Culture

The Russian Lawyer Who Met With Donald Trump Jr. Claims He Wanted Dirt On The Clintons ‘So Badly’

As new details emerge about Donald Trump Jr.’s previously denied meeting with a Russian lawyer who reportedly had dirt on Hillary Clinton, the lawyer in question is finally speaking out. In an exclusive interview with NBC News, Natalia Veselnitskaya denied allegations that she was supported by the Kremlin, and that she had any ties to known efforts by the Russian government to disrupt the 2016 presidential election. She did, however, speak at length about the meeting itself — including the original reason for its taking place, and Trump Jr.’s motivation for attending it.

When NBC News correspondent Keir Simmons asked Veselnitskaya about Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort’s apparent “impression” that she had information harmful to the Clinton campaign, she denied having any. “I never had any damaging or sensitive information about Hillary Clinton. It was never my intention to have that,” she said. However, Veselnitskaya did acknowledge the Trump campaign officials’ impression. “It’s quite possible that maybe they were looking for such information. They wanted it so badly that they could only hear the thought that they wanted.”

The meeting was supposed to concern the Magnitsky Act, by which the Kremlin banned the adoption of Russian children by Americans in 2012. Trump Jr. admitted as much in a recent statement, but according to Veselnitskaya, the president’s eldest son asked her just one question when they met at Trump Tower. “The question that I was asked was as follows: whether I had any financial records which might prove that the funds used to sponsor the DNC were coming from inappropriate sources.”

As for Kushner and Manafort, Veselnitskaya told NBC News she only realized who they were after seeing photos of the two at a later date. Trump’s son-in-law, she explained, “was only present in the meeting for probably the first seven to 10 minutes” before “he stood up and left the room.” The former campaign manager remained throughout the 20 to 30-minute meeting, though unlike Trump Jr., Manafort “never took any active part in the conversation” and instead spent most of the time “looking at his phone.”

Veselnitskaya flatly denied having ties to the Russian government’s apparent efforts to hack or sway the presidential election. Meanwhile, Rob Goldstone — the ex-British tabloid reporter who emailed Trump Jr. about the Russian lawyer’s possibly having dirt on Clinton — apparently made some interesting social media posts the day of the meeting. For starters, he tagged himself at Trump Tower on Facebook the afternoon of June 6th.


The day after the November election, Goldstone posted a selfie in which he donned a rather interesting shirt.

https://twitter.com/jonswaine/status/884195585833791488

(Via NBC News and Raw Story)