Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya said she went to Trump Tower on June 9 because a friend told her to meet his friend who turned out to be Donald Trump Jr. She insisted that she did not come to the meeting because his father was a political candidate or Donald Jr. would become a "first son" in the future, The Washington Post reported
She went to him for a Jewish client who asked her to lobby for the repeal of the Magnitsky Act. The lawyer, however, declined to name her friend who asked her to meet his friend in the Trump campaign. Veselnitskaya was repeatedly asked by the newspaper if she was referring to Emin Agalarov, the Russian singer and the son of billionaire Aras Agalarov, but she did not reply.
Pretending to be a big shot
Based on the personalities involved, the friend she was referring to is apparently the Russian singer who appeared with the future president in a music video. The Russian lawyer, however, named her friend’s friend who knew Donald Jr. She described British publicist Rob Goldstone – who sent the emails to Donald Jr. claiming Veselnitskaya has intelligence report against Hillary Clinton – as “someone who wanted to look like they were a big shot.”
To make his pretense credible to Donald Jr., Goldstone said she has something important from the Kremlin. The important thing referred to a discussion between Aras Agalarov and Yuri Chaika, the prosecutor general of Russia, which could help Trump win the 2016 election, but Veselnitskaya was apparently not told of the intelligence report.
She went to the meeting with the expectation they would discuss the Magnitsky Act.
After minutes of talking to Donald Jr., it was clear they were talking about different things. She was pushing for the lifting of the Magnitsky sanctions, while he was looking for dirt the Trump campaign could use against Clinton that Donald Jr.
abruptly ended the meeting.
Was Trump also involved?
The so-called intelligence report on Clinton could be referring to private emails from Democratic Party officials released by Russian hackers as Moscow’s way of helping Trump win the election. Donald Jr.’s tweet of the emails established and settled the issue that Trump’s campaign was involved in some way with Russians who wanted him to win.
Jens David Ohlin, a professor at the Cornell Law School, said the conversation now will turn to whether President Trump was involved personally in the interference or not, Reuters reported. Donald Jr. has cleared his father by saying he did not inform him of the meeting with Veselnitskaya.
