Veselnitskaya

<div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""></font></div><div style=""><div style="font-size: small;"><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="" /><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="">=</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">wapo:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/senate-intelligence-trump-russia-report/2020/08/18/62a7573e-e093-11ea-b69b-64f7b0477ed4_story.html" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/senate-intelligence-trump-russia-report/2020/08/18/62a7573e-e093-11ea-b69b-64f7b0477ed4_story.html</a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style=""><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">no lnx</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">National Security</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>Trump’s 2016 campaign chair was a ‘grave counterintelligence threat,’ had repeated contact with Russian intelligence, Senate panel finds</b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
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</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">By</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Karoun Demirjian and&nbsp;</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Ellen Nakashima</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">August 18, 2020</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">
</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">President Trump’s 2016 campaign chairman posed a “grave counterintelligence threat” due to his interaction with people close to the Kremlin</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">, according to a bipartisan Senate report released Tuesday that found extensive contacts between key campaign advisers and officials affiliated with Moscow’s government and intelligence services.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In its report, the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee states that&nbsp;<b>Trump’s then-campaign chair Paul Manafort worked with a Russian intelligence officer “on narratives that sought to undermine evidence that Russia interfered in the 2016 U.S. election,” including the idea that purported Ukrainian election interference was of greater concern.</b></span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">It found that a </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">Russian attorney</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);"> who met with Manafort, along with the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., and his son-in-law Jared Kushner at Trump Tower in 2016, had “significant connections” to the Kremlin.&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The information she offered them was also “part of a broader influence operation targeting the United States that was coordinated, at least in part with elements of the Russian government,” the report stated.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>But the panel also concluded that the FBI’s handling of Russian threats to the election was “flawed” and that the bureau gave “unjustified credence” to allegations about Trump’s Russia ties made in a dossier compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele, “based on an incomplete understanding of Steele’s past reporting record.”</b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Document: Read the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on Russian interference in the 2016 election]</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The Senate Intelligence Committee’s three-and-a-half year investigation stands as Congress’s only bipartisan examination of Russian interference in the 2016 election. The panel, significantly, agreed that the FBI overestimated Steel’s reliability and that Manafort and other aides exposed the campaign to undue Russian influence.&nbsp;<b>But its leaders were noticeably divided along party lines in how they interpreted the report’s significance, and several committee members — including its&nbsp;<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">acting chairman Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) — endorsed dissenting conclusions about Trump’s own culpability.</span></b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The partisan divisions are a sign that the panel’s tome likely will not put to rest the political wrangling over how seriously to treat foreign interference in U.S. democracy as the country heads into its most divisive election in modern history.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“After more than three years of investigation by this Committee, we can now say with no doubt, there was no collusion,” a group of six panel Republicans, including Rubio, wrote in a statement<b>&nbsp;instead accusing the Democratic Party of coordinating with foreign actors to produce Steele’s dossier.</b></span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">“In 2016, the Democratic Party, using a series of arm’s length transactions, hired a foreign citizen to seek out dirt on a political opponent, provided by foreign sources,” the Republicans wrote, attacking the FBI for “sloppy work and poor judgment.”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>
</b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>Five Democrat senators ­— including Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.</b>), the party’s 2020 vice-presidential nominee — asserted the report “unambiguously shows that members of the Trump Campaign cooperated with Russian efforts to get Trump elected.” Referring specifically to their findings on Manafort, the Democrats wrote, “This is what collusion looks like.”</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>The intelligence committee’s vice chairman, Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.), who did not sign onto the Democrats’ dissenting views, noted “a breathtaking level of contacts between Trump officials and Russian government operatives that is a very real counterintelligence threat to our elections,” and he encouraged “all Americans to carefully review the documented evidence of the unprecedented and massive intervention campaign waged on behalf of then-candidate Donald Trump by Russians and their operatives and to reach their own independent conclusions.”</b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The committee’s past chairman Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), who oversaw the bulk of the investigation and also steered clear of the GOP’s dissent, struck a position in the middle.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“One of the Committee’s most important — and overlooked — findings is that much of Russia’s activities weren’t related to producing a specific electoral outcome, but attempted to undermine our faith in the democratic process itself,” he said in a statement. “Their aim is to sow chaos, discord, and distrust. Their efforts are not limited to elections. The threat is ongoing.</span>”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Senate panel told Justice Dept. of suspicions over Trump family members’ Russia testimony</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Burr and Warner launched the committee’s probe before Trump’s inauguration in January 2017 and sustained the bipartisan investigation over the following three and a half years, even as other Congressional investigations into the same matter faltered along partisan lines. Since the Senate Intelligence Committee began its probe, former special counsel Robert S. Mueller III also released a 448-page report on Russian interference in the 2016 election — and Trump was impeached and acquitted after Democrats accused him of coercing Ukrainian leaders to interfere in the 2020 election.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>Though the committee’s probe covers much of the same turf as Mueller’s investigation, it was different in nature. Mueller was running a criminal probe; the Senate committee was conducting an intelligence investigation — a distinction that helps to explain some of nuanced differences between their conclusions.</b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">The Senate panel’s probe, which was mostly driven by the committee’s bipartisan staff, included more than 200 witnesses and considered evidence relating to Russian disinformation, Trump’s personal, business and campaign contacts with Russians and the transition period following the 2016 election.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">
