be true, describing them as “not dumber and not smarter than our guys.”

A USD spokesperson told BuzzFeed News Butina was invited “as an international guest lecturer upon the recommendation of Paul Erickson,” who is listed as a “life executive member” of the W.O. Farber Center for Civic Leadership, a USD program.

Even when the issue was far removed from guns, Butina did not turn down any opportunity to speak in front of an audience. That same summer, she spoke to high school students at an “Academy of Finance” workshop in Sioux Falls about women and entrepreneurship, describing her experience running furniture stores in her hometown. The teacher later posted a thank-you note saying it was “priceless to have a leader like Maria Butina and Paul Erickson in our classroom to role model” for the students.

“There was no political discussion whatsoever” at her event, Sioux Falls School District spokesperson Ben Schumacher told BuzzFeed News.

He confirmed that it was arranged by Erickson, who at the time was a volunteer with the Junior Achievement of South Dakota program.

“They’re well aware that Ms. Butina’s boyfriend lived in South Dakota.”

Despite him playing a major role in setting up all of these events, Butina does not seem to mention Erickson once in her more than 4,000 blog entries, as well as thousands more posts and photos on Facebook, Instagram, VK, and Twitter. It appears to be a glaring omission for the live-in “boyfriend” her lawyer said she was moving to South Dakota for after a years-long relationship.

She only mentions him in her gun group’s promotion for an event in Moscow where he was speaking in September 2014, describing him as a “life member” of the NRA, a gun collector, a Christian, and airplane aficionado who had served as a political consultant in six presidential campaigns. The NRA did not respond to BuzzFeed News' repeated requests for comment.

According to the FBI affidavit, Butina’s relationship with Erickson was a cover that she “appears to treat…as simply a necessary aspect of her activities.” Later on, she “expressed disdain” about having to live with him, prosecutors allege.

Erickson’s Sioux Falls apartment, where Butina lived on her visits in 2014 and 2015, lies in a quiet complex centered around an American flag, silent except for the wind chimes on neighbors’ balconies and the muted roar of a nearby highway. Families of deer circle behind a patch of trees by the bike path she used for morning runs and yoga. The listed address for Erickson’s business, Compass Care, is right across the street, in the same complex as the local office for US Sen. John Thune. Last month, it looked abandoned, with boxes of files sitting on the floor of the darkened front office.

It must have been a stark contrast to Butina’s life in Moscow, which, according to friends in Russia and photographs, was often a whirlwind of television appearances, interviews, speeches, and dinners at which she was the center of attention as the face of her organization.

“She is not a private person; she’s a public person,” her lawyer argued in court last month. “She was famous in Russia before she came to the US.”

Living in the Sioux Falls complex with Erickson, neighbors told BuzzFeed News, she was friendly but mainly kept to herself. Often spotted in running clothes, and once with her leg in a cast, she did not appear to make any personal friends and spent a lot of her time online, blogging about her workouts and healthy recipes on her personal account.

However, a number of Butina’s online posts were long, detailed observations about how things worked in the US that showed an unusual interest for a twentysomething who was visiting a rural state. She wrote about local school board elections in Sioux Falls, detailing the process of how IDs and tablets were used to vote and saying she was “fortunate to observe how local self-government is realized here.”

Her posts for and about her gun rights organization — which experts doubt was a legitimate grassroots organization, but rather a cover for her activities — increasingly incorporated US-centered and NRA talking points.

She often wrote about US crime and gun ownership statistics. She spoke and wrote about the mass shootings at Sandy Hook and Fort Hood, and shared US news stories about non-gun violence, for example, a 2014 story about about 24 people injured at a high school stabbing in Pittsburgh.

Although she almost always posted in Russian, the memes she shared were often in English, so the Americans she met and friended on social media were able to comment on them. They often featured graphic images to make their point — bloody knives, terrified women cowering from an aggressor, a victim shot in the head, and glamour shots of herself with weapons.

Her posts also became more political.

“According to supporters of the US Democratic Party, Russians can not be trusted with weapons,” she says in one of her blog's headlines in 2014. She often referenced NRA posts critical of President Barack Obama’s policies. The following year, when Hillary Clinton announced her candidacy, she shared a post titled “Hillary Equates Gun Owners With Terrorists, Says They Are 'Prone to Violence,'" and later posted the NRA’s anti-Clinton ad.

She also wrote about wanting to get her pilot’s license while she was in South Dakota. In November 2015, she took a discovery flight with Legacy Aviation, a flight school 10 minutes from Erickson’s apartment. She posted several photos taken in the air and posed with her pilot log announcing her “flying classes had started today.”

