Alleged Russian operative tried to lure elected Hawaii officials to Russia

A woman accused of working as a foreign operative in America used a Kauai County Council member and a nonprofit organization to try to lure government and military officials to meetings with high-ranking members of the Russian Federation.

Elena Branson, aka “Elena Cherykh,” 61, organized Kauai community members around a mission to preserve the formal name of Russian Fort Elizabeth State Historical Park in Waimea. Branson established a nonprofit called the Russian Kauaiian Association in response to efforts to change the fort’s name to its original Hawaiian name, Pa‘ula‘ula, and set up and attended the Fort Elizabeth Forum on Kauai in 2017 that featured speakers from Russia’s foreign ministry and professors from Russian universities.

The renaming of the fort remains pending.

Branson was charged by federal criminal complaint Tuesday for allegedly failing to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, conspiring to commit visa fraud and lying to FBI agents. Kauai County Council member Felicia Cowden is listed in the charging documents as “Councilmember-1.”

According to the Justice Department and documents obtained by the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, at Branson’s request Cowden invited Gov. David Ige, former Pacific Missile Range Facility commander Capt. Vincent Johnson, former Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, officials with the state Department of Land and Natural Resources, Kauai Mayor Derek Kawa­kami and Senate President Ron Kouchi to meetings with Branson and Russian Federation officials to discuss retaining the name of the fort.

Those officials included Russian Ambassador Anatoly Antonov, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Embassy Minister Sergey Koshelev, according to the correspondence.

Cowden also forwarded Ige, Kouchi, Kawakami and DLNR officials invitations from Branson to travel to Vologda, Russia, for a conference in 2019. They all declined. Cowden and three others from Hawaii accepted the all-expenses-paid trip.

Branson had been tapped by Russian President Vladimir Putin and top Kremlin officials to push pro-Russian policies and messages while building relationships with county, state and federal government officials and others, according to the complaint.

“At the direction of the Russian government, she led a years-long campaign to identify the next generation of American leaders, cultivate information channels, and shape U.S. policy in favor of Russian objectives,” said FBI Assistant Director in Charge Michael J. Driscoll, in a statement announcing the charges. “This case highlights the breadth of Russia’s relentless intelligence and malign influence activities targeting the United States.”

The Russian Federation actively spreads pro-regime propaganda and uses Russian citizens in the United States and elsewhere to make connections with U.S. community leaders, politicians and businesspeople in order to advance Russian government objectives, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

Branson was the head of several pro-Russia organizations operating in the U.S., including the Russian Community Council of the USA. She fled to Moscow in October after FBI agents interviewed her.

COWDEN DECLINED a Star-Advertiser request for an interview, but in a statement said there are “significant inaccuracies” in the federal charging document.

She accused but did not name an FBI agent in New York of not consulting the “Hawaii FBI branch” regarding “verifiable data on the American funding source, the nature of the American event in Vologda or the State parks minutes,” before writing the charges.

“I did not arrange meetings for Ms. Branson with anyone,” Cowden said. “Most of all of this is public record. I will not be giving interviews. It is important to me to allow the Department of Justice’s process to occur without co-mingling my statements of innocence with their inquiry of focus. They (federal investigators) can speak to me if they need more information.”

Cowden did not respond when the Star-Advertiser asked about letters and emails obtained by the Star-Advertiser that were sent by her to elected officials asking them to attend meetings about the fort’s name or join a trip to Russia led by Branson.

An April 15, 2019, email from Branson to Cowden, obtained by the Star-Advertiser, shows the pair discussing invitations to the conference in Russia.

“Dear Felicia, I am sending you to invitation from Russian Center New York to the trip to Russia. Please advise if any changes are needed. Kind regards, Elena,” the email reads.

Justice Department officials in Hawaii and New York declined to answer questions about the kind of relationships Branson fostered in Hawaii or Cowden’s assertions that they mischaracterized her work with Branson in the charging document.

ON KAUAI, news of the criminal allegations against Branson were not totally surprising to those who have met her.

Aaron Adair, 83, agreed to serve as CEO of the Russian Kauaiian Association because there “was nobody else” he told the Star-Advertiser. Adair was interviewed by FBI agents on six separate occasions.

“She (Branson) was a wonderful personality. I liked her,” Adair said. “Obviously now it all fits — she was very smooth and very nice. I’m sure she would be a successful spy.”

University of Hawaii at Hilo professor Peter Mills took the trip to Russia with Cowden and Branson. He told the Star-Advertiser he was surprised at the invitation because he authored a book arguing that Russia has little right to claim the fort on Kauai.