</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">At one point, the document all but concludes that Trump aides were duped and manipulated by Russian interests they were too callow to understand.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>“Russian officials, intelligence services, and others” acting in concert with the Kremlin “were capable of exploiting the transition team’s shortcomings,” the report concluded. “Based on the available information, it is possible — and even likely — that they did so.”</b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The report also presents a damning portrait of the Trump campaign’s hasty move in March 2016 to assemble a foreign policy team, asserting that it had recruited inexperienced people without thoroughly vetting them and thus potentially exposed itself to Russian influence.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">“Ultimately,” the committee wrote, “the foreign policy team exposed the Trump Campaign to significant counterintelligence vulnerabilities.”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The committee pointed to Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos, who attempted to secure a face-to-face meeting between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin through “highly suspicious” contacts with people close to the Russian government. Ultimately, investigators concluded, Papadopoulos “was not a witting co-optee of the Russian the Russian intelligence services. The panel also found that while Russia seemed to show an interest in campaign adviser Carter Page, investigators “found no indication that Page had useful Campaign information for the Russian intelligence services to extract, nor meaningful influence for them to exploit.”</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">The committee did find however that Putin personally directed the 2016 hack-and-leak campaign targeting the Democratic Party, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the Clinton campaign. The anti-secrecy group&nbsp;<b>WikiLeaks “actively sought and played a key role in the Russian campaign and very likely knew it was assisting a Russian intelligence influence effort,”</b>&nbsp;the report stated, surmising that a Russian military spy agency, known as the GRU, transferred hacked emails to WikiLeaks likely because it offered a more effective platform for publicity than the GRU’s own methods.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>Yet investigators could not “reliably determine the extent of authentic,<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">&nbsp;nonpublic&nbsp;</span>knowledge” Trump’s friend Roger Stone had about WikiLeaks’s coming releases and shared with the campaign.</b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The panel noted that its investigation was hampered by several witnesses’ refusing interviews and to produce documents, citing Fifth Amendment rights that protect against self incrimination. These included&nbsp;</span><b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Stone,&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">Manafort&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">and Rick Gates,</span></b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">&nbsp;the campaign’s deputy chair at that time. The panel’s request to interview Julian Assange was rebuffed.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">The committee also outright accused Blackwater founder and Trump supporter Erik Prince of stonewalling its investigation, saying that it was “hampered by a lack of cooperation” and that his account of a controversial 2017 meeting in the Seychelles alongside a Russian official was “brief and deceptive.”</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The committee previously released other volumes detailing aspects of its inquiry. Those reports focused on U.S. election security, Russia’s use of social media in disinformation campaigns, the Obama administration’s response to the perceived threat in 2016 and the intelligence community’s joint assessment that Russia had interfered in an attempt to tip the scales in Trump’s favor.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>Yet the panel’s effort to maintain a bipartisan approach has not saved it from partisan scrutiny. Last year, the panel came under fire from Senate Republicans after issuing a subpoena for Donald Trump Jr. to come in for a second round of testimony.</b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">After his testimony,&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">Trump Jr</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">. was one of several witnesses that the panel referred to the Justice Department for closer scrutiny over discrepancies between their testimony and that of Gates, the ex-deputy campaign chair who was a key witness in Mueller’s probe.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Earlier this year, Burr stepped aside as panel chairman after coming under scrutiny over stocks he sold in industries hit badly by the coronavirus pandemic. Rubio has been serving as acting chairman in his place.</span></div></div></div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="">beast?</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="">
</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="" /><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="">no lnx</font></font></font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">DOWNED</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>Russian Official Linked to Natalia Veselnitskaya, the Trump Tower Lawyer, Is Dead</b></div><div style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">Russia’s Deputy Attorney General Saak Karapetyan was exposed this year for running a foreign recruitment operation with Natalia Veselnitskaya</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
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</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Nico Hines</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">London Editor</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Updated 03.20.19 4:04PM ET / Published 10.04.18 1:15PM ET&nbsp;</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">A Russian official accused of directing the foreign operations of Natalia Veselnitskaya, the lawyer who met senior Trump campaign officials in 2016, has plummeted to his death in a helicopter crash.</span></div><div style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Russian Deputy Attorney General Saak Albertovich Karapetyan was exposed in a Swiss court this year for a plot to enlist another nation’s law-enforcement official as a double-agent for the Kremlin.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Media reports in Russia say he died Wednesday night when his helicopter crashed into a forest during an unauthorized flight in the Kostroma region, northeast of Moscow.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>Karapetyan, 58, was intimately familiar with some of the most notorious operations carried out under the orders of Vladimir Putin. He worked closely with Veselnitskaya as well as running some of Moscow’s most high-profile efforts to thwart international investigations into Russia’s alleged crimes.</b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">It was Karapetyan who signed a letter from the Russian government refusing to help the U.S. in a civil case it was pursuing linked to the death of Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian lawyer who was trying to expose a $230 million fraud in Russia. Leaked emails have since shown that Veselnitskaya helped to draft the document sent with that letter.&nbsp; &nbsp;</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
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</div><div style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Karapetyan has been involved in efforts to foil international investigations for more than a decade. The Daily Beast reported that he was present for a meeting in Moscow where British detectives claim they were poisoned during efforts to track down the killers of<b> Alexander Litvinenko</b>, who died after a dose of radioactive poison in London in 2006.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Despite claims that they were trying to help, the general prosecutor’s office did everything it could to block the Scotland Yard investigation.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Earlier this year, Karapetyan lashed out at Britain in the aftermath of the Novichok attack against former Russian spy Sergei Skripal. He linked Skripal, Litvinenko, and Boris Berezovsky, a high-profile critic of Putin who died of suspected suicide in 2013.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">“The British authorities have based the anti-Russian campaign surrounding the <b>poisoning of former GRU officer Skripal </b>and his daughter on a provocative scenario. A similar scenario was used in baseless allegations of Russia’s attempt on the life of Boris Berezovsky in London in summer 2003 and the circumstances surrounding the death of Alexander Litvinenko in the U.K. in November 2006,” Karapetyan said, according to Interfax.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">On Wednesday night, the wreckage of a helicopter believed to have been carrying Karapetyan was found near the village of Vonyshevo. Video purported to be from the scene shows the chopper mangled and burnt out amid twisted tree trunks.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">It is not known why experienced pilot Stanislav Mikhnov, 54, reportedly decided to take off after nightfall in adverse conditions without authorities’ approval. A third man, Arek Harutyunyan, was also killed, according to the Russian news agency Interfax.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">[NAMED AND SHAMED</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Russia’s Global Hacking Op Busted, Seven Agents Indicted]</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
