Divorce unclear custody arrangements and lots of name calling. Weve lost our minds, basically. It also dawned on us that this wasnt the first time the island had left the continent. The geological brexit happened thousands of years ago. This current split is unlikely to end up quite so pretty. ticking do cowboys still exist . We found generations of them ranching and riding in utah. The Wright Family is the first family of american rodeo. World champions who can make the roughest rides look like a ballet. Are you kind of dancing with the horse . I like to think you are. I dance a lot better with a horse than i do with my wife. laughter i aint got no rhythm. ticking im lesley stahl. Im bill whitaker. Im anderson cooper. Im jon wertheim. Im scott pelley. Those stories and more, tonight, on 60 minutes. ticking no, just a sec. What would it look like if we listened more . Could the right voice, the right set of words, bring us all just a little closer . Get us to open up . Even push us further . It could, if we took the time to listen. The most inspiring minds, the most compelling stories. Download audible and listen for a change. Can match the power of energizer. Because energizer ultimate lithium is the longest lasting aa battery in the world. [confetti cannon popping] energizer. Backed by science. You spend less when yand get way more. Air, so you can bring your vision to life and save in more ways than one. For small prices, you can build big dreams, spend less, get way more. Shop everything home at wayfair. Com this inot this john smith smith. Or this john smith. Or any of the other hundreds of john smiths that are humana Medicare Advantage members. No, its this john smith, who met with humana to create a Personalized Care plan. At humana, we have more ways to care for your health, and we find one that works just for you. No matter what your name is. Stahl its rare that russian agents come out from the shadows. But tonight, you will hear from 30yearold maria butina, who was front page news when she was charged, not with espionage, but with acting as an agent of a foreign government, and not registering with the u. S. Government. A judge in her case said butina sought to collect information that could be helpful to the russian government, under the direction of a russian official, at a time when the russian government was interfering in our electoral process. There was no trial, because butina, who was here on a student visa, cooperated and pled guilty to conspiring to act as a foreign agent. After serving time in a federal prison, she was just deported back to moscow. Maria butina was arrested on july 15, 2018, portrayed at the time as a sexy covert agent, planted by the putin government to infiltrate the n. R. A. These are photos of her at n. R. A. Events that she posted on her own social media accounts. Theyre a far cry from the young woman we met while she was still an inmate at a federal prison in tallahassee, florida. Hi, maria. Maria butina hello. Stahl the dazzle was gone, replaced by resentment and defiance. Her story, she told us, began in siberia, where she grew up, hunting with her dad. After university, she moved to moscow, and said she started a group called the right to bear arms. You were seeking a 2nd amendment for russia. Is that correct . Butina we were trying to get the changes in russian law that would allow guns for self defense. Stahl okay. So you hear that, an american hears that, and they say, come on, putin is not going to allow people to run around owning guns. Heres the case against you, that you started this organization as a way to infiltrate the n. R. A. Here, to meet people, as a way in to influence us. Butina thats nonsense. Stahl but you did that. You used your organization to meet people in the n. R. A. Butina the n. R. A. , for us, has always been an example. Because there is no more powerful lobbyist gun group in the world than the n. R. A. Learning from them was an honor. Stahl her introduction to the n. R. A. Was facilitated by this man, Alexander Torshin, a russian official, who she has admitted in court papers directed her activities in the u. S. Butina met him, she says, when he attended one of her gun rights rallies in moscow. We obtained thousands of private twitter messages they sent each other over 2. 5 years. Was he close to putin . Butina i dont think so. Stahl so you wrote him a message and you said, you are an influential member of putins team. Your words. Butina it doesnt suggest hes close to putin in any way. Stahl but was he an influential member of putins team . Butina i dont know. Stahl well, you wrote that. You know, in reading through your messages, it reads as if hes your intelligence case officer. Butina look, this is i think its an american, very old saying, that suggests that wolves have teeth, but not all animals with teeth are wolves. You cannot judge a person based on appearance. Stahl her appearance changed after she met torshin, becoming something of a celebrity, posing glamorously with guns in gq russia and on her own instagram account. Around that time in moscow she met with david keene, the former president of the n. R. A. , and other members, like paul erickson, who would become butinas boyfriend. You got to the point where you were staging rallies. You were holding conferences, or at least one big conference, where you brought the n. R. A. People from the United States over to moscow. And youre a kid from siberia. And im having trouble knowing how a young person is able to pull this off. Butina thats a great question to ask here in america. Because there were times when people didnt believe that women are capable to be leaders at all. Stahl that wasnt a sexist question. Butina because that it is. Because, i was stahl no, no, no, im saying youre a young person. Youre 23 years old. Butina but this is exactly the same. How can one judge me and say, what, i was too smart for my age . I think that is what is praised in america. When a young person takes his or her destiny in his own hands and fights. Stahl you traveled