Despite his apparent misery and forthcoming congressional testimony, Donald Trump Jr. isn’t the sole focus of a secret meeting that took place in Trump Tower during the presidential campaign. The Russian lawyer he and other campaign staffers met with, Natalia Veselnitskaya, is also under intense scrutiny by federal investigators and the media. She has since gone on camera to claim she wasn’t tied to the Kremlin, and has even offered to testify before Congress, but a new report by Reuters suggests Veselnitskaya may possess more questionable connections to Moscow than previously thought.
It turns out she represented Russia’s FSB security service for several years, according to court documents obtained by Reuters. In particular, Veselnitskaya worked on the top spy agency’s behalf in a “legal wrangle” regarding ownership of a luxury property in Moscow between 2005 and 2013.
Of course this doesn’t mean that Veselnitskaya and the FSB’s professional relationship went any further than handling a real estate case. As Reuters points out, however, the FSB is the same agency that was targeted specifically by the Obama administration in December, when it issued severe sanctions against Russia for its involvement in the election hacking. (The same sanctions President Trump subsequently tried to remove or lessen after assuming office.) What’s more, the FSB — which serves as the Kremlin’s successor to the Soviet-era KGB, was previously run by Vladimir Putin before he first became president.
(Via Reuters)