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</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Karapetyan’s links to Veselnitskaya emerged this year, when a case in Switzerland exposed the pair’s operation to recruit a high-level law-enforcement official who was supposed to be investigating the Swiss bank accounts of Russian oligarchs and mobsters.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
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</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">"Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya speaks during an interview with The Associated Press in Moscow, Russia, Sunday, April 22, 2018. Veselnitskaya who discussed sanctions with Donald Trump Jr. in New York during the 2016 campaign told The Associated Press in an interview that she has not been contacted by special counsel Robert Mueller and alleged that he was not interested in getting to the truth"</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Leak Exposes Trump Tower Russian’s Dirty Lobbying Operations</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
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</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The top investigator was fired for “unauthorized clandestine behavior,” and allegations of bribery and breaching secrecy laws. The Swiss authorities discovered that the officer—who was identified only as Victor K.—had met Karapetyan in Geneva and Zurich. Before Christmas 2016, Karapetyan telephoned the official and invited him to Moscow, where he was put up in a luxury hotel and asked to attend a meeting with Veselnitskaya.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">It is likely that the meeting with Veselnitskaya concerned the fallout from the death of Magnitsky, who had been working to expose a massive fraud that implicated the Kremlin when he was incarcerated, beaten, and left to die.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">In the aftermath of his death, the lawyer’s client, Bill Browder, campaigned to enact a series of anti-corruption laws all over the world in his name. The U.S. Magnitsky Act was passed in 2012.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>Veselnitskaya was one of the top advocates lobbying to overturn these global Magnitsky laws, which have reportedly absolutely infuriated Putin.</b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">When she arranged to meet Paul Manafort, Donald Trump Jr., and Jared Kushner at the infamous <b>Trump Tower meeting in 2016, she was offering dirt on Hillary Clinton allegedly given to her by Karapetyan’s general prosecutor’s office</b>, according to the emails of introduction, which have since been leaked. Once inside, we now know that she attempted to lobby the senior Trump officials on the Magnitsky case.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Karapetyan and Veselnitskaya also worked together on another job linked to Magnitsky. The U.S. authorities brought a civil case against a company called Prevezon for its alleged links to laundering proceeds of the fraud that Magnitsky uncovered.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">In April, emails obtained by Dossier, an anti-Putin campaign set up by former oligarch Mikhail<b> Khodorkovsky,</b> and published by The New York Times, showed that Veselnitskaya had helped to draft a document on behalf of the Russian government that explained why Moscow would not help with the fraud case against Prevezon.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Rather than engage with the allegations against Prevezon, much of the document was a personal attack on Browder. The cover letter that accompanied the document was signed by Karapetyan.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The refusal to help provide documents from inside Russia—orchestrated by Karapetyan and Veselnitskaya—likely contributed to the authorities’ ultimate decision to settle the case. Prevezon agreed to pay $5.9 million, but it did not admit any role in laundering the proceeds of the fraud.&nbsp; &nbsp;</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
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</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Nico Hines</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">London Editor</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">@nicohines</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">nico.hines@thedailybeast.com</div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div style="font-size: small;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/russian-witness-thrown-from-a-window-after-his-name-was-exposed-by-trump-tower-lobbyist-emails" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/russian-witness-thrown-from-a-window-after-his-name-was-exposed-by-trump-tower-lobbyist-emails</font></a></div><div style="font-size: small;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="font-size: small;"><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Russian witness thrown from a window after his name was exposed by Trump Tower lobbyist: emails</font></div><div>
</div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by Tom Boggioni / Raw Story October 4, 2019</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">According to a report from the Daily Beast, a witness who was taking part in a U.S. trial aimed at Russian corruption — and who fell from a window to his death — reportedly had his name exposed in emails connected to alleged pro-Kremlin disinformation campaign operative Natalia Veselnitskaya.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Emails uncovered by the Beast point the finger directly at Veselnitskaya, who met with Don Trump Jr. at Trump Tower in 2016 that became a major part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Russian involvement in Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Noting the death of Nikolai Gorokhov,</b>&nbsp;who was reportedly thrown from the window of a hotel in Moscow prior to appearing in a corruption trial, the Beast reports, “A cache of emails obtained by the Dossier Center, which is a Russian opposition organization based in London, exposes the depth of foreign asset entanglement in Trump’s America at the precise moment that the president’s dealings with Ukrainian officials threaten to pull the Department of Justice and State Department into an unseemly impeachment fight.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The report goes on to state that “The cache of emails that detail Veselnitskaya’s legal campaign and lobbying efforts in Washington, D.C., were shared with The Daily Beast by the Dossier Center, which is&nbsp;<b>funded by Mikhail Khodorkovsky,</b></span><b>&nbsp;one of Putin’s most prominent exiled critics</b>, ” before adding, “The emails cannot be independently verified by The Daily Beast via a digital signature but elements contained within them including cell phone numbers, bank details, planning, email addresses, and hearing dates can be confirmed by cross-checking with subsequent court papers, lobbyist filings and other reporting.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“New emails from the same cache, which includes messages from and to Veselnitskya and her aide and translator Murat Glashev, shed light on Veselnitskaya’s lobbying and legal campaign against the Magnitsky Act and appear to suggest that it may have been carried out in breach of another U.S. law and court orders,” the report continues. “Some of the emails suggest the breaking of an order put in place by a New York court to protect the identity of Gorokhov, a Russian witness who testified in a sealed deposition. His evidence was hidden amid fears of reprisals back home.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">You can read more here.</font></div></div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="">CYPRUS BANK:</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/putin-wants-trump-hand-over-three-dhs-agents-who-are-investigating-company-linked">https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/putin-wants-trump-hand-over-three-dhs-agents-who-are-investigating-company-linked</a></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Lost in all the controversy over President Vladimir Putin asking Donald Trump to turn over former&nbsp;<a href="https://www.rawstory.com/2018/07/ex-russian-ambassador-michael-mcfaul-calls-putins-request-question-ridiculous-hopes-white-house-denounces/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">U.S. Ambassador Michael McFaul</a>&nbsp;to Kremlin investigators for questioning — in return for access to Russian officials indicted by the Justice Department for meddling in the 2016 election — was the fact that Putin had a whole list of Americans he wanted to be turned over.