The co-owner of the school, Mark Isackson, told BuzzFeed News that he had seen Butina in the news and was surprised to recognize one of his flight instructors in half a dozen photos with the alleged Russian spy three years earlier. “Oh…that’s Kurt, all right. That’s Kurt,” he said when a BuzzFeed News reporter showed him the pictures posted by Butina.

Kurt Andersen said he had “no recollection of this short introductory flight whatsoever.”

Butina never registered for formal flying lessons with the school, Isackson said. As a Russian citizen, she would have had to register through the TSA’s Alien Flight Studentprogram, a post-9/11 screening process that requires noncitizens to undergo a "security threat assessment" before being cleared to attend flight school.

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“My guess is there were many Butinas out there.”

In the background of all her activities in South Dakota is the presence of Erickson, usually the person taking her photo with the Americans she met. He is rarely pictured with Butina except for a few photos posted by other groups — the Right to Bear Arms convention, the outdoor group’s collection of photos from the pheasant hunt, a USD alumni event in Washington.

Erickson has not been accused of any wrongdoing, but prosecutors said in court filings that he was "instrumental in aiding her covert influence operation, despite knowing its connections to the Russian official." His efforts included helping in efforts to organize a meeting at the May 2016 NRA convention between then-candidate Trump and Alexander Torshin, the deputy governor of Russia's central bank and a former Russian senator who was allegedly Butina’s handler in Russia.

Friends and former colleagues who spoke to BuzzFeed News described Erickson as a longtime bachelor, a “wild character,” a “bumbling bullshitter,” a “mystery wrapped in an enigma,” and “a sharp political guy” with a colorful past, known for hyping his connections and driving a bright red 1990s Mustang with the license plate RTWING.

In the small world of South Dakota politics, most people had run across him at some point, they said. His career spanned a bizarre range of work, including being a top staffer in Pat Buchanan’s presidential campaign, coproducing the anti-communist action movie Red Scorpion with disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff, and lobbying for an African dictator.

In his memoir, Abramoff described Erickson as a “tall, thin raconteur” who “successfully hypnotized most of Washington's official media” when he worked with the College Republicans.

“No one was better to parachute into a crisis than Erickson,” he wrote.

Others describe him as a cash-strapped “con man” who according to South Dakota public records has at least seven court judgments totaling $421,212 against him and his companies since 2003, a fraud with an overblown sense of importance who, like Butina, was a compulsive networker. He kept connections from his time at the University of Virginia and Yale — for example, South Carolina Rep. Mark Sanford, who was recently surprised to discover he had hosted the alleged Russian agent for Thanksgiving.

“He’s a connector; he’s one of those guys that knows a lot of people, or pretends to, and puts himself in the middle of everything,” a friend of Erickson’s who worked in the same circles told BuzzFeed News. “We’d sit around and wonder what Paul is doing; does he really know the people he claims to know? Does he really own homes in Manhattan Beach and LA? You just don’t know.”In his messages to Butina, revealed in court filings, he similarly bragged about the lists of influential people he could introduce her to, assuring her, “If you were to sit down with your special friends and make a list of ALL the most important contacts you could find in America…NO ONE could build a better list.”

While details of the years-long relationship among Butina, Erickson and Torshin continue to emerge, former intelligence officials and Russia analysts say theirs was just one of what was likely a large number of similar efforts.

John Sipher, a former member of the CIA clandestine service, said Russians “may well have dispatched a number of folks in different ways” to see what stuck.

Finley, the former CIA operations officer, agreed, saying Butina’s actions can’t be seen as “some giant master plan” but rather a part of Russians' countless low-cost, low-risk operations.

“When they sent her over, they didn’t know she’d infiltrate the NRA and meet high-level people, but as opportunities arose they’d take them. They were casting as wide a net as they could,” she said. “My guess is there were many Butinas out there.” 

'Mighty Ducks' star Shaun Weiss arrested for public intoxication — and his mug shot is really, really sad

Shaun Weiss in 2015, and in 1994’s D2: The Mighty Ducks. (Photos: Getty Images, Buena Vista Pictures/courtesy Everett Collection)

Weiss was picked up by patrolling officers who found him and three others outside a closed business complex in Oroville, Calif. After talking with the others in his group, authorities determined that Weiss was high on drugs. The Heavy Weights star was held behind bars for a few hours until he sobered up and was released without charges. It’s unclear what he was supposedly on and no blood sample was ordered. Amused officers said Weiss was “witty” while in custody.

However, Weiss’s mug shot isn’t a laughing matter. The actor appears disheveled and thin, looking much older than 38. His condition has concerned fans on social media.