Mills’ 2002 book, “Hawaii’s Russian Adventure,” revealed that Kauai Chief Kaumuali‘i had the fort built in 1817 as his personal compound and in a show of his Russian alliance in an effort to maintain Kauai’s sovereignty from King Kamehameha I, according to the University of Hawaii.

In Russia, Mills found himself meeting with members of the foreign ministry and other agencies.

“I’m just a UH Hilo professor and I thought, ‘Damn, what am I doing here?’” Mills said. “I can say that Elena was gracious and it was a great trip overall, but my question all along was where is the money coming from and who is behind it. That was a curiosity for sure. Because I was against what they were arguing for. I felt like I was facing some real powerful and well-funded attempts to keep the Russian label on the place.”

Mills acknowledged the FBI interviewed him about the trip and his interactions with Branson.

Svetlana Anderson, listed as the Russian Kauaiian Association business agent on documents filed with the state Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs, told the Star-Advertiser she was “blown away” when she became aware of the charges.

“When the FBI came to my house that was not a nice situation,” Anderson said. “From my impression, I went to see my mom in Siberia. It was a free ticket and I enjoyed.”

ACCORDING TO the federal charges, on Feb. 7, 2019, Cowden reached out to Gabbard’s staff to see if the congresswoman was in Hawaii and available to meet with Branson and two diplomats from the Russian Embassy in Washington, D.C.

Gabbard in October 2019 was accused by former Secretary of State and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton of being a favorite of Putin’s regime, and most recently echoed the Kremlin line on Ukraine prior to Russia’s invasion and asking President Joe Biden to guarantee the country would never be admitted to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

“Biden can very easily prevent a war with Russia by guaranteeing that Ukraine will not become a member of NATO,” Gabbard wrote on Twitter in February. “It is not in our national security interests for Ukraine to become a member of NATO anyway, so why not give Russia that assurance?”

A Gabbard spokesperson told the Star-Advertiser, “Tulsi never met with Branson, and never heard of her until a few days ago.”

On April 15, 2019, Cowden forwarded an email from Branson to the office of Kawakami.

“This is a formal invitation to the Russian event. Can you determine the appropriate way to send it along to the Mayor?” read Cowden’s email, addressed to two mayoral aides. “Should I ask Elena to simply send it to Mayor@kauai.gov or do we send it with a cover letter? I have spoken with him a handful of times about it. He hasn’t said no, but he doesn’t seem to trust the situation.”

Kawakami’s office acknowledged a meeting with Branson and others in December 2018 about the potential name change of the fort. Kawakami deferred to the state as the matter was outside of the county’s purview, and declined the invitation to travel to Russia in 2019.

In an April 18, 2019, letter to Ige, Cowden shared a trip itinerary and invited the governor to “a peace conference” in Vologda, Russia, to attend the “Fort Ross Dialogues,” about a historic Russian fort in California.

“How is it not obvious I was begging for help and consistently got no response from the layer of government that should have appropriately engaged?” said Cowden, in a statement to the Star-Advertiser explaining the Ige letter. “This letter is an example of my doing my best, with limited experience, to hand this diplomatic invitation up to the appropriate level of governance. To engage with this level of international diplomacy was/is far above my pay grade. This is an overt request for help with the desire being to hand off the responsibility of managing international affairs to a level that would match the governor’s responsibility and experience. None of this overlapped any county level of authority.”

Cowden also raised concerns from the Russian community in Hawaii about changing the Kauai fort’s name to its original Hawaiian. Cowden told Ige she became involved with the issue early on in her tenure as a Kauai County Council member.

“The Russian Federation and myself have sent differing communication to yourself and the State,” wrote Cowden. “It is important to me that you are aware of this possible trip which has arisen very recently. … I have been asked to lead this process as I have stayed involved since I was approached for help and have developed a relationship of trust with the Russian Embassy and the Russian Center for America based in New York.”

Cowden told Ige that the “envoy coming from Russia to California, and then to Kauai” included Antonov, Lavrov, Koshelev and “other dignitaries.”

She also alleged that Johnson, the former Pacific Missile Range Facility commander, “has been in this information loop.”

U.S. Marine Corps Maj. Rob Martins and U.S. Navy Cmdr. Tiffani Walker, officials with U.S. Indo-Pacific Command Public Affairs, declined to answer Star-­Advertiser questions about whether Branson met with Johnson or if she had any other meetings or relationships with military officials in Hawaii.