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">According to Michael Weiss, writing for the&nbsp;<em>Daily Beast</em>, far down Putin’s shopping list are t<a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/this-is-why-putin-is-targeting-three-dhs-agents" style="text-decoration-line: none;">hree Department of Homeland Security</a>&nbsp;agents whom he has accused of running off with over $400 million in Russian money – when in fact they were&nbsp;<b>investigating associates of Putin laundering that money.</b></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The agents — identified as Todd Hyman, Aleksandr Schwartzman, and Svetlana Angert — were included by Putin, who reportedly explained to Trump that some of that stolen money was funneled to the 2016 presidential campaign of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.&nbsp; "It might have been legal, the contribution itself, but the way the money was earned was illegal,” Putin offered at the Helsinki meeting.</font></p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As Weiss writes, “Hyman, Schwartzman, and Angert were not laundering money, as Putin and his prosecutor would suggest; they were investigating money launderers.”</font><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">According to a deep dive into their careers, the&nbsp;<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">three agents were principals in a civil asset forfeiture case brought against<b>&nbsp;Prevezon Holdings, a Cyprus-</b>registered company suspected of laundering Russian public funds — some of which was invested in Manhattan properties which raised red flags with federal investigators.</span></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">According to Weiss, “In 2013, $24 million of Prevezon’s U.S.-based assets were frozen in a civil asset forfeiture complaint brought by the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of New York. The case was settled out of court in May 2017, with the company agreeing to pay $5.9 million in damages in exchange for not having to admit to any wrongdoing.”</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Where this circles back around to Trump — and possibly why he initially called Putin’s request an“incredible offer” — is a&nbsp;<b>principal in Prevezon: Natalia Veselnitskaya,</b>who later met with&nbsp;<a href="https://www.rawstory.com/2018/08/trump-jr-suddenly-goes-silent-laura-ingraham-questions-trump-tower-meeting-russians/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Donald Trump Jr.</a>&nbsp;and other Trump campaign officials in a 2016 Trump Tower gathering that is currently being investigated by the FBI.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“So, fast-forwarding to the summer of 2018 and that press conference in Helsinki, it appears Putin was recapitulating in front of the whole world ‍the rough contours of risible guilt-by-association conspiracy theory first mooted hush-hush by Veselnitskaya to Trump’s son, son-in-law, and his now-indicted campaign chairman who currently is on trial,” Weiss writes.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">You can read&nbsp;<a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/this-is-why-putin-is-targeting-three-dhs-agents" style="text-decoration-line: none;">the whole in-depth report here</a>.“That Putin for a moment thought this shambolic quid pro quo proposal would be entertained by the American establishment tells you quite a lot about the contempt in which he holds that establishment under its current leadership,” Weiss continued.”Putin clearly feels as if he doesn’t have to try very hard anymore to abase and undermine our country, perhaps because he is himself impressed at how easy that is to do.”</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;=</font></p></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.rawstory.com/2018/01/prominent-russian-insiders-attended-trump-inaugural-and-mingled-with-administration-officials-report/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">wealthy Russian political and business leaders flocked to Washington, DC — and the lobby of Trump International Hotel — during last year’s inauguration festivities, The Washington Post reported Saturday.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“As questions about Russia’s interference in the 2016 election were beginning to percolate publicly, prominent business leaders and activists from that country attended inaugural festivities, mingling at balls and receptions — at times in proximity to key American political officials,” The Post reported.</font></div><div>
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</div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Their presence caught the attention of counterintelligence officials at the FBI, according to former U.S. officials, although it is not clear which attendees drew U.S. government interest,” The Post continued. “FBI officials were concerned at the time because some of the figures had surfaced in the agency’s investigation of the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia, the officials said.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Natalia Veselnitskaya, the Russian lawyer whose June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower is being investigated by special counsel Robert Mueller, attended a black-tie party hosted by Rep. Dana Rohrahbacher (R-CA).&nbsp;<b>Rep. Rohrabacher has been nicknamed, “Putin’s favorite congressman.”</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Other guests included tycoon Viktor Vekselberg and Russian politician Boris Titov.</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“It’s strange,” noted ex-Russia ambassador Michael McFaul, who didn’t remember Russians attending former President Barack Obama’s inauguration.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Alexey Repik, a wealthy Russian pharmaceutical executive, documented his adventures on Facebook, including a photo taken with Mike Pompeo, the Kansas Republican who was eventually chosen by Trump to head up the CIA.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Repik allegedly also met Eric Trump, Vice President Mike Pence and Trump chief of staff Reince Priebus.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Watch Seth Meyers answer “Who the hell is Dana Rohrabacher?”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div></div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">newsweek</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Russian lawyer whose June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower with Donald Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner has become a focal point of a probe into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, was reportedly among at least a half-dozen Russian elites with political ties that attended Inauguration Day events.</font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></div><div>
</div><div>Related: Five Ways It Seems Russia Colluded With Trump</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, who promised damaging information about Hillary Clinton in the now infamous meeting that also included Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, attended a black-tie inaugural party held by the campaign committee of Republican Representative Dana Rohrabacher of California, an associate who accompanied her told The Washington Post in a report published Saturday.</span></div><div>
</div><div>Veselnitskaya and Russian American lobbyist Rinat Akhmetshin, also present at the Trump Tower meeting, held wine glasses and smiled in a photo posted by the campaign committee of Rohrabacher, a longtime advocate for better relations with Russia.</div><div>
</div><div>In a statement to The Post, Veselnitskaya said she went to a private event in Washington, D.C. that night at the invitation of Akhmetshin, and that she did not attend President Donald Trump’s inauguration. Akhmetshin’s lawyer, Michael Tremonte, told the newspaper that he invited Veselnitskaya because she was in town and that an event organizer gave him the tickets. However, a spokesman for<b>&nbsp;Rohrabacher’</b>s congressional office, Kenneth Grubbs, said there was no record of Akhmetshin’s invitation or that the Russians bought tickets to the party.</div><div>
</div><div>The presence of Russians at the inauguration events reflected anticipation in Moscow for a thaw in relations with the U.S. after Donald Trump's victory, especially considering Trump's occasional praise of Russian President Vladimir Putin.</div><div>