Shaun Weiss’s mugshot from his Aug. 4 arrest. (Photo: Oroville Police Department)

Weiss has been arrested on drug charges before, including meth possession one year ago. That incident came five days after he completed a jail sentence for petty theft. Weiss was sentenced to 150 days after allegedly stealing $150 worth of merchandise from Fry’s Electronics, but ultimately served only 12 due to overcrowding.

Yahoo Entertainment reached out to Weiss’s manager, but did not immediately receive a response.

WHAT TO WATCH: Primaries test GOP, Democratic identities

Republican Troy Balderson, a candidate for Ohio's 12th District, joins volunteers at a phone bank in Westerville, Ohio, on Monday, Aug. 6, 2018, a day ahead of a special election for the congressional seat. Balderson, a two-term Republican state senator, is working to retain GOP control of the 12th District. He faces Democrat Danny O'Connor, the Franklin County recorder, whose fundraising outpaced Balderson's during the most recent reporting period by nearly four times. (AP Photo/Julie Carr Smyth)

Democrats hope to grab a House seat that Republicans have held for decades. A tweet from President Donald Trump could tip a GOP gubernatorial primary in Kansas. Democrats continue to decide how far to the left the party should move. And critical Senate races are coming into focus.

What to watch as voters in five states head to the polls Tuesday:

BATTLEGROUND OHIO

Ohio's 12th Congressional District doesn't normally get this much attention.

But a special election to fill a seat vacated by a longtime Republican congressman is becoming a barometer of where the midterms may be heading. Danny O'Connor, a 31-year-old local election official, appears to be within striking distance of becoming the first Democrat to represent this stretch of central Ohio in decades.

An O'Connor victory would be another strong sign of Democratic enthusiasm as the party pushes to take back control of the House in November. In fact, given how poorly they've fared here in the past, Democrats would likely be encouraged even if they lose by a few percentage points.

O'Connor is facing Republican Troy Balderson, a 57-year-old state senator endorsed by President Donald Trump.

The district reaches from parts of liberal-leaning Franklin County, home to Columbus and The Ohio State University, through suburbs and into small-town Ohio. Trump won there by more than 11 percentage points in 2016 and has pulled out all the stops to keep it in the GOP column, including holding a rally with Balderson over the weekend.

For all the attention — and cash — the race is receiving, the special election is about more than a single House seat up for grabs in a competitive midterm election year. The results could signal where Ohio is trending heading into the next presidential election.

A strong showing by O'Connor would give Democrats hope that they could regain ground they lost in 2016 when Trump dominated the state. A big Balderson victory, however, could help soothe GOP anxiety that Trump's grip on the Midwest could be waning.

TRUMP EFFECT

If Trump's endorsement doesn't carry his preferred candidate across the finish line in Ohio, he'll look to Kansas, where he backed Secretary of State Kris Kobach's bid to become governor.

Kobach is a hard-line conservative who shares the president's views on immigration and echoes his unproven assertions about voter fraud in U.S. elections. He's in a tight race against incumbent Republican Gov. Jeff Colyer and insurance commissioner Ken Selzer among others.

Trump named Kobach to help lead a post-2016 election commission aimed at uncovering voter fraud. The group disbanded this year after finding no evidence of fraud in the presidential election as Trump had claimed after losing the popular vote.

Kobach also is a staunch anti-tax conservative who promises to continue former Gov. Sam Brownback's approach of sweeping tax cuts after his election in 2010. They became unpopular when promises of economic growth didn't materialize but cuts to schools and other public services did.

Colyer, who stepped in for Brownback after Trump named him to an ambassadorship, hails from the more moderate branch of the Kansas GOP that has rolled back some of Brownback's fiscal moves. An incumbent Kansas governor has lost a primary only twice since the state began holding such elections 110 years ago, the last time in 1956.

If Kobach comes out on top, Democrats believe they have an unusual shot at making the general election competitive. But their hopes could be complicated by Greg Orman, a Kansas City-area businessman who submitted petitions Monday with more than 10,000 signatures for what could become the most serious independent run for Kansas governor in decades. If he gets on the ballot and gains tractions, it could come at the expense of Democrats.

DEMOCRATIC IDENTITY BATTLES

Tuesday's primaries will give Democrats another opportunity to work through internal divides between progressives and more mainstream liberals and moderates.

An eastern Kansas district anchored in Kansas City will decide whether to nominate labor lawyer Brent Welder, a former presidential campaign aide to Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, to face Rep. Kevin Yoder in a district that narrowly opted for Hillary Clinton in 2016.

Welder campaigned with Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the democratic socialist who ousted a top Democratic House leader in a New York City primary in June.

In a suburban Detroit district, three mainstream Democrats are viewed as leaders to vie for a GOP-held seat in November: former legislator Tim Greimel, endorsed by Sen. Carl Levin; Suneel Gupta, a tech executive and entrepreneur and younger brother of Dr. Sanjay Gupta of CNN; and Haley Stevens, who ran the Obama administration's auto bailout program.

