According to emails recovered and reviewed by the Associated Press, Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya has been lying all along to the American public, to investigators, and to Congress about the depth and extent to which she was actually representing the Kremlin when she attended a now-infamous meeting between herself, Donald Trump Junior, campaign manager Paul Manafort, and presidential adviser Jared Kushner.
In a series of television appearances, Veselnitskaya pretended to “break her silence” about the meeting — all while still misrepresenting herself as merely an independent party, interested only in loosening American sanctions on Russia that resulted in a crackdown by Vladimir Putin on American adoptions of Russian babies and children.
Presenting herself as a humanitarian concerned only with whether children could find loving homes, Veselnitskaya continued to insist that she knew nothing about compromising information on Hillary Clinton, and that she had never met with anyone involved before. That last bit may be the only honest thing she’s said thus far.
From the AP report:
Scores of emails, transcripts and legal documents paint a portrait of Natalia Veselnitskaya as a well-connected attorney who served as a ghostwriter for top Russian government lawyers and received assistance from senior Interior Ministry personnel in a case involving a key client.”
That data was obtained from the Dossier Center, a London-based investigative unit opposed to the regime of Vladimir Putin. For her part, Veselnitskaya says her emails were hacked, although that matters little in contrast with the content of those emails.
All of this ties back to the American citizen, Bill Browder, that Donald Trump considered turning over to Putin for questioning when the two leaders met for a summit in Helsinki just ten days ago. Veselnitskaya’s primary client is accused by Browder of laundering money through Prevezon Holdings — a charge that US intelligence agencies back up. Browder has been a target for extradition to Russia for justice of their own variety after his involvement in the legal case that led to sanctions against Russian oligarchs under the Magnitsky Act.
But the documents obtained by the AP show that the Russian lawyer wasn’t simply defending that client. From the AP:
[S]he both received Russian government support and provided assistance to high-level authorities in Moscow.”
Surely Ms. Veselnitskaya will shortly be turned into a witness in Robert Mueller’s Special Counsel investigation.
Watch her denial that she is even a “government lawyer” filmed just months ago with NBC News:
Featured image via screen capture
