By Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com
The Russian attorney who pledged to share dirt on Hillary Clinton during a meeting with Donald Trump Jr. last year was accompanied by a Russian-American lobbyist who previously worked in Soviet counterintelligence, according to NBC News.
The Russian-born lobbyist, who was unnamed, served in the military before emigrating to the U.S., where he has dual citizenship. Some U.S. officials believe he still has ties to Russian spy agencies.
The lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, previously acknowledged she attended the June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower with at least one other man, whom she declined to identify. But Veselnitskaya denied she was working on Moscow’s behalf and told NBC that she met with Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort to discuss sanctions.
Emails released by Trump Jr. suggest Veselnitskaya wanted to share damaging information about Clinton as part of a Russian plot to interfere with the presidential election.
After releasing the emails, Trump Jr. conceded he “probably would have done things a little differently.”
President Trump defended his son, saying “most people would have taken that meeting.”
“My son is a wonderful young man. He took a meeting with a Russian lawyer, not a government lawyer but a Russian lawyer,” Trump said Thursday in a joint press conference in Paris with French President Emmanuel Macron. “From a practical standpoint most people would have taken that meeting. It’s called opposition research or research into your opponent.”
