The general consensus is that Donald Trump Jr. acted unwisely in meeting with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya. He did it in person and he left an email trail. Having said that, there is a whole lot more to this story and you best wait for all the shoes to drop.
And they are dropping. Let’s take things piece at a time.
An interview with Veselnitskaya on NBC this morning went like this:
MOSCOW — The Russian lawyer who met with Donald Trump Jr. during the presidential campaign denied in an exclusive interview with NBC News that she had any connection to the Kremlin and insisted she met with President Donald Trump’s son in 2016 to discuss sanctions between Russia and the U.S., not to hand over information about Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
“I never had any damaging or sensitive information about Hillary Clinton. It was never my intention to have that,” Natalia Veselnitskaya said.
Her account appeared to contradict that of Trump Jr., who said on Sunday that the premise of the meeting was to discuss damaging information on Clinton that the lawyer was offering. When asked how Trump Jr. seemed to have the impression that she had information about the Democratic National Committee, she responded:
“It is quite possible that maybe they were longing for such an information. They wanted it so badly that they could only hear the thought that they wanted.”
Actually, it did not contradict Trump Jr. whatsoever. Junior released the email chain and here it is
The email clearly suggests that Hillary Clinton was colluding with the Russians. There is a problem- there is no such thing as a “crown prosecutor” but Veselnitskaya once worked as a Russian prosecutor. Veselnitskaya had been denied a visa to enter the US but someone in the obama administration granted her a parole letter so she could defend a company called Prevezon Holdings. Somewhere between January and June 9, 2016, Veselnitskaya veered off her course of defending Prevezon Holdings. When she met with Junior she turned the meeting into a discussion of repealing the Magnitsky Act.
During the meeting Veselnitskaya raised the issue of restoring U.S. adoptions inside Russia if the United States would repeal the Magnitsky Act, a law passed in 2012 punishing Moscow for human rights violations in connection with the death of a lawyer who had discovered a massive money laundering scheme inside the country.
That’s really interesting because Putin hates the Magnitsky Act, which was passed to punish Moscow for the death of Sergei Magnitsky.
Vladimir Putin has long reviled the Magnitsky Act and fought to have it repealed. And according to letter from Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Charles Grassley, the Kremlin’s main fight against the law was led by Veselnitskaya’s client, Katsyv.
That would be Denis Katsyv, the owner of Prevezon Holdings, who is being sued by the US for money laundering:
Most notably, Veselnitskaya represented Denis Katsyv, the son of a senior government official and owner of Russian real estate firm Prevezon, which was sued in 2013 by then-Manhattan US Attorney Preet Bharara on charges of laundering money in a massive Russian government tax scam.
As a counter punch, Putin suspends the adoption of Russian babies by US citizens.
Enter Rob Goldstone, the author of the email to Junior.
It was at a beauty pageant in Moscow in 2013 that the Trump’s met the Agalarov family. Rob Goldstone is the publicist for billionaire Aras Agalarov’s son Emin. Goldstone was also the broker for the meeting between Junior and Veselnitskaya. Then Agalarov’s are said to have close ties to Vladimir Putin and Goldstone has strong ties to the Agalarov’s.
So what’s going on?
Congress passes the Magnitsky Act as a response to the “Magnitsky Affair”:
The scam is also known as the Magnitsky affair, named after Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian lawyer for American investment fund manager Bill Browder who is widely believed to have been tortured and killed in a Russian prison after exposing the $230 million fraud.
After Magnitsky’s death, Browder sought justice for his former attorney in the US and Europe and, in 2012, Congress passed the Magnitsky Act, which froze the assets of and denied visas to 44 Russian businessmen believed to have been involved in Magnitsky’s death.
Putin fights to have it repealed and responds by suspending the adoption of Russian babies. Denis Katsyv is the main principal in that fight.
US Attorney Preet Bharara sues Katsyv and Prevezon.
Natalia Veselnitskaya is dispatched allegedly to defend Prevezon and Katsyv.
She meets with Junior about the repeal of the Magnitsky Act. Remember this from above?
