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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The same political research firm that prepared a dossier on Trump campaign ties to Russia had unrelated information on Clinton Foundation donors that a Russian lawyer obtained and offered to President Donald Trump’s eldest son last year, three sources familiar with the matter said.
The sources told Reuters that the negative information that Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya wanted to give to Republican Trump’s campaign at a June 2016 meeting in New York had been dug up by Fusion GPS in an unrelated investigation.
In December, 2014, the sources said, Veselnitskaya, who then was involved in litigation pitting her Russian client against British-American financier William Browder, received a legal research memo reporting that the Ziff Brothers, two New York financiers allied with Browder, had made a large contribution to a Clinton charity.
The memo had been prepared by Fusion, which had been hired to conduct legal research on Browder by Baker and Hostetler law firm. The firm represented Russian businessman Denis Katsyv, who was engaged in disputes with Browder and U.S. prosecutors.
Two sources said the Fusion GPS work for Baker and Hostetler that produced the information Veselnitskaya offered Trump Jr. and his associates was unrelated to the firm’s work for Perkins Coie, a law firm that represented the Democratic National Committee and Clinton’s campaign
In an interview with Bloomberg on Monday, Veselnitskaya said she went to the Trump Tower meeting with Donald Trump Jr., his brother-in-law Jared Kushner, and top campaign adviser Paul Manafort to show them proof of tax evasion by major Democratic donors.
originally posted by: theantediluvian
a reply to: JinMI
Here's a copy of Veselnitskaya's memo on DocumentCloud.
. Also, according to the memo, the brothers invested $80 million from 1999 to 2004 which yielded a total income of $800 million by 2006.
No idea if it's true.
Well this quite a stunning development. If the reporting is correct, the information that Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya shared with Donald Trump Jr and others in the Trump Tower meeting, was the result of research done by Fusion GPS.
originally posted by: shooterbrody
a reply to: theantediluvian
Well this quite a stunning development. If the reporting is correct, the information that Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya shared with Donald Trump Jr and others in the Trump Tower meeting, was the result of research done by Fusion GPS.
Something was "shared" at this meeting?
I thought trumps reps received nothing at this meeting.
So does this now make the meeting "set up"?
originally posted by: AndyFromMichigan
originally posted by: shooterbrody
a reply to: theantediluvian
Well this quite a stunning development. If the reporting is correct, the information that Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya shared with Donald Trump Jr and others in the Trump Tower meeting, was the result of research done by Fusion GPS.
Something was "shared" at this meeting?
I thought trumps reps received nothing at this meeting.
So does this now make the meeting "set up"?
We found out a few days ago that Fusion set up the meeting. At this point, there's no avoiding the conclusion that they set up the meeting specifically to create the Russian Collusion narrative to use against Trump.
The info on Democratic tax evasion was the "dirt" that the Russian lady said she had. Trump Jr. claims she didn't have any such info. It might have just been bait to get some Trump people to attend the meeting.
Something was "shared" at this meeting? I thought trumps reps received nothing at this meeting.
In the interview, Veselnitskaya said she sent her memo to Goldstone in advance so Trump Jr. could familiarize himself with the issues, but he seemed not to have done so. When she began laying out the case against the Ziffs, she said that he asked: “This money the Ziffs got from Russia, do you have any financial documents showing that this money went to Clinton’s campaign?”
So does this now make the meeting "set up"?
We found out a few days ago that Fusion set up the meeting. At this point, there's no avoiding the conclusion that they set up the meeting specifically to create the Russian Collusion narrative to use against Trump.
The info on Democratic tax evasion was the "dirt" that the Russian lady said she had. Trump Jr. claims she didn't have any such info. It might have just been bait to get some Trump people to attend the meeting.
Precisely how Ms. Veselnitskaya ended up at the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting to present her findings remains in dispute. She asked Aras Agalarov, a well-connected Russian oligarch who knows the Trump family, to help her share her allegations with the Trump campaign, according to Mr. Agalarov’s attorney, Scott Balber.
She may have told Mr. Agalarov that she had previously conveyed the same information to Mr. Chaika, Mr. Balber said. Mr. Agalarov’s son then enlisted his publicist, Rob Goldstone, to broker the meeting.
In emails to Donald Trump Jr., Mr. Goldstone wrote that a Russian prosecutor — an apparent reference to Mr. Chaika — had met with Mr. Agalarov and wanted to offer the Trump campaign official documents that would incriminate Mrs. Clinton. Mr. Goldstone described the proposed meeting as part of the Russian government’s effort to help Mr. Trump’s candidacy, and said a “government lawyer” would fly to New York to deliver the documents.
According to Rinat Akhmetshin, the former Soviet counterintelligence officer who immigrated to the US in 1994 and has since become a lobbyist, who from all appearances was Veselnitskaya's right-hand man in these anti-Magnitsky Act endeavors, she gave the document to Don Jr, Manafort and Kushner in a plastic file folder.