</div><div>A rich Russian pharmaceutical executive, Alexey Repik, and his wife and former model, Polina Repik, attended Donald Trump’s inauguration, writing in a Facebook post that he got close enough at a pre-inaugural event to “check the handshake strength” of the president-elect.</div></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="content-list-component bn-content-list-text yr-content-list-text text" data-beacon="{" p="p" mnid="mnid" citation="citation" data-beacon-parsed="true" data-rapid-cpos="9" data-rapid-subsec="paragraph" data-rapid-parsed="subsec" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; width: 705px; max-width: 720px; min-width: initial; font-family: ProximaNova, " helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" roboto="Roboto" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px"><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.75rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">s team said that Friday’s news does not show any wrongdoing.</font></p></div><div class="content-list-component bn-content-list-text yr-content-list-text text" data-beacon="{" p="p" mnid="mnid" citation="citation" data-beacon-parsed="true" data-rapid-cpos="10" data-rapid-subsec="paragraph" data-rapid-parsed="subsec" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; width: 705px; max-width: 720px; min-width: initial; font-family: ProximaNova, " helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" roboto="Roboto" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px"><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.75rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“As the congressman has acknowledged before, the meeting was a dinner with two longtime acquaintances ― Manafort and Weber ― from back in his White House and early congressional days. The three reminisced and talked mostly about politics. The subject of Ukraine came up in passing,” Ken Grubbs, Rohrabacher’s spokesman, told HuffPost in an email. “It is no secret that Manafort represented [pro-Putin Ukrainian President] Viktor Yanukovych’s interests, but as chairman of the relevant European subcommittee, the congressman has listened to all points of view on Ukraine. We may only speculate that Manafort needed to report back to his client that Ukraine was discussed.”</font></p></div><div class="content-list-component bn-content-list-text yr-content-list-text text" data-beacon="{" p="p" mnid="mnid" citation="citation" data-beacon-parsed="true" data-rapid-cpos="11" data-rapid-subsec="paragraph" data-rapid-parsed="subsec" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; width: 705px; max-width: 720px; min-width: initial; font-family: ProximaNova, " helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" roboto="Roboto" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px"><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.75rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Still, Rohrabacher has emerged as an important figure in the investigations into potential collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian efforts to help President Donald Trump and hurt his rival Hillary Clinton.</font></p></div><div class="content-list-component bn-content-list-text yr-content-list-text text" data-beacon="{" p="p" mnid="mnid" citation="citation" data-beacon-parsed="true" data-rapid-cpos="12" data-rapid-subsec="paragraph" data-rapid-parsed="subsec" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; width: 705px; max-width: 720px; min-width: initial; font-family: ProximaNova, " helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" roboto="Roboto" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px"><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.75rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">One of a mere handful of well-known GOP figures in Washington who were enthusiastic about Trump before his election victory, Rohrabacher was&nbsp;<a href="http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/white-house/article119973813.html" data-beacon="{" p="p" lnid="lnid" once="once" under="under" consideration="consideration" mpid="mpid" plid="plid" http="http" www.mcclatchydc.com="www.mcclatchydc.com" news="news" politics-government="politics-government" white-house="white-house" article119973813.html="article119973813.html" data-beacon-parsed="true" class="bn-clickable" data-ylk="subsec:paragraph;cpos:12" data-rapid-parsed="slk" data-rapid_p="14" data-v9y="1" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgb(13, 190, 152) 0px -2px 0px inset;">once under consideration</a>&nbsp;to be the new administration’s secretary of state. He has cast doubt on the conclusions of the U.S. intelligence community about the election and said voters&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2016/12/16/politics/kfile-rohrabacher-russian-hacking/index.html" target="blank" data-beacon="{" p="p" lnid="lnid" benefited="benefited" from="from" the="the" hacks="hacks" mpid="mpid" plid="plid" https="https" www.cnn.com="www.cnn.com" politics="politics" kfile-rohrabacher-russian-hacking="kfile-rohrabacher-russian-hacking" index.html="index.html" data-beacon-parsed="true" class="bn-clickable" data-ylk="subsec:paragraph;cpos:12" data-rapid-parsed="slk" data-rapid_p="15" data-v9y="1" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgb(13, 190, 152) 0px -2px 0px inset;">benefited from the hacks</a>of Clinton campaign messages. Last year, he&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2017/08/29/politics/kfile-rohrabacher-rendezvous/index.html" data-beacon="{" p="p" lnid="lnid" met="met" with="with" julian="Julian" assange="Assange" mpid="mpid" plid="plid" https="https" www.cnn.com="www.cnn.com" politics="politics" kfile-rohrabacher-rendezvous="kfile-rohrabacher-rendezvous" index.html="index.html" data-beacon-parsed="true" class="bn-clickable" data-ylk="subsec:paragraph;cpos:12" data-rapid-parsed="slk" data-rapid_p="16" data-v9y="1" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgb(13, 190, 152) 0px -2px 0px inset;">met with Julian Assange</a>&nbsp;of WikiLeaks, the group that released the stolen Clinton materials, and said he wanted to give Trump information proving the hack was not committed by Russia. Soon afterward, top Republicans&nbsp;<a href="http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-ca-russia-rohrabacher-subcommittee-20171026-story.html" target="blank" data-beacon="{" p="p" lnid="lnid" curtailed="curtailed" his="his" powers="powers" mpid="mpid" plid="plid" http="http" www.latimes.com="www.latimes.com" politics="politics" la-pol-ca-russia-rohrabacher-subcommittee-20171026-story.html="la-pol-ca-russia-rohrabacher-subcommittee-20171026-story.html" data-beacon-parsed="true" class="bn-clickable" data-ylk="subsec:paragraph;cpos:12" data-rapid-parsed="slk" data-rapid_p="17" data-v9y="1" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgb(13, 190, 152) 0px -2px 0px inset;">curtailed his powers</a>&nbsp;on his influential subcommittee. And in 2016,&nbsp;Rohrabacher had meetings with Trump adviser&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/mueller-probing-pre-election-flynn-meeting-pro-russia-congressman-n819676" data-beacon="{" p="p" lnid="lnid" michael="Michael" flynn="Flynn" mpid="mpid" plid="plid" https="https" www.nbcnews.com="www.nbcnews.com" news="news" us-news="us-news" mueller-probing-pre-election-flynn-meeting-pro-russia-congressman-n819676="mueller-probing-pre-election-flynn-meeting-pro-russia-congressman-n819676" data-beacon-parsed="true" class="bn-clickable" data-ylk="subsec:paragraph;cpos:12" data-rapid-parsed="slk" data-rapid_p="18" data-v9y="1" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgb(13, 190, 152) 0px -2px 0px inset;">Michael Flynn</a>&nbsp;― who is now cooperating with Mueller ― and with Russian lawyer&nbsp;<a href="http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/10/03/gop-congressman-met-in-moscow-with-kremlin-linked-lawyer-at-center-of-russia-investigation/" data-beacon="{" p="p" lnid="lnid" natalia="Natalia" veselnitskaya="Veselnitskaya" mpid="mpid" plid="plid" http="http" foreignpolicy.com="foreignpolicy.com" gop-congressman-met-in-moscow-with-kremlin-linked-lawyer-at-center-of-russia-investigation="gop-congressman-met-in-moscow-with-kremlin-linked-lawyer-at-center-of-russia-investigation" data-beacon-parsed="true" class="bn-clickable" data-ylk="subsec:paragraph;cpos:12" data-rapid-parsed="slk" data-rapid_p="19" data-v9y="1" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgb(13, 190, 152) 0px -2px 0px inset;">Natalia Veselnitskaya</a>&nbsp;― who is known for a Trump Tower meeting she had with Donald Trump Jr., Manafort and others hoping that Russia would share information damaging to Clinton.