“During the meeting Veselnitskaya raised the issue of restoring U.S. adoptions inside Russia if the United States would repeal the Magnitsky Act”
By what authority would she be able to offer the deal? Something like that would have to come from very high up despite Veselnitskaya denying any connection to the Kremlin.
Now for the fun part.
It is asserted that Prevezon hired one Fusion GPS:
Glenn Simpson is a former Wall Street Journal correspondent who cofounded firms, SNS Global and Fusion GPS, which specialize in generating negative press against their clients’ opponents. ii. Four different journalists at the Financial Times, New York Times and the Wall Street Journal have all confirmed to Hermitage that Glenn Simpson has been hired by Prevezon to lobby for the anti-Magnitsky Campaign.
Veselnitskaya is also said to have hired Fusion GPS. Yeah, THAT Fusion GPS:
“Fusion GPS is the company behind the creation of the unsubstantiated dossier alleging a conspiracy between President Trump and Russia,” Mr Grassley wrote in the letter. “It is highly troubling that Fusion GPS appears to have been working with someone with ties to Russian intelligence – let alone someone alleged to have conducted political disinformation campaigns– as part of a pro-Russia lobbying effort while also simultaneously overseeing the creation of the Trump-Russia dossier.”
Fusion has been stalling Congress for some time now. We have yet to learn about the depth of the connection between Fusion GPS and the Kremlin.
More
Veselnitskaya is listed as a managing partner at Kamerton Consulting. It has no website, working phone or email. Eight days after meeting with Junior, somehow she is sitting immediately behind obama’s Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul during a Foreign Affairs Committee hearing:
How exactly does that happen? How does a Russian lawyer defending a client being sued by a US Attorney wind up in this seat?
It appears that Junior had a carrot dangled in front of him- that Hillary Clinton was colluding with the Russians. He naively jumped at it, but was met by Veselnitskaya (probably an agent acting on Putin’s behalf and in the US using the defense of Prevezon as a ruse) who sought a deal; repeal of the Magnitsky Act – so desired by Putin- in return for the resumption of adoption of Russian babies. Junior didn’t bite. Goldstone was probably a stooge for the Agalarov’s in brokering the meeting as a favor to Putin. Fusion GPS is connected to this but how deep remains to be seen.
And we definitely need to know what obama’s connection is with Veselnitskaya.
Chaser:
The NY Times colluded with the Russians to win the Pulitzer Prize:
An article published in December 2016 that helped a team of New York Times reporters win a 2017 Pulitzer Prize drew a great deal of content from an independent Russian news site based in Latvia, bringing up thorny questions about how media giants capitalize on the work of local outlets.
The story by Andrew E. Kramer was one piece in a series about Russia that brought the Times the Pulitzer, but it “spells out the same narrative” as an article in the news website Meduza, according to BuzzFeed News. Kramer’s article focused on Aleksandr Vyarya, a computer programmer who fled Russia after refusing a government hacking job and whose experience was recounted in September 2015 by Meduza reporter Daniil Turovsky.
“The only thing which really makes me angry is that he [Kramer] got this Pulitzer Prize,” Ivan Kolpakov, the editor-in-chief of Meduza, told BuzzFeed. “It was our exclusive reporting on Aleksandr Vyarya.”
Addendum:
I thought initially that Goldstone might have been playing Veselnitskaya and Junior on behalf of the Agalarov’s against each other until she offered the deal for resumption of the adoptions in return for repeal of the Magnitsky Act. She has juice and that juice could come from only one place.
Veselnitskaya is a spy.
DrJohn has been a health care professional for more than 30 years. In addition to clinical practice he has done extensive research and has published widely with over 70 original articles and abstracts in the peer-reviewed literature. DrJohn is well known in his field and has lectured on every continent except for Antarctica. He has been married to the same wonderful lady for over 30 years and has three kids- two sons, both of whom are attorneys and one daughter on her way into the field of education.
DrJohn was brought up with the concept that one can do well if one is prepared to work hard but nothing in life is guaranteed.
Except for liberals being foolish.