Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya was in contact with the top prosecutor in Moscow before she had an infamous meeting with Donald Trump Jr. in Trump Tower in June 2016.
Before the meeting occured, she was in contact with top Russian prosecutor Yuri Chaika to discuss materials she brought with her to the meeting with the president’s eldest son, the New York Times reported.
Although she has claimed she did her own research, the talking points she brought with her to the meeting included parallels and some verbatim similarities with documents top Russian officials handed to a U.S. congressman on a trip to Moscow.
Republican Rep. Dana Rohrabacher of California met with Veselnitskaya on his 2016 trip to Moscow. He also met with other Russian officials, and was handed a package of documents marked ‘confidential.’
Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya had contact with Russian prosecutors in advance of her June 2016 meeting with Donald Trump Jr., according to a new report
That document was also tied to the same prosecutor’s office.
The Times reviewed both documents and found similarities.
Among the allegations contained in the documents is a charge that New York investment firm Ziff Brothers Investments had evaded taxes in its Russian investments, while contributing to Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation.
Don Jr. had taken the meeting under the offer by a British music executive of gaining access to ‘official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father.’
As it turns out, the information Vesenetskaya related to investments by William Browder, who was kicked out of Russia after alleging to have uncovered a massive fraud.
Donald Trump Jr. took the meeting after being promised dirt on Hillary Clinton
British music publicist Rob Goldstone (pictured) helped line up a meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and the Russian lawyer
The materials she presented focused on Browder and New York-based Ziff Brothers, which had invested with Browder.
Browder’s investment firm, Hermitage Capital, is listed as contributing up to $25,000 to the Clinton Global Initiative and Daniel Ziff contributed up to $100,000 to CGI, Bloomberg reported. The presentation was meant to show Clinton benefitted from ‘stolen’ funds.
Veselnitskaya, who has had Russia’s FSB as a client, has repetaedly denied taking the meeting at the behest Moscow.
She has also gone after ‘mass hysteria’ about the meeting.
If her presentation was meant to show she had found information that would blow back on Clinton during the campaign, the president’s son was unimpressed. He said he didn’t learn anything useful in the meeting.
Browder has said these and other charges from Moscow are trumped up to discredit him. He has gone after Moscow repeatedly alleging fraud, and has championed the Magnitsky Act, named for his lawyer who died in prison in Russia.