Second Russian’s role at Trump Jr meeting raises questions
The meeting that Donald Trump Jr. had in June 2016 with a woman billed as a Russian government lawyer included at least one other person with long-standing ties to Russia.
Rinat Akhmetshin, who once served in a Soviet counterintelligence unit, told the Associated Press Friday that he was also there, along with a translator.
The revelation adds to the questions surrounding the now infamous meeting at Trump Tower and the extent of the contacts between Trump associates and Russians seeking to help the 2016 Trump presidential campaign. Trump Jr. didn’t disclose Akhmetshin’s presence in several public statements on the meeting.
The meeting took place after Trump Jr. received emails suggesting Natalia Veselnitskaya was a Russian government lawyer who would offer incriminating information about Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton from the Russian government.
Akhmetshin told the Associated Press that Veselnitskaya turned over documents that she believed showed the flow of illicit money to the Democratic National Committee. She suggested the Trump associates make them public. “This could be a good issue to expose how the DNC is accepting bad money,” Akhmetshin quoted her as saying. He added that he didn’t know if the documents were from the Russian government.
He did not return messages seeking comment.
Trump Jr. has said the meeting produced no meaningful information. His attorney, Alan Futerfas, didn’t respond to requests for comment, though on Tuesday he said that “the meeting lasted about 20-30 minutes, and nothing came of it.” In an NBC News interview, Veselnitskaya denied having Kremlin ties and said she never had damaging information on Clinton to share.
Akhmetshin’s presence — and Trump Jr.’s shifting account — “adds another deeply disturbing fact about this secret meeting,’’ said Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence committee.
Akhmetshin registered as a lobbyist for the Human Rights Accountability Global Initiative in June 2016, saying he worked to restore Americans’ ability to adopt Russian children. President Vladimir Putin of Russia halted the adoptions in response to the Magnitsky Act, a 2012 law that imposed sanctions on Russian officials over suspected human rights abuses. Adoptions Trump Jr. said when The New York Times broke the news of the meeting with Veselnitskaya, who was known to have worked against the Magnitsky Act, that “we primarily discussed a programme about the adoption of Russian children.”
A former senior Clinton campaign official said no one on the Democratic candidate’s campaign met with Veselnitskaya or Akhmetshin and that campaign officials have no knowledge of being approached by either individual.
In March, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley raised questions about whether Akhmetshin should have registered as a foreign agent for lobbying congressional staffers to repeal the Magnitsky Act.
He was involved in a screening of an anti-Magnitsky Act film — which Veselnitskaya also worked on — and told congressional staffers “it was a shame that this bill has made it so Russian orphans cannot be adopted by Americans,’’ according to a March 31 letter by Grassley to a top Justice Department official.
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