</font></p></div><div class="content-list-component bn-content-list-text yr-content-list-text text" data-beacon="{" p="p" mnid="mnid" citation="citation" data-beacon-parsed="true" data-rapid-cpos="13" data-rapid-subsec="paragraph" data-rapid-parsed="subsec" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; width: 705px; max-width: 720px; min-width: initial; font-family: ProximaNova, " helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" roboto="Roboto" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px"><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.75rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The 15-term congressman is courting controversy even as he faces what observers describe as his toughest re-election race yet in a California district that seems to be&nbsp;<a href="http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-friedersdorf-rohrabacher-oc-20171026-story.html" data-beacon="{" p="p" lnid="lnid" turning="turning" more="more" liberal="liberal" mpid="mpid" plid="plid" http="http" www.latimes.com="www.latimes.com" opinion="opinion" op-ed="op-ed" la-oe-friedersdorf-rohrabacher-oc-20171026-story.html="la-oe-friedersdorf-rohrabacher-oc-20171026-story.html" data-beacon-parsed="true" class="bn-clickable" data-ylk="subsec:paragraph;cpos:13" data-rapid-parsed="slk" data-rapid_p="20" data-v9y="1" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgb(13, 190, 152) 0px -2px 0px inset;">turning more liberal</a>. He appears unfazed. &nbsp;</font></p></div><div class="content-list-component bn-content-list-text yr-content-list-text text" data-beacon="{" p="p" mnid="mnid" citation="citation" data-beacon-parsed="true" data-rapid-cpos="14" data-rapid-subsec="paragraph" data-rapid-parsed="subsec" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; width: 705px; max-width: 720px; min-width: initial; font-family: ProximaNova, " helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" roboto="Roboto" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px"><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.75rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“My constituents couldn’t care less about this,”&nbsp;Rohrabacher told The New York Times last year. “They are not concerned about Russia.”</font></p></div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><a href="https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/did-russian-lawyer-natalia-veselnitskaya-just-gift-wrap-donald-jr-robert-mueller">https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/did-russian-lawyer-natalia-veselnitskaya-just-gift-wrap-donald-jr-robert-mueller</a></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Donald Trump Jr. reportedly told Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya during the 2016 campaign that his family would consider overturning an anti-corruption law opposed by Russia “if we come to power.” And she said that he also asked her to provide damaging information about Hillary Clinton.</font></div><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Bloomberg&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-06/trump-jr-said-anti-russia-law-may-be-reviewed-moscow-lawyer-says" style="text-decoration-line: none;">reported on Monday</a>&nbsp;that Veselnitskaya made the remarks during a television interview in Moscow.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump Jr.’s meeting with Veselnitskaya was first revealed by&nbsp;<em>The New York Times</em>&nbsp;in July. Trump initially said that the meeting was to talk about Russian adoptions in the U.S., which had been halted by Russian President Vladimir Putin after the U.S. passed an anti-corruption law called the Magnitsky Act.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The president’s son later admitted that Veselnitskaya had promised to provide opposition research on then-Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Looking ahead, if we come to power, we can return to this issue and think what to do about it,” she recalled Trump Jr. telling her at the 2016 meeting. “I understand our side may have messed up, but it’ll take a long time to get to the bottom of it.”</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">According to Veselnitskaya, Trump Jr. also asked her to provide evidence that Clinton’s campaign accepted illegal donations connected to tax evasion. She said that she did not have the evidence he requested “and described the 20-minute meeting as a failure,” Bloomberg reported.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Veselnitskaya said that she would be willing testify before the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee if they agreed to make the testimony public.</font></p><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/21/world/europe/trump-russian-lawyer-fsb-kgb.html">https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/21/world/europe/trump-russian-lawyer-fsb-kgb.html</a></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/07/natalia-veselnitskaya-trump-junior/533670/</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">july 15 &nbsp;<span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">no link img</span></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;Veselnitskaya has a tendency to appear from out of nowhere and become the center of attention. Before a now-infamous meeting with Donald Trump Jr. at Trump Tower last summer—one that also involved a former Soviet counterintelligence officer and current American citizen and D.C. lobbyist Rinat Akhmetshin—Veselnitskaya was a relatively unknown figure, even in Moscow. When her name did find its way into the international news, it was because of her <b>spirited defense of some of Russia’s least defensible actions.</b></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">“She’s like tank,” says her friend, the Russian-born film director Andrei Nekrasov. “Maybe she overstepped some bounds when she was there [in New York last June]. But she felt she could do something on behalf of Russia. That’s the kind of person she is. She could get misty-eyed talking about this stuff. She’s a patriot.”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">And it was evidently this sense of patriotism that took her from obscure origins as a regional prosecutor in Russia to Trump Tower last summer—and from there to the center of a scandal engulfing the American president.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">* * </div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>Veselnitskaya, 42, once served as a prosecutor in the Moscow region</b>, an area that encompasses the vast Moscow suburbs, military towns, and dacha communities. The <b>region is both rich and rife with corruption and organized crime.</b> It is this relatively rough and provincial background that makes Russian observers skeptical about Veselnitskaya’s sudden entrée into the distant scandals of Washington. “Instead of the highest [Russian] officials, spies, and the famous diplomat [Sergei] Kislyak, we now get a Moscow region mover and shaker with a<b> reputation for as a ‘fixer,’</b> who fits into the scandals at the local, regional level, but seems absurd as part of the world of geopolitics,” writes the Russian journalist Oleg Kashin.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Few people in Moscow had heard of Veselnitskaya until she burst onto the pages of The New York Times this week. Those who had, though, spoke of her fearsome reputation. “She was probably the most aggressive person I’ve ever encountered in all my conflicts with Russians,” says Bill Browder, a former investor in Russia who has been fighting Veselnitskaya in court for four years. </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“She is vindictive and ruthless and unrelenting.” According to Browder, Veselnitskaya hired a team and spent millions of dollars to track his movements around the world in order to serve him with a subpoena that would force him to turn over 20 years worth of documents. Veselnitskaya did not respond to multiple requests for comment.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The Moscow region was a good place for a young lawyer to sharpen her teeth, as well as to find the clients and political patrons that would help her rise. </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">She became close to both the powerful governor of the region, Boris Gromov, as well as to the family of <b>Yury Chaika</b>, then the Russian justice minister and now the prosecutor general of the Russian Federation. (He seems to be the person mistakenly referred to as “the Crown prosecutor of Russia” in the emails Trump Jr. released this week.) According to people who know her, she remains close to the Chaika family; she told The Wall Street Journal on Friday that she knew Chaika personally.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">It was also during this time that Veselnitskaya became close to the family that would bring her to New York and, ultimately, to Trump Tower.</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In 2002, Pyotr Katsyv, a powerful local businessman and later the region’s transportation minister, and his son Denis had been accused of extorting land from a local business owner, who then turned to a man with alleged mafia connections for help, according to an investigation in the liberal Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta. As the Katsyvs’ lawyer, Veselnitskaya got the reputed mobster sent to jail, and secured international arrest warrants for the business owner and his family.