Bill Browder, CEO and founder of Hermitage Capital Management, appeared in front of a Senate Committee on Thursday. With all of the very important healthcare machinations taking place with Mitch McConnell and his Republican ghouls, the testimony took a backseat. There are quite a few important parts of Browder’s testimony but the most important one is his assertion that Vladimir Putin’s number one objective is to get the Magnitsky Act repealed, or at the very least, to lessen its effectiveness.
Rhode Island’s Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse wanted to make the nature of the meeting clear. Talk that Trump Jr. has been pushing this “adoption” talk. What was that about?
Whitehouse: Over and over again, when the White House issued a statement about the young Donald Trump's meeting, they talked about how the discussion with [Natalia] Veselnitskya was about the adoption of Russian children. On July 9, they said that Russian children was the subject. On July 10, they tweeted how the conversation was primarily about adoptions. Sean Spicer later on, talked about a conversation as a discussion of adoption. When the president interviewed with the New York Times, he said “I actually talked about Russian adoption with Vladimir Putin.” The president's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, in his July 24, intel committee statement said he was talking about the issue of the ban of U.S. adoptions of Russian children. So, to a Russian agent or official, a conversation with America about adoption, is a conversation really about what?
Browder: About the Magnitsky Act.
Browder explains that Putin’s retaliation for the United States passing the Magnitsky Act was to ban U.S. adoption of Russian children and now, it’s a convenient way to “cover” what you’re really talking about.
Whitehouse: If you're talking about adoption—
Browder: You’re not talking about adoption. Nobody was talking about adoption. They were talking about the repeal of sanctions so that Russian torturers and murderers could freely travel and keep their money in America.
Whitehouse: Adoption is in effect, code for Russians for talking about lifting of sanctions.
Browder: That’s correct.