Tag: Natalia Veselnitskaya

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Russian Lawyer Who Met With Trump Jr. Admits She’s Kremlin Informant

Donald Trump Jr.

The allegations for a year and a half have been that someone from the Trump campaign met or coordinated with Russian actors connected with the Kremlin.

Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, who met with Donald Trump Jr. at Trump Tower offering dirt on Hillary Clinton during the campaign, now admits she is a top Kremlin informant.

There’s your “there.”

From The New York Times:

The Russian lawyer who met with Trump campaign officials in Trump Tower in June 2016 on the premise that she would deliver damaging information about Hillary Clinton has long insisted she is a private attorney, not a Kremlin operative trying to meddle in the presidential election.

But newly released emails show that in at least one instance two years earlier, the lawyer, Natalia V. Veselnitskaya, worked hand in glove with Russia’s chief legal office to thwart a Justice Department civil fraud case against a well-connected Russian firm.

Ms. Veselnitskaya also appears to have recanted her earlier denials of Russian government ties. During an interview to be broadcast Friday by NBC News, she acknowledged that she was not merely a private lawyer but a source of information for a top Kremlin official, Yuri Y. Chaika, the prosecutor general. “I am a lawyer, and I am an informant,” she said. “Since 2013, I have been actively communicating with the office of the Russian prosecutor general.”

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Bloomberg: Trump Jr. Hinted At Repealing Russian Sanctions “If We Come To Power”

Don Trump Jr. (L) Donald Trump (R)

Bloomberg reports that Natalia Veselnitskaya, the Russian government lawyer who met with Donald Trump Jr. at Trump Tower last year, says Don Jr. indicated a Trump administration would be open to re-examining a law targeting Russia if they “came to power.”

Veselnitskaya said she went to the New York meeting to show Trump campaign officials that major Democratic donors had evaded U.S. taxes and to lobby against the so-called Magnitsky law that punishes Russian officials for the murder of a Russian tax accountant who accused the Kremlin of corruption.

“Looking ahead, if we come to power, we can return to this issue and think what to do about it,’’ Trump Jr. said of the 2012 law, she recalled. “I understand our side may have messed up, but it’ll take a long time to get to the bottom of it,” he added, according to her.

Veselnitskaya also said Trump Jr. requested financial documents showing that money that allegedly evaded U.S. taxes had gone to Clinton’s campaign. She didn’t have any and described the 20-minute meeting as a failure.

A lawyer for Trump Jr., Alan Futerfas, said the president’s son had no comment about the interview, the first time Veselnitskaya has offered details about what was discussed at Trump Tower in Manhattan. In the past, Trump Jr. has said that he had wasted his time seeing the lawyer because she provided no useful information.

You’ll recall Junior took the meeting having been told Veselnitskaya had dirt that would incriminate Clinton.

Trump Jr. agreed to the meeting saying, “If it’s what you say I love it especially later in the summer.”