In the outside lane is Fayrouz Saad, who'd be the first Muslim woman in Congress. She doesn't have Welder's momentum, but she backs single-payer health insurance and other progressive policy ideas, and hopes that her better-funded rivals split most of the votes, allowing her to squeeze through.

In suburban Seattle, three Democrats are vying in a jungle primary for the seat held by Rep. Dave Reichert, who is retiring. That likely means that just one of pediatrician Kim Schrier, attorney Jason Rittereiser, and former federal public-health official Shannon Hader will advance along with Republican state Sen. Dino Rossi.

Ritteresier backs single-payer health care. Shrier boasts support from EMILY'S List and Planned Parenthood. Hader counters with labor endorsements.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee hasn't taken sides in those races, but national Democrats say they are bullish on all three seats regardless of Tuesday's outcome.

FALL RACES COME INTO FOCUS

Two critical races that could determine which party controls the Senate will come into focus Tuesday. Missouri's Claire McCaskill began the cycle presumed to be the most vulnerable Democratic incumbent. Since then, she's smoked her top Republican rival, Attorney General Josh Hawley, in fundraising, but also endured bad headlines about her use of a private jet. Tuesday's election will serve as a measure of enthusiasm for both candidates.

In Michigan, Sen. Debbie Stabenow joins McCaskill among the 10 Senate Democrats facing re-election in states Trump won. Polls suggest she's in a strong position as she awaits her GOP opponent. Among the possibilities: military veteran and business executive John James, who'd join Tim Scott as the second black Republican in the Senate.

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Associated Press writers Thomas Beaumont in Des Moines, Iowa, and Rachel La Corte in Olympia, Washington, contributed to this report.

AP FACT CHECK: Wildfire, water experts rebut Trump's claims

A helicopter drops water on a burning hillside during the Ranch Fire in Clearlake Oaks, Calif., Sunday, Aug. 5, 2018. (AP Photo/Josh Edelson)

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is claiming that California's water policy is shortchanging firefighters of water to battle the state's raging wildfires. That's not so, according to wildfire and water experts.

A look at his tweets and the facts behind them:

TRUMP: "California wildfires are being magnified & made so much worse by the bad environmental laws which aren't allowing massive amount of readily available water to be properly utilized. It is being diverted into the Pacific Ocean. Must also tree clear to stop fire spreading!" — tweet Sunday.

THE FACTS: That's not what state experts say.

"We have plenty of water" for battling the massive blazes burning in hills north of San Francisco, said Scott McLean, a spokesman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. The current spate of wildfires happens to be within range of large Northern California lakes and the state's biggest river, McLean said.

Nor is having enough water a problem in battling California wildfires in general. Firefighting aircraft can dip in and out of cattle ponds or other small bodies of water to scoop up water for dropping and spraying on flames. When fires burn in an area that happens to be without ponds, lakes or rivers, state officials typically call in more planes to ferry in water, McLean said.

California's battles over divvying up water in the arid state are unending, but a battle between firefighters and the Pacific Ocean hasn't been one of them, according to Jay Lund, a civil and environmental engineering professor at the University of California, Davis, and a longtime analyst of the state's water wars.

Trump's claim "is so physically impossible, you don't even really want to respond," Lund said.

For one thing, the wildfires are in the hills, far from the Pacific Ocean and from the man-made storage and distribution system that carries water from California's wetter north to the drier, more populated south.

The state's recently ended five-year drought killed millions of trees, leaving them as brittle fuel for wildfires. As Trump alluded to in his tweet, experts have urged state and federal forestry officials to move quickly in clearing swathes of dead forests because of their added fire danger. The dry, hot weather that climate change brings adds to the dried tinder and risk.

"It might have something to do with forest management and the drought. But it has nothing to do with water policy," Lund said.

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TRUMP: "Governor Jerry Brown must allow the Free Flow of the vast amounts of water coming from the North and foolishly being diverted into the Pacific Ocean. Can be used for fires, farming and everything else. Think of California with plenty of Water - Nice! Fast Federal govt. approvals." — tweet Monday.

THE FACTS: Trump is raising an old dispute in California, the country's top farm state: the competition for water between agricultural and environmental groups, fishermen and others who want more water for wildlife and habitat. But the dispute has little to do with firefighting.

Republican lawmakers in California's agriculture-rich Central Valley complain the state and federal governments allow too much of the state's rainfall and snow melt to flow naturally through rivers and into the Pacific Ocean, instead of being diverted for irrigation.

