Instead, Trump attended a Trump Victory fundraising lunch at the Four Seasons Hotel in New York, and returned to Trump Tower at 1:02 PM, where he "remained for the rest of the afternoon". According to emails, the Veselnitskaya meeting was scheduled for 4:00 PM.
LONDON— Trump Tower lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya has been accused of an elaborate new plot to pervert the course of justice. Veselnitskaya, the pro-Kremlin lawyer who attended the notorious 2016 Trump Tower meeting with Donald Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner, allegedly doctored official documents, according to leaked files viewed by The Daily Beast.
"Trump Jr.'s meeting with Russian lawyer was about sanctions, financier tells Senate panel". CBS News. Archived from the original on July 27, 2017. Retrieved July 27, 2017. ^ Fandos, Nicholas; Haberman, Maggie (September 7, 2017). "Trump Jr. Says He Wanted Russian Dirt to Determine Clinton's 'Fitness' for Office". The New York Times.
In July 2018, the president denied knowledge of the meeting. Robert Mueller, the special counsel of the Department of Justice in charge of Russia-related investigations, investigated the emails and the meeting, and their relation to the Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections .
Ms. Veselnitskaya has maintained that she was acting in a private capacity when she visited Trump Tower in June 2016, shortly after Mr. Trump clinched the Republican nomination.
As part of the investigation, the Justice Department asked the Russian government in 2014 for assistance in obtaining bank records and other materials pertaining to the fraud scheme, the indictment said.
In response, the Russians provided the supposed findings of an investigation that “purported to exonerate all Russian government personnel” and instead cast blame on the London-based chief executive of Hermitage, William F. Browder; his lawyer, Mr. Magnitsky; and others, the indictment said.
In that case, the Manhattan prosecutors alleged that corrupt Russian officials stole the corporate identities of companies owned by Hermitage Capital Management, a foreign investment firm operating in Russia, and used them to fraudulently claim $230 million in tax refunds.
The money-laundering case was not directly related to the Trump Tower meeting. But a federal indictment returned in Manhattan seemed to confirm that Ms. Veselnitskaya had deep ties to senior Russian government officials and rekindled questions about whether the Kremlin tried to use her as an intermediary to Donald J. Trump’s campaign.
The papers did not disclose her role, the indictment charged. The indictment said Ms. Veselnitskaya exchanged emails with a senior Russian prosecutor, attaching drafts with edits and comments. Many of her suggestions “were adopted, either essentially verbatim, in rephrased form or with light edits,” it said.
A Russian lawyer at the center of the 2016 Trump Tower meeting between Russians and Trump campaign officials has been charged with criminal obstruction of justice in a federal civil case in Manhattan.
Magnitsky died in prison, and in 2012 President Barack Obama signed the Magnitsky Act, which sanctioned Russian officials believed responsible for his death. At the 2016 Trump Tower meeting, which was convened after a Trump associate told Donald Trump Jr. that a group of Russians had dirt on Hillary Clinton, Veselnitskaya pressed Trump campaign officials on lifting the Magnitsky sanctions.
Trump Jr. initially told reporters that the meeting had been "primarily about adoptions". He then released a statement saying it had been a "short introductory meeting" concerning "a program about the adoption of Russian children". A few days later Trump Jr. acknowledged that he went into the meeting expecting to receive opposition research from Veselnitskaya that could hurt Clinton's campaign, adding that none was presented and that the conversation instead focused on the Magnitsky Act. Later a statement from Trump Jr.'s lawyer said Veselnitskaya had claimed to have information "that individuals connected to Russia were funding the Democratic National Committee and supporting Mrs. Clinton" but "it quickly became clear that she had no meaningful information". Trump Jr. said he felt the adoption issue was her "true agenda all along" and the claims of helpful political information were a pretext. After learning that the New York Times was about to publish the series of emails setting up the meeting, Trump Jr. himself published the email chain via Twitter, and explained that he considered the meeting to be "political opposition research". He summarized the meeting as "such a nothing... a wasted 20 minutes".
The meeting, which took place on June 9, 2016, first came to the attention of authorities in April 2017, when Kushner reported on a revised security clearance form that he had met with Veselnitskaya.
Papadopoulos met with Mifsud on March 14, 2016, in Rome, as well March 24 and April 26 in London. At the March 24 meeting, Mifsud brought along Olga Polonskaya, a 30-year-old Russian woman from St. Petersburg. Papadopoulos later received an email from Mifsud indicating that Polonskaya was trying to contact him.
A meeting took place at Trump Tower in New York City on June 9, 2016, between three senior members of the 2016 Trump campaign – Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort – and at least five other people, including Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya. The meeting was arranged by publicist and long-time Trump acquaintance Rob Goldstone on behalf of his client, singer-songwriter Emin Agalarov. The meeting was first disclosed to U.S. government officials in April 2017, when Kushner filed a revised version of his security clearance form.
The recipients included Trump Jr., Kushner, and Manafort. In a June 14, 2016, email, five days after the meeting, Goldstone forwarded a news story about Russian hacking of Democrats' emails, describing the news as "eerily weird" in light of what had been discussed at Trump Tower.
At a meeting on March 24, 2016, the professor brought along a Russian woman, Olga Polonskaya. Papadopoulos made multiple unsuccessful attempts to set up meetings in Russia between Trump or members of his campaign and Russian officials. He communicated his proposals and interactions to several Trump campaign officials.
Other participants. Rob Goldstone, the publicist of Emin Agalarov, who said that Agalarov asked him to contact Trump Jr. New York attorney Scott S. Balber, who was retained by Emin and Aras Agalarov, denied that Goldstone's emails accurately outlined the origins of the meeting.