across the United States, attending n. R. A. Meetings. The u. S. Government says that you were making connections with republicans so that you could influence u. S. Policy, and you were doing it slowly but deliberately. Butina if i were not russian, that would be called social networking. Stahl have you ever had a case like this . John demers, the assistant attorney general for national security, whose office helped prosecute butina, says what she did wasnt social networking, and wasnt on her own initiative. I quoted butinas lawyer, bob driscoll maria is not a spy. She knows of no secret codes. There were no safe houses. In other words, she was completely open and there was no espionage. John demers her lawyer is right that she didnt get, as far as we know, classified information. Right. But thats not what she was doing here. She was an influence agent. She was getting access to americans who she thought were close to power in america. Stahl what was the actual crime . Demers the law she broke was being here acting as an agent of the russian government while she was here, and pretending that she wasnt. Stahl is that a law . Demers its one of the laws that we have, to combat foreign influence. What makes her so dangerous is that the people who shes contacting dont know that shes there taking direction from the russian government. Stahl she first came to the u. S. In 2014 to attend n. R. A. Conventions, where she posted photos with prominent republicans scott walker, bobby jindal, rick santorum. Her argument is, im some spy. You know, here i am showing myself with these people all over the place. Im not hiding. Demers shes hiding her true identity. Thats her face, but shes not telling them that shes there as an agent of russia. Stahl this was a photo she didnt post, though we were able to obtain this grainy copy. In one of her private messages to her contact in moscow, Alexander Torshin, she wrote are we allowed to publish the photo of trump jr. . As if they needed to run the decision up to a more senior level. There were other hints of a Higher Authority when she organized meetings in moscow in december 2015 between senior officials, including torshin. When you see this, again, you can get the impression that theres some government person higher than torshin kind of directing this whole thing, pulling the strings. Butina but its all conspiracy theories. There is absolutely no proof of any of that, and i am not aware of any actions like this. Stahl she didnt just attend n. R. A. Events. Here she is in the summer of 2015 at a Libertarian Convention in las vegas called freedomfest, where she asked thencandidate donald trump a question. Butina do you want to continue the politics of sanctions that are damaging on both economies, or you have any other ideas . Trump i dont think youd need the sanctions. I think that we would get along very, very well. Stahl one of the goals of the russian government at this point in time was to get rid of those sanctions. It was a major goal. Butina it was also a major goal for every russian citizen that suffers today from these sanctions, i believe, that our countries shall not fight. Stahl so you asked about sanctions and not gun rights, because you want us to be friends. Butina absolutely. Stahl not long after, she began helping organize u. S. Russian friendship dinners. In a document sent to torshin, she wrote that these dinners will make it possible to exert the speediest and most effective influence on the process of making decisions in the american establishment. Thats pretty explicit, that youre seeking to influence u. S. Policy. Butina its pretty explicit that i am seeking that our two countries establish friendship between each other. And i dont mean governments. I mean people. Stahl as the 2016 u. S. Election was approaching, she claimed to have success making direct contact with several of Donald Trumps russian advisors. And she writes torshin, we made our bet. I am following our game. Torshin answers, this is the battle for the future. It cannot be lost. Patience and cold blood. A week later, butina writes, only incognito right now everything has to be quiet and careful. So, incognito, patience, cold blood. What is that . Butina let me take you back to 2016, around the elections time. Do you remember how at that point American Media treated russia . Everything was toxic. Tell me that there is no racism here against the russians . Oh, please. It is. Stahl i reminded her that the judge said her crime was a threat to our democratic institutions. Butina and it is very sad for me, because it shows how broken the Justice System in the United States is. Stahl youre saying shes wrong . Butinecau betheyou cannot charge collecting information with not specifying what information. I have never collected any sensitive or classified information. Stahl theyre saying you sought to influence our policies. Butina i never sought to influence your policies. I came here on my own because i wanted to learn from the United States and go back to russia to make russia better. Stahl the Justice Department taped our interview with butina, which john demers listened to. Demers it was a masterpiece of disinformation. It had conflation, obfuscation, changing the subject, accusing you of being sexist, accusing the American People of being racist against russians. Whenever the questions got difficult, trying to change the topic. Partial denials. Stahl so theres no way to look at what she was doing here as being somewhat naiive and innocent . Demers i dont think that shes naiive or innocent. Stahl less than a week after donald trump won the election, butina was claiming to her contact Alexander Torshin that she had influence over at least one of the cabinet choices. John bolton will be secretary of state, 90 , she writes, and continues, ask our people if theyre happy with that. Our opinion will be taken into account. What does that mean . Butina well, lesley, paul told me to write that. Stahl paul erickson, her former boyfriend, and a republican operative. Butina i hesitated