Muslim Candidates Are Determined To Make History In This Election

"It's so close we can taste it." But first they have to get Michigan's Muslim voters to cast ballots.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democratic congressional candidate, campaigns for Michigan gubernatorial candidate Abdul El-Sayed at a July rally.

Akram Ali looked with satisfaction at the stack of newspapers he’d placed at the entrance to the most popular baklava shop in Dearborn, an Arab American, Muslim enclave outside of Detroit.

He and his wife, Afrah, had stayed up all night to get their slim publication, billed as the “Arab American Youths Newspaper,” to the presses by 2 a.m. Saturday, just in time to distribute it to the area’s bakeries and shawarma spots before the weekend rush. The timing was crucial, Ali said, and so was the message: Vote!

“It’s essential for us, especially our youth, to be engaged, to voice their opinions, to not be afraid,” Ali said. “This is about making history.”

He was talking about the Michigan primary Tuesday and the milestone potential it holds for three Muslim Democratic candidates: Abdul El-Sayed, 33, who’s running for governor, and 42-year-old Rashida Tlaib and 35-year-old Fayrouz Saad, who are vying for seats in Congress. The country has never had a Muslim governor or a Muslim woman in Congress, and the idea that a “first” could emerge from their own circles has energized Muslims in unprecedented ways

Michigan congressional candidate Fayrouz Saad.

And even if none of the candidates advance on Tuesday, Dearborn and Detroit residents said, the energy from this election cycle is likely to endure as young Muslims realize there’s space for them in the previously off-limits political realm.

“It’s so close we can taste it,” said Mehruba Akhtar, 27, on the sidelines of a Detroit forum sponsored by the Muslim Anti-Racism Collaborative. “Before, in people’s heads, this was just an idea so far out we didn’t even think it was possible.”

In the run-up to the big day, Muslims — many of them new to politics — have volunteered in phone banks, canvassed neighborhoods, cheered at rallies, registered voters, and urged jaded relatives to give the polls a chance. Campaign materials are printed in Arabic and English. Mosques, which as nonprofits can’t endorse specific candidates, urge voting as a civic duty. One Dearborn-based newspaper printed two full pages of sample ballots marked with several Muslim picks beneath a reminder: “It’s legal to take this with you to the polls as a guide.”

The enthusiasm feels like a Muslim spin on the actor Issa Rae’s famous red-carpet quote: “I’m rooting for everybody black.” But the sentiment goes deeper than what critics might dismiss as identity politics. Muslims live under a president who once said “Islam hates us,” who stacked his administration with Islamophobes, and whose first month in office yielded the travel ban targeting Muslim-majority countries. Muslims correlate President Donald Trump’s anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant rhetoric with a spikein hate crimes, including bloody assaults and mosque burnings.

“I think we’re going to win, but I have no clue.”

Getting involved in politics, Michigan Muslims said, is a way to assert their place in the country and to guard the rights they fear will slip away as the Trump administration floats ideas like a crackdown on Muslim civil society through a ban on the Muslim Brotherhood. All of the Muslim candidates have received bigoted messages about their campaigns on social media; Saad even used some of what she called her “Trump-inspired fan mail” in a campaign ad. The ad showed tweets telling her to “Go Home!” and “No muslims in our government.”

Khulood Faruqui, a 23-year-old engineer, got married last year and moved from California to Michigan, where she is constantly on alert in public places because her headscarf marks her as Muslim. She’d never been interested in politics until Trump was elected and she realized that “being silent and complacent can be deadly.” On Sunday, she attended a rally in Detroit to watch Bernie Sanders, who won the 2016 Michigan Democratic presidential primary in an upset, stump for El-Sayed before a crowd of more than 1,000. Faruqui had a blue sticker printed with “Abdul” attached to her black headscarf.

“We have to come out and be active,” she said. “If you think other people are going to do it for you, it’s not going to happen.”

With about 115,000 Muslims registered as Democrats in Michigan, the candidates will need more than the Muslim vote to win, and even getting Muslims to vote has been difficult. In 2016, Trump won Michigan by just over 10,000 votes, leaving many Muslims here feeling regretful that they didn’t show up to the polls. Only 12.8% of registered Muslims voted in the 2016 election, according to Emgage, a political action committee focused on US Muslims. A study by the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, a Muslim-focused think tank, found that registered Muslims are as likely to vote as any other group, and yet there’s still a sense that Muslim turnout should’ve been higher given the stakes.

“The personal responsibility is real,” said Kareem El-Hosseiny, 30, who was at the Detroit rally with two friends, 23-year-old Chehab Kaakarli, in an “Abdul” shirt, and 23-year-old Jousef Shkoukani, in a “Rashida” shirt.

Khulood Faruqui at a Detroit rally for gubernatorial candidate Abdul El-Sayed.

