Natalia Veselnitskaya, a prominent Russian lawyer who has crusaded against the Magnitsky Act, met with Donald Trump Jr. and other campaign associates, the New York Times reports.
Natalia Veselnitskaya.
A Russian lawyer with connections to the Kremlin and Vladimir Putin met with Donald Trump Jr., Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner during the 2016 election, and promised to reveal “damaging information” about Hillary Clinton, the New York Times reports.
Natalia Veselnitskaya, who was in the United States as part of a case involving a Russian businessman accused of money laundering in a civil suit brought by former U. S. Attorney Preet Bharara, met with the Trump campaign team figures at Trump Tower on June 9,2016, the Times reports.
According to the Times, “the accounts of the meeting represent the first public indication that at least some in the campaign were willing to accept Russian help.”
The meeting came two weeks after Trump clinched the Republican presidential nomination. The Times reports that the Veselnitskaya wanted to discuss adoptions and the Magnitsky Act, an American law passed in 2012 that blacklisted suspected Russian human rights abusers. Putin retaliated by halting American adoptions of Russian children, according to the Times.
“It was a short introductory meeting. I asked Jared and Paul to stop by. We primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children that was active and popular with American families years ago and was since ended by the Russian government, but it was not a campaign issue at the time and there was no follow up, ” Trump Jr. said in a statement to the Times. “I was asked to attend the meeting by an acquaintance, but was not told the name of the person I would be meeting with beforehand.”
Here’s what you need to know:
Natalia Veselnitskaya.
President Donald Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., was promised damaging information about Hillary Clinton before he agreed to the meeting with Natalia Veselnitskaya, the New York Times reports. Trump Jr. said he met with Veselnitskaya on behalf of an acquaintance, but did not know her name prior to the meeting.
“After pleasantries were exchanged, the woman stated that she had information that individuals connected to Russia were funding the Democratic National Committee and supporting Ms. Clinton, ” Trump Jr. told the Times on Sunday. “Her statements were vague, ambiguous and made no sense. No details or supporting information was provided or even offered. It quickly became clear that she had no meaningful information.”
Trump Jr. said the conversation then shifted to the Magnitsky Act.
“It became clear to me that this was the true agenda all along and that the claims of potentially helpful information were a pretext for the meeting, ” he told the newspaper.
The meeting was recently disclosed to authorities by Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort, the Times reports.
In a statement, a spokesman for President Trump’s outside counsel said Veselnitskaya misrepresented herself and alluded to ties to Democrats.
“We have learned from both our own investigation and public reports that the participants in the meeting misrepresented who they were and who they worked for, ” Mark Corallo, spokesperson for Trump’s outside counsel, said in a statement. “Specifically, we have learned that the person who sought the meeting is associated with Fusion GPS, a firm which according to public reports, was retained by Democratic operatives to develop opposition research on the president and which commissioned the phony Steele dossier.”
Corallo said President Trump was not at the meeting and did not know about it.
According to the Times, Veselnitskaya’s clients and activities previously drew the attention of the FBI.
She said Saturday in a statement to the newspaper “nothing at all about the presidential campaign” was discussed at the meeting and said she has “never acted on behalf of the Russian government” and “never discussed any of these matters with any representative of the Russian government.”
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Natalia Veselnitskaya.
Veselnitskaya has led a crusade against the Magnitsky Act in Russia and the United States, assisting the Russian government in striking back against the Obama-era law. The topic was discussed during the meeting with Trump campaign associates, the New York Times reports.
The Magnitsky Act was named for Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who uncovered fraud involving a real estate company, Prevezon Holdings, owned by the son of a Russian government official. Magnitsky later suspiciously died in Russian custody. He uncovered the case on behalf of Hermitage Capital, an American company who was victimized by the fraud, according to the U. S. government. Hermitage’s founder, William Browder, fought for the law, which was passed in 2012 and allows the president to deny visas to and freeze assets of Russians believed to be complicit in Magnitsky’s death, according to Business Insider.
Putin responded by halting adoptions of Russian children by Americans and creating his own anti-Magnitsky blacklist of U. S. citizens, including former Manhattan U. S. Attorney Preet Bharara, the Times reports.
Veselnitskaya has led the lobbying effort to kill the Magnitsky Act, according to The Daily Beast. She is the head of a Delaware-based non-governmental organization, Human Rights Accountability Global Initiative Foundation, which is “working on analyzing legal and legislative options to help overturn this adoption ban, ” according to its website.
Natalia Veselnitskaya in New York.
“She’s not just some private lawyer, ” Browder told the Times. “She is a tool of the Russian government.”
Browder told Business Insider that it was Veselnitskaya’s “main project” in 2016 to fight the Magnitsky Act, and “there was no obvious reason” for her to be lobbying against the act as part of its defense of Prevezon, a company accused of fraud in the United States.
“It wouldn’ t have helped the company address the money laundering allegations mounted by the US Department of Justice, ” Browder told Business Insider. “The only reason for them to do this would have been at the behest of the Russian government.”
Veselnitskaya also helped produce a Russian TV documentary that accused Browder of being the real culprit behind the fraud uncovered by Magnitsky, the Times reports.
Natalia Veselnitskaya.
Veselnitskaya and her firm, Kamerton Consulting, represented a prominent Russian businessman, Denis Katsyv, the owner of the Cyprus-based Prevezon Holdings, in a civil case accusing the company of fraud. The case was filed in 2013 in Manhattan by then-U. S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Preet Bharara. Katsyv’s father, Pyotr, is a senior government official in Russia.
“In 2007, a Russian criminal organization engaged in an elaborate tax refund fraud scheme resulting in a fraudulently-obtained tax refund of approximately $230 million from the Russian treasury. As part of the fraud scheme, members of the organization stole the corporate identities of portfolio companies of the Hermitage Fund, a foreign investment fund operating in Russia. The organization’s members then used these stolen identities to make fraudulent claims for tax refunds, ” the U. S. attorney’s office said in a press release.
She filed an affidavit during the case about her difficulty in obtaining the ability to travel to the United States to assist in her clients defense. You can read the document below or here:
In the documents, Veselnitskaya claims she has been “harassed by the (U. S.) government” since November 2015 in connection to the case. She wrote about one incident at Heathrow Airport that occurred while she was trying to return to the U. S. after a trip from New York to London.
“I was detained for two hours by Heathrow Airport officials who specifically targeted me because of the parole number that the United States Government had assigned me, ” she wrote. “During my detention I was unjustifiably subjected to a strip search, for no apparent reason. I should not be subjected to such humiliation when I have been promised entry to the United States to defend against the scandalous accusations in this lawsuit on behalf of my clients.”
The case was settled in May 2017, with Prevezon agreeing to pay nearly $6 million to resolve the claims. You can read more about the case and settlement here.
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Natalia Veselnitskaya.
Veselnitskaya attended Moscow State Law Academy, graduating in 1998, according to a court filing from the Prevezon Holdings case.
After graduation, she worked for the state prosecutor’s office for three years, she wrote in the filing.
