It turns out that the Russian government lawyer wasn’t the only person at the Trump Jr., Kushner, Manafort meeting. The meeting was also attended by a former Soviet counterintelligence official.
NBC News reported:
The Russian lawyer who met with Donald Trump Jr. and others on the Trump team after a promise of compromising material on Hillary Clinton was accompanied by a Russian-American lobbyist — a former Soviet counterintelligence officer who is suspected by some U.S. officials of having ongoing ties to Russian intelligence, NBC News has learned.
The lobbyist, who denies any current ties to Russian spy agencies, accompanied the lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, to the June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower attended by Donald Trump Jr.; Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law; and Paul Manafort, former chairman of the Trump campaign.
As Putin has famously said:
To get more stories like this, subscribe to our newsletter The Daily.
""There is no such thing as a former KGB man.†– Vladimir Putin https://t.co/lj9YmqsCZr
— Josh Schwerin (@JoshSchwerin) July 14, 2017
The Trump family has been lying. Alarm bells should be going off as both Trump and the Russians say that the meeting was about nothing, but when an American presidential campaign is meeting with Soviet/Russian counter intel officials, there is definitely something going on. If no Russian hacked information on Clinton was shared at the meeting, why was a “former” Soviet intelligence official present?
The story that is being shared from both the Russians and the Trumps is astonishingly similar. Both of them claim that the meeting was a nothing event, but a nothing meeting wouldn’t have been kept secret and left off of security clearance forms.
If the Trump Jr. emails were a collusion smoking gun, the presence of a Soviet counter intelligence official is a blazing cannon.
Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association