This time could be different, El-Hosseiny said, because “you have candidates like Rashida, like Fayrouz, like Abdul, and they’re finally giving us a voice that we never thought was going to come.”

Tlaib, a former state lawmaker and vocal anti-Trump activist, has raised the most money in the crowded race for the seat vacated by Detroit stalwart Rep. John Conyers Jr., who resigned in December after multiple women accused him of sexual misconduct.Tlaib won the endorsement of the Detroit Free Press, but she faces formidable opponents. The seat is firmly Democratic, so if Tlaib wins Tuesday, she’s all but guaranteed to become the first Muslim woman in Congress.

Saad, a former Homeland Security official in the Obama administration, faces a tougher fight in a Republican-leaning district. A poll published last week by the Free Press showed her trailing far behind other Democrats in the running.

In the governor’s race, polls have shown El-Sayed, a doctor, trailing the main opponent Gretchen Whitmer, a former state senator who’s backed by establishment Democrats as well as labor and women’s groups. But in recent weeks, with the endorsements of Sanders and rising progressive star Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, at least one poll showed the race tightening and Michigan political analysts caution against writing off El-Sayed’s chances.

“To create a historical victory in Michigan and in America, let us elect Abdul as the next governor of the state of Michigan!” Sanders said at the rally.

Hours before his appearance with Sanders, El-Sayed was making the rounds at Detroit’s historically black churches, getting “amens” for his policy ideas and chuckles for his stump speech poking fun at the skepticism around his candidacy because he’s “a little bit young, a little bit brown, a little bit Muslim.”

El-Sayed’s wife of 12 years, psychiatrist Sarah Jukaku, accompanied him in a big white Suburban that ferried them around town. They shared a croissant and talked about missing their 8-month-old daughter, who was home with grandparents. Their relationship was captured in a campaign ad that many Muslims found groundbreaking for its portrayal of the tenderness between an ordinary Muslim couple: a bearded man and a hijab-wearing woman laughing as they cooked dinner together and decorated their daughter’s nursery.

Before his daughter was born, El-Sayed said, he wrote her a 5,000-word letter, largely because he knew he was incurring risk as a Muslim on the campaign trail in a time of open hostility toward Islam, and he wanted her to know about her dad in case, for some reason, he did not survive the campaign. El-Sayed said he hopes she “grows up with the history of what it all meant.”

“It’s so close we can taste it.”

“In this moment, sometimes you’re afraid and you want to sit on the sidelines and hold close everything that’s dear to you,” Jukaku said. “But I think that lets people who want to divide us win. Abdul wanted to stand up and say, ‘No, we’re better than that.’”

As Election Day neared, El-Sayed said he was “extremely tightly wound,” but trying not to let the anxiety hinder his last-minute campaigning. He said he was buoyed by Ocasio-Cortez’s surprise unseating of a 10-term incumbent in New York six weeks ago — a victory that was even sweeter because it came on the same day the Supreme Court upheld Trump's travel ban.

Could he pull off the same feat in Michigan?

“I think we’re going to win, but I have no clue,” El-Sayed said. “The scientist and the person of faith in me says one has to always appreciate the possibility of an outcome one doesn’t want.”

'A war zone': Bloodbath in Chicago as 12 people are shot dead and 59 injured in a dozen shootings in just 60 hours over the weekend in the Windy City

• Twelve people were shot dead and 59 injured in Chicago in just 60 hours
• The spate of shootings took place from 5pm on Friday to 5am on Monday 
• Paramedics went as far as saying the city was like a 'war zone' 
• In just a two-hour stretch in the early hours on Sunday, 25 people were shot in five different mass shootings 
• Jahnae Patterson, 17, Kenny Ivory, 17, Nicholas Cox, 23, and Ron L. Johnson, 50, were among the 11 fatalities over the weekend
• An 11-year-old boy was the youngest injured victim over the weekend 
• So far, no arrests have been made in connection with any of the shootings  

Twelve people have been shot dead and 59 others injured in Chicago in a horror weekend with authorities describing the streets as a 'war zone'.

At least three people were shot after 5pm Friday evening, 14 were shot Saturday, 48 were shot Sunday and six were shot before 5am Monday.

The bloodiest spate of shootings occurred in just a two-hour stretch in the early hours on Sunday, when 30 people were shot between midnight and 3am. Police reported at least 16 separate shooting incidents - with multiple victims at almost all of them.

There were so many trauma victims at Stroger Hospital on Sunday morning that their family and visitors were barred from entering.

Paramedics described the city as a 'war zone', while police said it as being one of the most violent weekends of late.   

Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson said in a Monday press conference that more needs to be done to hold to hold gunman to account. 