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>When Denis Katsyv was sued in New York on accusations of money laundering in 2013, Veselnitskaya again served as his counsel.</b> But the case had implications bigger than the $14 million Katsyv was accused of stealing from Bill Browder. In his lawsuit, Browder alleged that Katsyv had used New York real estate to launder the money as part of a scheme uncovered by the lawyer and auditor Sergei Magnitsky, who died in a Russian prison under mysterious circumstances in 2009. People familiar with the Katsyv case say that Katsyv, like nearly all wealthy Russians, was simply getting his own money out of Russia using “established channels,” and that the $14 million at issue was not part of the $230-million fraud Magnitsky had uncovered.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The case was settled in May and Katsyv’s company did not admit fault. But in the four years of fighting the case, Katsyv and <b>Veselnitskaya had decided to go after Browder, and his efforts to punish Russian officials for Magnitsky’s death.</b> Magnitsky had been denied medical attention in jail despite his worsening gall stones pancreatitis, and appeared to have died a violent death. Browder, who had been his client, sought revenge and got it with the passage of the 2012 Magnitsky Act. The law </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">froze the U.S. assets of and banned entry to a list that eventually had<b> two dozen Russian officials allegedly involved in Magnitsky’s death. </b>It enraged the Kremlin, which retaliated with a law banning American adoptions of Russian children, and by launching a massive lobbying effort to get the bill repealed.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Katsyv began to fund lobbying efforts to try to have the act repealed, and to keep an expanded version of the law, the Global Magnitsky Act, from getting passed. (Congress passed the measure last December.)</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> Veselnitskaya became the representative of a brand-new Russian NGO, registered in Delaware in February 2016, called the Human Rights Accountability Global Initiative Foundation, dedicated “to help restart American adoption of Russian children.” Katsyv also employed Akhmetshin, the former counterintelligence officer who attended the Trump Tower meeting. Akhmetshin, now an American citizen, reportedly briefed congressional staffers, telling them “‘it was a shame that this bill has made it so Russian orphans cannot be adopted by Americans.”</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The anti-Magnitsky efforts gave Veselnitskaya another turn in the spotlight. Last summer, shortly before the Trump Tower meeting,</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> Nekrasov, the Russian director, released a film that questioned Browder’s version of Magnitsky’s story. It was supposed to have its premiere on the floor of the European Parliament, but at the last moment, Browder got the showing canceled. Suddenly, Veselnitskaya, whom Nekrasov says he had never met before and who he says had no involvement in the film’s production, appeared and delivered a searing indictment of the cancellation—in Russian. “[N]o one speaks Russian in the Parliament,” </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Nekrasov told me. “She gave a speech that was, to my taste, a little too emotional. She said something like, ‘It’s my country, it’s been shamed, it has been covered in dirt.’ It was very effective—she’s a lawyer, she can speak well—and all the media was there and the cameras all turned toward her. She became the star.”</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Veselnitskaya quickly seized the mantle, organizing showings of the film in New York and Washington, as well as in Moscow, where Nikita Mikhalkov, the Kremlin’s favorite film director and Putin advocate, introduced the film. “She’s a very passionate person and maybe sometimes she gets carried away,” Nekrasov says.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> * *</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">When Veselnitskaya found herself meeting with Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort, she had been in New York to deal with the Katsyv case and the Magnitsky Act. It was this, she claims, that she wanted to discuss with Trump Jr., who by his own account was disappointed that she hadn’t come bearing kompromat on Hillary Clinton. (According to Veselnitskaya’s account in an interview with the Today Show, Kushner got up and walked out mid-meeting, and Manafort seemed uninterested, eyes glued to his phone.)</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">On a later trip to New York, in January 2017, she managed to catch both Donald Trump’s inauguration and the national women’s march. She didn’t like what she saw. “‘My body, my choice’ is all about abortion, homosexuality, illegal migration and two presidents,” she wrote on her Facebook page along with a dozen photographs taken from a window above Fifth Avenue. “Anything goes. But for those who didn’t get what this is about, this is now called ‘human rights.’” In another post, she called the protests “a pussy strike … all orchestrated by [Senate Minority leader Chuck] Schumer.”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>Until she became a subject of intense speculation in the American and Russian press, her Facebook page was decorated with the Russian flag and crest—it has since changed to a meditative quote from Aristotle</b>—and it reflects the politics of both a dedicated lawyer and an ardent Russian patriot. She writes glowingly of Soviet culture, of the importance of the Soviet victory in World War II (a special point of emphasis for Putin), and assails the Russian opposition as “the so-called liberals.” But many of her posts are dedicated to publicly trashing Browder. She frames their legal battle over $14 million in grand geopolitical terms. When the New York judge handed her team a victory in a procedural hearing in 2014, she wrote a long post titled “1:0 Russia.” When the case settled in May and more than half of Katsyv’s money was unfrozen, Veselnitskaya wrote, “For the first time, the USA has acknowledged that the Russians are right.” Appearing on a Russian television channel, she defended her client by railing against the sanctions of the Magnitsky Act, saying that it was just a “pretext,” a way for the American government to “use administrative levers of power to politically influence our country’s leadership.”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Despite not speaking English, she pays close attention to news coming out of the U.S., especially since Trump took office. When Trump fired acting attorney general Sally Yates for directing U.S. attorneys not to defend the travel ban, Veselnitskaya was baffled. “I can’t think of a single norm that would allow the attorney general to do something like this,” she wrote. “In such instances, the general has to resign. This is reminiscent of the games of Obama’s last days in office.” She floats reports of rumors that Trump was considering appointing Texas Senator Ted Cruz to the post of attorney general. She praises the Trump State Department for stopping a money transfer to the Palestinian Authority (but what she believes is Hamas) that “Obama and Kerry … tried to push through in their last hours in power.” She recirculates American far-right conspiracy theories that the Women’s March in Washington was organized by a member of Hamas. She concluded, in English, that “liberalism is a fucking mental disorder.” She assailed the American press for their “infantilism” and “complete lack of understanding of what’s going on in the masses.” After a trip to the States that coincided with the turbulent first two weeks of the Trump presidency, she wondered aloud if the chaos in America weren’t a good thing. “Maybe,” she wrote, “this is that time that is given to us in order for humanity to continue its existence?”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">“I don’t know why it always happens like this,” she replied to a friend in a post about the women’s march while she was still in the U.S. “Every time I’m here, something insane happens.”</div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no link img</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The husband of the former Florida chair of the Trump campaign obtained a front-row seat to a June 2016 House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing for Natalia Veselnitskaya, the Russian attorney who had met with Donald Trump Jr. at Trump Tower eight days prior.</span></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>Lanny Wiles, the husband of former Florida campaign chair Susie Wiles</b>, saved the prominent seat for Veselnitskaya at the June 14 hearing on “U.S. Policy Toward Putin’s Russia,</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">” ABC News has confirmed.