As more details have developed from the meeting that took place between Donald Trump Jr, Trump campaign leaders and a Kremlin lawyer at Trump Tower last year, suspicions have been specifically focused on a Russian-American lobbyist who was reportedly also at that meeting. The details were confirmed by the Associated Press (AP) on Friday, July 14, a week after the New York Times initially broke the story. That lobbyist, Rinat Akhmetshin, had been identified as a former military officer for Russian intelligence when the Soviet Union existed. Akhemetshin has denied this as a "smear campaign" but some U.S.

officials believe he still has connections.

Akhemetshin's past as Russian intel officer

In a story published by Politico last year titled: "Putin's favorite congressman," Akhmetshin was interviewed about pro-Putin U.S. Congressman Dana Rohrabacher. In the article, Rinat acknowledged that he had been a counterintelligence officer for the Soviet union but said that he had been drafted into it. He also added that just because he was born in Russian that it didn't make him an agent of the Kremlin. But, Akhmetshin has dual citizen ship and in the mentioned Trump Tower meeting, he had obviously "joined forces" with the Kremlin lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya to lobby against the U.S. created Magnitsky Act.

Incriminating, unverified information

Despite Trump Jr's claims that he had "come clean" with all of the details of the meeting on July 9, more details were revealed over the week that followed, revealing a more deliberate attempt to hide details and the meeting's intentions. It was learned that the meeting was to share information obtained by the Russian government that would prove to be incriminating for Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee.

The AP article titled: "Russian-American lobbyist joined Trump's son's meeting, too" said that Veselnitskaya brought a plastic folder with her that had printed out documents which claimed to show illicit funds flowing to Democrats from Russians.

According to Akhmetshin, he said that when the Trump leadership asked the lawyer if there was evidence to support her claims, they seemed to lose interest when Veselnitskaya said the campaign would need to do more research themselves.

That the Trump campaign would want proof could suggest that they had not settled into their habit of making up "alternative facts" yet. It would seem that they were unaware that they didn't need evidence to support what they refer to as "Opposition Research." Later on in their campaign -- and well into the Trump presidency -- his team has never really made much of an effort to provide evidence for many of their claims, calling facts and negative coverage of their administration "fake news". Even their own created fictions against their opposition have served their agenda well enough.
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