The Russian lawyer who met with Donald Trump Jr. in June of 2017 came armed with campaign dirt on Hillary given to her by the shady opposition research firm Fusion GPS, Reuters reported Thursday.
Three sources familiar with the matter told Reuters that the lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, offered Don Jr. information on Clinton Foundation donors that had supposedly been dug up in an unrelated investigation.
Fusion GPS is the same firm that prepared the infamous Steele dossier on the Trump campaign’s alleged ties to Russia, which was financed by the Clinton Campaign, the DNC, and also possibly Obama for America.
Some have theorized, including PJ Media’s Tyler O’Neil, that the Clinton campaign used the promise of campaign dirt to lure the Trump campaign into an incriminating meeting with the well-connected Veselnitskaya. The deep state could then accuse Trump of colluding with the Russians.
Fusion GPS met with Veselnitskaya before and after the meeting, it was recently revealed.
Reuters’ sources said Veselnitskaya in 2014 “received a legal research memo reporting that the Ziff Brothers, two New York financiers allied with British-American financier William Browder, had made a large contribution to a Clinton charity.”
This was at a time when Veselnitskaya was involved in litigation pitting her Russian client against Browder,
The memo had been prepared by Fusion, which had been hired to conduct legal research on Browder by Baker and Hostetler law firm. The firm represented Russian businessman Denis Katsyv, who was engaged in disputes with Browder and U.S. prosecutors.
Glenn Simpson, one of Fusion GPS’ founders, met with Veselnitskaya about that litigation before and after her meeting with Trump Jr., Kushner and Manafort, according to a source familiar with the matter.
No wonder the three were bored to tears and couldn’t wait to get out of there.
According to Reuters’ sources, the information that Fusion GPS gave to Veselnitskaya, and that she offered to the Trump Jr., “was unrelated to the firm’s work for Perkins Coie, a law firm that represented the Democratic National Committee and Clinton’s campaign.”
Interestingly, a source familiar with Simpson’s 10-hours of testimony in August before the Senate Judiciary Committee said Simpson “told investigators he did not know of Veselnitskaya’s Trump Tower meeting until reports of it appeared in the media.”
Judicial Watch announced Thursday that it has filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Justice for all records of communications related to Veselnitskaya’s immigration parole.
“The Justice Department knew, or should have known that that lawyer was not allowed to be in the country, and we want to know the details — that’s why we’re suing in court,” said JW President Tom Fitton.
During a special order on the House floor Wednesday night, Congressman Mark Meadows, (R-NC), a member of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, said that the evidence has been leading to a very different conclusion than the media narrative would suggest.
Why did Obama pay “1 million dollars” to Fusion GPS? he asked.
“The point is to recognize that there are legitimate, unanswered questions about whether the Obama Justice Department involved themselves in a political project targeting then-candidate Donald Trump—a suggestion that has far more evidence behind it than the directionless investigation into the Trump-Russian collusion,” Meadows said.
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