Shortly before his father was
formally nominated for president last summer, Donald Trump Jr. was approached
by a Russian lawyer who set up a meeting to discuss a Russian policy, according
to interviews with Trump family lawyers.
President
Trump’s eldest son briefly gathered others for the meeting, including his
brother-in-law Jared Kushner, as well as then-presidential campaign manager
Paul Manafort for the meeting at Trump Tower in New York City with the lawyer,
identified by Trump family lawyers as Natalia Veselnitskaya, pictured above.
Veselnitskaya
used the meeting in June 2016 to have a conversation about a U.S. law called
the Magnitsky Act that Russia leader Vladimir Putin reviles and has retaliated
against by blocking U.S. adoptions of Russian children.
The
encounter was short and the Trump team had no further contact with the woman or
the policy issue, lawyers said.
The
meeting was recently disclosed to congressional investigators by one of the
attendees, according to sources directly familiar with the disclosure.
President Trump was not aware of
the meeting and did not attend it, according to the lawyers. A translator and
an American businessman working for a pro-Russian business lobby also attended
the meeting, which lasted about 20 minutes, according to the interviews.
The
president’s legal team said Saturday they believe the entire meeting may have
been part of a larger election-year opposition effort aimed at creating the
appearance of improper connections between Trump family members and Russia that
also included a now-discredited intelligence dossier produced by a former
British intelligence agent named Christopher Steele who worked for a U.S.
political firm known as Fusion GPS.
“We
have learned from both our own investigation and public reports that the
participants in the meeting misrepresented who they were and who they worked
for,” said Mark Corallo, a spokesman for President Trump’s legal team.
“Specifically, we have learned that the person who sought the meeting is
associated with Fusion GPS, a firm which according to public reports, was
retained by Democratic operatives to develop opposition research on the
President and which commissioned the phony Steele dossier. "
"These
developments raise serious issues as to exactly who authorized and participated
in any effort by Russian nationals to influence our election in any manner,”
Corallo said.
Veselnitskaya
is identified in court documents as a former Russian prosecutor and private
lawyer in Moscow who had been representing the Russian businessman Denis Katsyv, pictured above, and his Prevezon Holdings, against a U.S. Department of Justice a civil asset forfeiture
case. In one document, she described having trouble getting a visa from the
U.S.
The Justice Department alleges
Prevezon received money from a money-laundering scheme in Russia that was
uncovered by a Russian attorney and auditor named Sergei Magnitsky, pictured below.
Magnitsky
became a cause celeb in the United States after he claimed in 2008 to uncover a
major international money laundering scheme centered in Russia. He was
imprisoned by Putin, reportedly tortured and died in 2009 in a Moscow prison,
then tried and convicted posthumously by the Russian government in 2011.
But
in 2012 the U.S. Congress passed and President Barack Obama signed a law in his
honor, the Magnitsky Act, which punished Russian officials alleged to be
responsible for the lawyer’s death by keeping them from entering the United
States or using the American banking system.
It
is that law that has been reviled by Putin and his allies in Russia and which
came up in the meeting between Veselnitskaya and Donald Trump Jr., according to
the lawyers.
The
Prevezon case that Veselnitskaya worked on was filed by the Justice Department
in 2013 and dragged on for four years before it was settled this May. Prevezon
paid about $6 million but did not admit wrongdoing.
The connection drawn by the
president’s lawyers between Veselnitskaya and Fusion GPS comes from a letter
this spring by the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Charles Grassley, who
disclosed that Fusion GPS also provided litigation support in the Prevezon
case.
Prevezon
also apparently lobbied against the Magnitsky Act, according to Grassley's
letter.
"Prevezon’s
lobbying efforts were reportedly commissioned by Mr. Katsyv, who organized them
through a Delaware non-profit he formed and through the law firm then
representing Prevezon in the asset forfeiture case, Baker Hostetler. Among
others, the efforts involved lobbyist Rinat Akhmetshin and Fusion GPS, a
political research firm led by Glenn Simpson," the letter said.
Grassley
has asked the Justice Department to look at all the connections and is seeking
information from Fusion GPS on whether opponents of Trump funded the creation
of a salacious intelligence dossier to hurt his presidential bid. The FBI has
said it has been unable to corroborate many of the allegations in the dossier
that involved Trump.
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