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Photos and video of Veselnitskaya at the hearing show her seated directly behind Michael McFaul, former United States ambassador to Russia from 2012-2014.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya at hearing on Russia left of Obama's @McFaul eight days after @donaldjtrumpjr https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMJkgSPSb0o …</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">10:57 PM - 11 Jul 2017</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp; 4,723 4,723 Retweets &nbsp; 5,127 5,127 likes</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Veselnitskaya’s work and connections have come under scrutiny after it was revealed last weekend that the Russian lawyer met with Donald Trump Jr. at Trump Tower in June 2016. The meeting was allegedly pitched by Veselnitskaya as an opportunity for her to share damning information about Trump’s election rival, Hillary Clinton. Trump Jr. said that Veselnitskaya instead used the meeting to l<b>obby in favor of overturning the Magnitsky Act</b>, a 2012 bill that blocks certain Russian officials' entrance to the U.S. and their use of the U.S. banking system.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Lanny Wiles told ABC News he has “absolute, zero connection” to any relations the Russian lawyer may have had to the Trump campaign.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Susie Wiles, who was working for the Trump campaign at the time, told ABC News she was not aware of who her husband reserved seats for in the Congressional hearing, and said she has no knowledge of Veselnitskaya’s contact with the Trump campaign.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">“It’s an unfortunate coincidence that I was helping and supporting Donald Trump’s candidacy while this meeting was going on,” she said.</div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.democracynow.org/2017/7/10/award_winning_journalist_amy_wilentz_on" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">https://www.democracynow.org/2017/7/10/award_winning_journalist_amy_wilentz_on</a></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="letter-spacing: -0.2px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">President Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner is, along with Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr., at the center of a shocking New York Times story published Sunday. According to the article,<b>&nbsp;Kushner, Trump Jr. and then-campaign chair Paul Manafort met with a Kremlin-linked lawyer</b>&nbsp;during the 2016 campaign after being promised damaging information about Hillary Clinton at Trump Tower two weeks after Trump won the Republican nomination. Kushner is one of Trump’s senior advisers who has assumed a major diplomatic role in the administration, despite having no previous diplomatic experience. We speak to Amy Wilentz, a contributor at The Nation.</font></span></div><div style=""><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">LAT</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 13px; margin-bottom: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 27px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a id="PEBSL000163" title="Donald Trump" href="http://www.latimes.com/topic/politics-government/donald-trump-PEBSL000163-topic.html" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">&nbsp;Trump</a>’s eldest son, son-in-law and then-campaign chairman met with a Russian lawyer shortly after Trump won the Republican nomination, in what appears to be the earliest known private meeting between key aides to the president and a Russian.</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 27px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Representatives of Donald Trump Jr. and&nbsp;</span><a id="PEBS00024" title="Jared Kushner" href="http://www.latimes.com/topic/business/jared-kushner-PEBS00024-topic.html" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">Jared Kushner</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;confirmed the June 2016 meeting to the Associated Press after&nbsp;</span><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/08/us/politics/trump-russia-kushner-manafort.html" target="_blank" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">the New York Times reported Saturday</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;on the gathering of the men and </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya at Trump Tower. Then-campaign chairman&nbsp;<a id="PEGPF00198" title="Paul Manafort" href="http://www.latimes.com/topic/politics-government/paul-manafort-PEGPF00198-topic.html" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">Paul Manafort</a>&nbsp;also attended, according to the statement from Donald Trump Jr.</span></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 27px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>He described it as a “short introductory meeting” during which the three discussed a disbanded program that used to allow U.S. citizens to adopt Russian children.</b> Russia ended the adoptions in response to American sanctions brought against the nation following the 2009 death of an imprisoned lawyer who spoke about a corruption scandal. Trump Jr. said he invited the other two Americans, was asked to attend by an acquaintance not named in the statement and was not told beforehand with whom he would meet.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 27px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“It was not a campaign issue at that time and there was no follow-up,” he said.</font></p><aside class="trb_ar_sponsoredmod trb_barker_mediaconductor" data-adloader-networktype="mediaconductor" data-role="delayload_item" data-screen-size="desktop" data-withinviewport-options="bottomOffset=100" data-load-method="trb.vendor.mediaconductor.init" data-load-type="method" data-vendor-mc="" data-mediaconductor-processed="true" style="margin: 5px 0px 25px; clear: both;"><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 18px; clear: both; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 27px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Kushner lawyer Jamie Gorelick</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> said her client already disclosed the meeting in a revised filing of a form that requires him to list meetings with foreign agents.</span></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 27px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Mr. Kushner has submitted additional updates and included, out of an abundance of caution, this meeting with a Russian person, which he briefly attended at the request of his brother-in-law, Donald Trump Jr. As Mr. Kushner has consistently stated, he is eager to cooperate and share what he knows,” she said.Unlike Kushner, Trump Jr. does not serve in the administration and is not required to disclose his foreign contacts. The New York Times reported Saturday, citing unnamed people familiar with the matter, that Manafort disclosed the meeting to congressional investigators questioning his foreign contacts.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 27px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Manafort helmed Trump’s campaign for about five months until August and resigned from the campaign immediately after the Associated Press reported on his firm’s covert Washington lobbying operation on behalf of Ukraine’s ruling political party. He is one of several people linked to the Trump campaign who are under scrutiny by a special counsel and congressional committees investigating Russian meddling in the 2016 campaign and potential coordination with Trump associates.</font></p><aside class="trb_ar_sponsoredmod" data-adloader-networktype="yieldmo" data-v-ymid="ym_1606464552242100545" data-role="delayload_item" data-withinviewport-options="bottomOffset=100" data-load-method="trb.vendor.yieldmo.init" data-load-type="method" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 5px 0px 25px; clear: both;"><div id="ym_1606464552242100545" data-id="ym_1" class="ym ym_scroll" /></aside><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 18px; clear: both; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 27px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Manafort has denied any coordination with Russia and has said his work in Ukraine was not related to the campaign.</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 27px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The New York Times said Veselnitskaya is known for her attempts to undercut the<b> sanctions against Russian human rights abusers.</b> The newspaper also said her clients include state-owned businesses and the son of a senior government official whose company was under investigation in the United States at the time of the meeting..</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">..</span></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""></font></p></aside></div>