'It is the same people who are pulling the triggers in some of these communities. This isn't a widespread issue among citizens of the city. This is a small subset of individuals who think they can play by their own rules because they continue to get a slap on the wrist when we arrest them,' Johnson said.

So far, no arrests have been made. 

Jahnae Patterson, 17 (left) and Kenny Ivory, 17, (right) were among the 11 fatalities over the weekend

Nicholas Cox, 23, of the 2700 block of South Dearborn Street, died in hospital at around 8.26pm Sunday, after being shot in the abdomen and buttocks

Jahnae Patterson, 17, Kenny Ivory, 17, Nicholas Cox, 23, and Ron L. Johnson, 50, were among the 11 fatalities over the weekend. 

Patterson had been standing on the side walk on the 1300 block of South Millard Avenue in Lawndale, on the Southwest Side, with a group of people when two men walked up to them and opened fire at around 2.35am Sunday.

Patterson was shot in the face and died at the scene. Five other people were injured, including an 11-year-old boy and 14-year-old boy who were both shot in the leg.

A 21-year-old woman was taken to Mount Sinai Hospital in critical condition with a gunshot wound to her back and arm, while another 17-year-old girl was shot in her arm. A 17-year-old boy, suffered a gunshot wound to his leg and was taken hospital. 

Ivory was shot and killed as he rode his bike on the South Side on Sunday afternoon.

Police say the teen had got into an argument with another group of men who were on their bikes at around 4.15pm on the 7600 block of South Union Avenue in the Gresham neighborhood. He was rushed to hospital but died a short time after his arrival.

Ivory was shot and killed as he rode his bike on the South Side on Sunday afternoon. Pictured is the cordoned off scene of his fatal shooting 

Two women cry outside the Stroger Hospital in Chicago where they were so overwhelmed with shooting victims over the weekend, that family and friends were asked to leave 

A man wipes his eyes outside the Stroger Hospital in Chicago, after leaving the emergency room due to overwhelming crowds of family and friends of shooting victims on Sunday

Evidence markers sit on the ground at the scene where a boy was killed after being shot in the abdomen while riding his bike in Chicago 

Twelve people were killed and 59 injured in a spate of mass shootings spread across the city between 5pm Friday and 5am Monday. Pictured are 16 separate shooting locations where shootings occurred over the weekend. Multiple people were injured or killed in almost every attack

Cox, of the 2700 block of South Dearborn Street, died in hospital at around 8.26pm Sunday, after being shot in the abdomen and buttocks.  

Johnson was shot dead and a 55-year-old woman was wounded in the early hours of Monday morning, when a gunman in a ski mask shot them in the 13000 block of South Drexel Avenue, in Altgeld Gardens, on the Far South Side, where Johnson lived.

Johnson, who was shot in the head, was pronounced dead at the scene at 12.50am, the Chicago Tribune reports. 

Shooters reportedly targeted outdoor gatherings, a block party and even a funeral over the weekend. 

Witnesses described terrifying scenes outside a 24 hour laundromat as a 19-year-old boy ran to find sanctuary at the store as someone shot at him - only to find an employee had locked the door.

The teen said he'd been walking to a gas station at 11.40pm Sunday when someone began shooting at him. He fled to the laundromat, in the 3900 block of South Archer Avenue in the Brighton Park neighborhood, where customers and staff screamed and took cover.

When he couldn't get in, he fled and ran to hospital for treatment for a gunshot wound to his arm. 

Miguel Patino had been one of around two dozen patrons doing their laundry at the time. 

'The kids were freaking out,' he said, adding that he'd often hear gunshots at night while walking his dog. 'They were screaming and crying.'

Patterson's mother Tanika Humphries was devastated to lose her first born

Crystal Robinson revealed that her son was among the 59 injured over the weekend, as she urged people to 'put the guns down Chicago!' 

'The Worst phone call u can EVER get is that ur son has been Shot!!!' she wrote on Facebook. 

'Thank Everyone for All the phone calls and text it has been a long morning for me and my family but my son is ok!!!! We Stay Prayed Up!'

Another early Sunday morning shooting, this time in the Gresham neighborhood, left eight people injured, including four teenage girls, as they stood in a courtyard in the 1300 block of West 76th Street. Police report that the group had were approached by several males who opened fire.

Two girls, aged 14 and 19, were shot in their hands, a 17-year-old was shot in the knee, and another 17-year-old was struck in the leg. 

Two male teens, a 21-year-old woman and 35-year-old man were also rushed to hospital. They are all described as being in a stable condition.    

The high number of shootings made it difficult for both police and medical staff to keep track. At one point, police said Stroger Hospital had been placed on trauma lockdown, ABC7 reports. 