to write that, but i thought it might, you know, it was a certain way to show off to torshin and say, well, maybe i have highlevel contacts here. Stahl do you think she had influence over who was chosen . Demers i doubt it. I think she intended to have influence over who was chosen. And i think what makes her dangerous is that, at the end of the day, we dont know. Stahl one of the things she wanted to talk about were the conditions in the washington, d. C. Jail where she was first held. Cockroaches were everywhere, she claimed, no mattresses or blankets. And. You told me that you found faith . Butina no. God found me. He was always there. And helped me to go through all these tough days. Stahl that included over 100 days in solitary confinement. Butina it is a torture. It is not normal for a human being to be locked for 23, 20, 22 hours in a cell by your own. Do you really think for not filing the paper, you deserve 18 months of incarceration, four months in solitary confinement, and all this experience in jail . Is that the way . Demers when she was talking to you in your interview, her audience wasnt the American People. It was Vladimir Putin and all the people in russia who are going to decide her fate when she goes back there. Stahl are you worried that shes going to go around the country, criticizing, you know, how dare the americans talk about human rights, look what happened to me . Demers and i have very little doubt that the russian government will leverage her as an instrument of propaganda, to say, here was this poor, young, idealistic russian student, and look what happened to her. They threw her in jail for 18 months. Stahl when she arrived back in moscow a week ago, she was greeted by a media frenzy, had a reunion with her dad, and immediately started giving interviews about the conditions of her incarceration. ticking may 1 of 75. The magic moment. Congress really democratized wall street. I wanted to have a firm that wanted to get everybody in. Because people couldnt access wall street. We wanted to be agents of change. For the better. only tylenol® rapid release gels have laser drilled holes. They release medicine fast, for fast pain relief. Tylenol®. How did you find greatgrandmas recipe . Were related to them . Were portuguese . I thought we were hungarian . Grandpa, can you tell me the story again . Behind every question is a story waiting to be discovered. Wertheim they say that breaking up is hard to do. Its one thing to declare, im out of here. Its Something Else entirely to disentangle finances and come up with custody arrangements. If divorce between two people is seldom tidy, imagine the complications when the split is, effectively, between a country and a continent. The United Kingdom is learning this the hard way. British voters decided to exit, or brexit, the European Union, ending a long marriage. That was in june of 2016. More than three years later, you might say that the u. K. Is still sleeping on the couch. This past thursday, the deadline to leave passed without resolution. Yet there is a certain uniquely british theatricality to brexit, a mix of colorful characters, conflicts, threats, promises. But still, no clear exit strategy. John bercow order, order. Wertheim he may demand it, but order has been in short supply lately at the palace of westminster. Bercow be a good boy, young man. Be a good boy. Wertheim thought partisan politics was an exclusively American Issue . Take a look at the mother of parliaments. Boris johnson i have to say, mr. Speaker, i have never heard such humbug in all my life. Wertheim youd be forgiven for thinking youd walked into a streetfight, with considerably nicer upholstery. Barry sheerman this prime minister, to talk about morals and morality, is a disgrace. Bercow order. Wertheim it falls to the speaker, john bercow, to preside. Bercow calm. Wertheim unlike nancy pelosi, this speaker doesnt usually vote. His job . Keeping well, order. In theory, anyway. Bercow order wertheim can we get you a gavel . They make those. Would that make your job easier . Bercow im not sure it would. And its very unbritish to have a gavel in the chamber. Although there is a general requ b people doubtless myself included think that we are being briefer than we are. And most people are in favor of brevity, as long as it is someone elses. Protestors we come from yorkshire just to say. Wertheim the dividing lines the United Kingdoms decision to exit the European Union, the 28country political and trading bloc. This issue has not only engulfed the doorsteps of parliament, but the country as a whole. Brexit will impact every bit of the economy, from roaming charges to auto parts; from cattle to cod. Paul joy, whose family has been fishing for centuries, cannot wait to leave the European Union and its limits on his catch. Paul joy its as bad as weve ever seen. Its been decimated over a period of time. I can remember the days fishing when we just had to go out there and fish, and there was no such things as quotas. We had abundant fish stocks before we entered europe. Wertheim to understand the current scrap over brexit, it helps to understand an ancient dispute the battle of hastings. Which certainly isnt lost on these guys, who reenact it every year. In 1066, william the conqueror defeated the anglosaxon king harald, and the Norman Conquest changed england forever, becoming an important plot point in britains complicated relationship with europe. Fool youre talking to a fool, sir. I am not a great political theorizer or a historian. Wertheim in the great tradition of shakespeare, the fool knows of whence he speaks. Fool as long as there has been an england, there has been an opinion upon europe. Wertheim on a clear day, you can look out across the English Channel here and see the french poles away. But if you really want a sense of just how close the United Kingdom sits to mainland europe, consider these sheer magnificent white cliffs of dover. They represent the original split between this country and that continent, hard proof that the United