Details on the memo Natalia Veselnitskaya brought to the meeting shed light on at least some of the “dirt” the Trump campaign was given on Hillary Clinton at this particular meeting. Turns out that they may have primarily discussed the Magnitsky Act afterall. Only problem? The act’s lead advocate, an American-British investor, was at the heart of the “dirt” that the Russian government was apparently passing on to the Trump campaign. What’s more, the Magnitsky Act “dirt” aligns precisely with what was promised in the email back and forth between Trump Jr and Agalarov:
Her talking points do concentrate on the Magnitsky Act and Browder. They state that Browder conned US lawmakers into passing the law by blaming Russians for embezzling funds that she alleges Browder stole from the Russian Treasury through a tax-evasion scheme involving shares in Gazprom, the Russian oil and gas company. But the memo also contradicts her basic claims.
Her meeting with Donald Trump Jr., she wrote in an email to Foreign Policy, had nothing to do with the 2016 election. But that’s not true. The four-page memo ties Browder’s alleged misdeeds to the Clinton campaign by highlighting Browder’s partnership with a hedge fund then headed by three brothers, Daniel, Dick, and Robert Ziff. “According to available information [the] Ziff Brothers financed the two Obama election campaigns, and the American media call them ‘the main sponsor of the Democrats,'” the memo says. “It cannot be ruled out that they also financed Hillary Clinton campaign.” The document clearly was suggesting that the Ziffs’ actions in Russia might be ammunition for the Trump campaign…
Rob Goldstone, a publicist for Emin who brokered the Trump Tower meeting, wrote in a June 3 email to Trump Jr. that the “Crown prosecutor of Russia” in a meeting with Aras Agalarov “offered to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father.” Goldstone said the offer was “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.” Goldstone’s mention of the crown prosecutor was an apparently errant reference to Russian Prosecutor General Yuri Chaika, a close ally of Russian President Vladmir Putin who has worked to oppose the Magnitsky Act and is prosecuting Browder in absentia for fraud.
www.motherjones.com/...
“It cannot be ruled out” that one of the Democrats’ biggest donors, the Ziff brothers, also financed her campaign.
Really? That’s some pretty weak “dirt.”
One wonders whether the true purpose of the meeting was to bait the Trump campaign with “dirt” so that there would be an in-person meeting at Trump Tower that Putin could use as kompromat when the “Russian collaboration” issue finally broke.
And yes, I’m sure the Trump campaign (as Donald Jr outlined) was very disappointed in the weakness of the dirt that Russia lured them with on this particular occasion.