The hospital, however, denied this but acknowledged the 'unusually high volume of patients' over a 24-hour period. 

Meanwhile family and friends have been paying tribute to the victims of the bloody weekend.

Patterson's mother Tanika Humphries was devastated to lose her first born.

'How an I suppose to live like this?' she asked on social media, 'Y'all took my baby. Lord Jesus this shooting need to stop. Pray for our city. My baby is gone. 

'Baby girl imma miss you. Rip baby see you when i get there.'

The spate of deadly shootings took place across multiple Chicago neighborhoods mostly on the West and South sides, from 5pm on Friday to 5am Monday

Detectives investigate a shooting where multiple people were shot on a sidewalk on Sunday in Chicago

A bystander watches as Chicago Police officers and detectives investigate one of several shootings on Chicago's South and West sides over the weekend

A friend of the teen, Tanya Denise, wrote on Facebook: 'This girl was trying to live her best life and y'all just gone shorting it. This just so sad.'

She use to be my next door neighbor, so sad,' added Shaton Se'derous.

Chicago Police Chief of Patrol Fred Waller said during a Sunday press conference that most of the shootings were being traced back to gangs.

'We know that some of these incidents were targeted and are related to gang conflicts in those areas,' Waller said.

He went on to express frustration that gang members do not fear the consequences and that they were taking advantage of large summer crowds to seek revenge.

'They take advantage of that opportunity and they shoot into a crowd, no matter who they hit,' Waller said. 

'I promise this city, we won't be defeated. We won't be overrun by that small element that's committing these reckless acts.'

Police said in some of the cases shooters sprayed bullets indiscriminately into crowds in rival territories. The Tribune counted a total of more than 70 people shot between Friday evening and early Monday morning.

The weekend violence stood in contrast to a general decline in crimes in the city where shootings are down 30 percent and murders down 25 percent, according to police.

Bystanders watch on as police continue to investigate the spate of shootings in various neighborhoods

Nevertheless, Chicago's official murder count, at 310 killings before the weekend, was the highest in the country and far eclipsed those of America's two largest cities -- New York and Los Angeles.

'Incidents of either random or targeted shootings on our streets are totally unacceptable,' said Fred Waller, a Chicago Police Department commander.

Violence in the Midwestern city often spikes in the summer months, when the warm weather means more people are outside. Waller said there were a number of outdoor events over the weekend that were vulnerable to gang-related revenge attacks.

'What we have are multiple areas with crowds,' Waller said. 'They take advantage of that opportunity.'

The latest spasm of bloodshed occurred at the same time as the famed Lollapalooza music festival was taking over a large swath of the city's downtown, requiring a heavy police presence.

The festival was not affected by the violence, Waller said. The shootings surged in the early morning hours, well after the end of the festival's daily schedule of performances.

Chicago's gun violence has been the subject of two high-profile protests this summer, in which demonstrators temporarily blocked major expressways to call attention to their demands for more investment in poor communities.

Federal authorities have increased their efforts in the city, creating a special task force in cooperation with local police to target those who repeatedly commit gun crimes. 

Police have also taken over 5,500 guns off the streets this year as part of a new initiative to stem the flow of illegal firearms in the city to curb gun violence. 

Police have said violent crime has declined overall in Chicago but there has still been more than 1,700 shootings this year alone. 

Chicago ended 2017 with fewer homicides, 650, than 2016, when there were 771. Although the drop was significant, it exceeded the combined number of killings in New York City and Los Angeles, which are the two US cities bigger than Chicago.

Chicago Police officers and detectives investigate a shooting where multiple people were shot on Sunday, August 5, 2018 in Chicago, Illinois 

Chicago's gun violence has drawn widespread attention, including from Donald Trump and his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, who blamed the problem on Chicago's long-time 'Democratic rule' in a series of tweets on Sunday and Monday.

President Trump said last year he was sending in federal help to fight the gun violence in the city because it had reached 'epidemic proportions'. 

The former New York City mayor also tweeted his support for Chicago's former superintendent, Garry McCarthy, referring to him as 'Jerry' and calling him a 'policing genius'.

McCarthy announced this year that he plans to run for mayor next February against Democratic Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who fired Mr McCarthy in 2015 after the release of dashcam video showing a white police officer shooting a black teenager 16 times.

Misspelling Mr Emanuel's last name, Giuliani tweeted: 'He can do a lot better than Mayor Emmanuel who is fiddling while Chicago burns.'

Giuliani also falsely claimed that Chicago had '63 murders this weekend'.

Chicago has some of the nation's strictest gun laws, but the city still recovers more firearms each year than any other place in the nation. 

However, the 60 percent of firearms used in violent crimes in Illinois come from out-of-state, mostly from Indiana, which has far more lenient gun laws.