Who is June 2016 Trump Tower Meeting Attendee Natalia Veselnitskaya

Natalia Veselnitskaya is a Russian lawyer who spent her first three years out of law school working for the Moscow Prosecutor’s Office before going into private practice in 2003. Among her clients is Denis Katsyv, who is the owner of a Russian company called Prevezon Holdings and the son of the vice president of the state-owned Russian Railways and a former deputy governor of the Moscow region. In 2013 U.S. District Attorney Preet Bharara took Prevezon to court over Russian money laundering allegations; Veselnitskaya represented Prevezon in the case.¹²³

U.S. authorities said Prevezon’s money laundering was first uncovered by Russian whistleblower accountant Sergei Magnitsky. After going public with the accusations Magnitsky was arrested on tax evasion charges; he died a year later in a Russian prison under suspicious circumstances. His death led to the passage of the Magnitsky Act, a 2012 U.S. law that bars Russians suspected of human rights abuses from entering the U.S. and freezes their foreign assets. Many Russians affected by the Magnitsky Act are connected to the Russian government, and much of Vladimir Putin‘s personal wealth is believed to be tied up in those assets. In retaliation for the Magnitsky Act Putin stopped the American adoption of Russian children. Putin also created an “anti-Magnitsky” blacklist of U.S. citizens; among those blacklisted was Preet Bharara.⁴⁵⁶⁷

In February 2016, Veselnitskaya co-founded the Human Rights Accountability Global Initiative Foundation (HRAGIF) with Rinat Akhmetshin, a Soviet-born American pro-Russia lobbyist who heads the organization. HRAGIF’s goal is to repeal the Magnitsky Act; Prevezon is allegedly behind HRAGIF’s lobbying efforts.⁸⁹

In 2016 Veselnitskaya sought a meeting with the Trump campaign as part of her efforts to reverse the Magnitsky Act.¹⁰ According to his representative at the meeting, Irakly Kaveladze, Russian real estate tycoon Aras Agalarov arranged the meeting as a favor to a Veselnitskaya.¹¹ Agalarov is a business associate and personal friend of Donald Trump.¹² In early June 2016, Agalarov’s son, Russian pop star Emin Agalarov, contacted Donald Trump Jr. via his publicist Rob Goldstone. Goldstone told Trump Jr. that the “Crown prosecutor of Russia” was offering to give the Trump campaign damaging information about Hillary Clinton as “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.” “If it’s what you say I love it,” replied Trump Jr, and and the two proceeded to set up the June 9, 2016, meeting between members of the Trump campaign and a woman (Veselnitskaya) that Goldstone had described to Trump Jr. as a “Russian government attorney.”¹³¹⁴

Veselnitskaya invited Akhmetshin to the Trump Tower meeting. Akhmetshin said Veselnitskaya brought documents to the meeting that detailed what she characterized as illicit funds flowing to the Democrats, but as she did not have sufficient evidence to back up her claims Trump Jr. quickly lost interest. Veselnitskaya then proceeded to discuss the Magnitsky Act, which also reportedly did not interest Trump Jr. Akhmetshin said Veselnitskaya left behind a document with the Trump associates describing the allegations: “It was corporate stuff – lawyerly stuff.”¹⁵¹⁶

After the meeting became public in 2017 Veselnitskaya initially said, “Nothing at all was discussed about the presidential campaign. I have never acted on behalf of the Russian government and have never discussed any of these matters with any representative of the Russian government.”¹⁷ She also claimed that the meeting was “not related at all to the fact [that Trump Jr.] was the son of the candidate.” In October, 2017, evidence surfaced however that Veselnitskaya discussed what she had presented to Trump Jr. in the meeting as information damaging to Hillary Clinton with Russia’s prosecutor general, Yuri Y. Chaika, and that the memo she brought to the meeting closely followed a document that Chaika’s office had given to pro-Russia U.S. Congressman Dana Rohrabacher two months earlier. At that juncture Veselnitskaya declined to be interviewed, saying that the New York Times had published “lies and false claims.”¹⁸ After private emails surfaced in April 2018 showing that she was working with Russian government officials however Veselnitskaya acknowledged that she was an informant for the Russian government: “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.”¹⁹

Two months into his presidency Donald Trump fired Bharara.²⁰ Two months later Prevezon settled with the U.S. government for $6 million without admitting guilt just as the case was about to go to trial.²¹²²

The bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report “Russian Active Measures Campaigns and Interference in the 2016 U.S. Election Volume 5: Counterintelligence Threats and Vulnerabilities”, released in redacted form to the public on August 18, 2020, determined that Veselnitskaya “has significant and concerning connections to Russian government and intel officials, and has not been forthcoming about those relationships.”²³

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Who is Natalia Veselnitskaya

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