Russian-U.S. lobbyist joined Trump Jr., too
WASHINGTON — A prominent Russian-American lobbyist and former Soviet military officer attended a meeting with President Donald Trump’s son, son-in-law and campaign chair last year, the lobbyist said Friday.
The admission adds a new wrinkle to the Trump team’s evolving explanations about the June 2016 session.
Rinat Akhmetshin confirmed his involvement to The Associated Press in an interview.
He had not been previously identified as a participant in the meeting at Trump Tower in New York, which was billed as part of a Russian government effort to help the Republican White House campaign.
The meeting has heightened questions about whether Trump’s associates co-ordinated with Russia to meddle in the presidential election — to help him and thwart Hillary Clinton — and whether they’ve been forthcoming about their foreign contacts.
Federal and congressional investigators are probing possible connections between the campaign and Moscow.
Akhmetshin has been reported to have ties to Russian intelligence, a characterization he dismisses as a “smear campaign.”
He’s a well-known Washington presence, lobbying for Russian interests.
Akhmetshin told the AP he served in the Soviet military in a unit that was part of counterintelligence but he was never formally trained as a spy.
In emails posted by Donald Trump Jr. earlier this week, a music publicist said he arranged the meeting because a Russian lawyer wanted to pass on negative information about Democrat Hillary Clinton.
While Trump Jr. has confirmed that Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya was in the meeting, he has not disclosed Akhmetshin’s presence.
The president’s son has publicly discounted the meeting, saying he did not receive the information he was promised.
In a statement Sunday, Trump Jr. said the lawyer had said she had information that people tied to Russia were funding the Democratic National Committee and supporting Clinton, a description that Akhmetshin backed up in his interview with the AP.
In his first public interview about the meeting, Akhmetshin said he accompanied Veselnitskaya to Trump Tower where they met an interpreter.
He said he had learned about the meeting only that day when Veselnitskaya asked him to attend. He said he showed up in jeans and a T-shirt.
Veselnitskaya brought with her a plastic folder with printed-out documents that detailed what she believed was the flow of illicit funds to the Democrats, Akhmetshin said.
Veselnitskaya presented the contents of the documents to the Trump associates and suggested that making the information public could help the campaign, he said.
“This could be a good issue to expose how the DNC is accepting bad money,” Akhmetshin recalled her saying.
Trump Jr. asked the lawyer if she had sufficient evidence to back up her claims, including whether she could demonstrate the flow of the money.
But Veselnitskaya said the Trump campaign would need to research it more. After that, Trump Jr. lost interest, according to Akhmetshin.
“They couldn’t wait for the meeting to end,” he said.
The Russian government has denied any involvement or knowledge of the June 2016 meeting.
Asked Friday about Akhmetshin, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, told reporters: “We don’t know anything about this person.”