Donald Trump’s denial of collusion with Russia suffered yet another blow on Friday when it emerged this his son failed to disclose the presence of a former Soviet military officer at a now notorious meeting.
Rinat Akhmetshin – who claims he served in a counterintelligence unit but never formally trained as a spy – told the Associated Press that he attended the meeting with Donald Trump Jr, which billed as part of a Russian government effort to boost Trump’s election campaign.
Now a pro-Moscow lobbyist, Akhmetshin dismisses reports that he has ties to Russian intelligence agencies as a “smear campaign”. Earlier this year he was described by the chairman of the Senate judiciary committee as an expert in “subversive political influence operations often involving disinformation and propaganda”.
In an interview with the AP, Akhmetshin said he accompanied Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya to Trump Tower in New York where they met an interpreter who also participated in the meeting in June 2016. He told the news agency he had learned about the meeting only that day when Veselnitskaya asked him to attend, and turned up in jeans and a T-shirt.
The AP reported: “During the meeting, Akhmetshin said Veselnitskaya brought with her a plastic folder with printed-out documents that detailed what she believed was the flow of illicit funds to the Democratic National Committee (DNC). Veselnitskaya presented the contents of the documents to the Trump associates and suggested that making the information public could help the Trump campaign, he said.
‘This could be a good issue to expose how the DNC is accepting bad money,’ Akhmetshin recalled her saying.”
According to Akhmetshin, Trump Jr asked Veselnitskaya if she had all the necessary evidence to supporting her claims, including whether she could prove the flow of the money. But when Veselnitskaya replied that the Trump campaign would need do further research, Trump Jr lost interest.
“They couldn’t wait for the meeting to end,” he told the AP, adding that he did not know if Veselnitskaya’s documents were provided by the Russian government.
The meeting was also attended by Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, and Paul Manafort, then chairman of the Trump campaign. Akhmetshin said he recognised Manafort because they worked in “adjacent political circles” but never together.
He told the AP that the meeting was “not substantive” and he “actually expected more serious” discussion. “I never thought this would be such a big deal, to be honest.”
The meeting had been brokered by Rob Goldstone, a British music publicist whose clients include Russian singer Emin Agalarov, an acquaintance of the Trump family.
Asked about Akhmetshin’s presence, Trump Jr’s lawyer, Alan Futerfas, told NBC News: “The person was described as a friend of Emin’s and maybe as a friend of Natalia’s … He is a US citizen. He told me specifically he was not working for the Russian government, and in fact laughed when I asked him that question.”
Futerfas added: “I have absolutely no concerns about what was said in that meeting.”
Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for Russian president Vladimir Putin, told reporters on Friday: “We don’t know anything about this person.”
Trump Jr and Veselnitskaya have claimed that the 20-minute meeting was dominated by the Magnitsky Act, a 2012 US law that blacklists suspected Russian human rights abusers. In retaliation, Putin halted American adoptions of Russian children.
In March, Akhmetshin was named by Chuck Grassley, chairman of the Senate judiciary committee, as lobbying against the Magnitsky Act along with the firm Fusion GPS, “which was also involved in the creation of the unsubstantiated dossier alleging collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians”.
Grassley wrote in a letter to the justice department: “It is particularly disturbing that Mr Akhmetshin and Fusion GPS were working together on this pro-Russia lobbying effort in 2016 in light of Mr Akhmetshin’s history and reputation. Mr Akhmetshin is a Russian immigrant to the US who has admitted having been a ‘Soviet counterintelligence officer.’
“In fact, it has been reported that he worked for the GRU [military intelligence] and allegedly specializes in ‘active measures campaigns’, ie, subversive political influence operations often involving disinformation and propaganda. According to press accounts, Mr Akhmetshin ‘is known in foreign policy circles as a key pro-Russian operator,’[ and Radio Free Europe described him as a ‘Russian “gun-for-hire” [who] lurks in the shadows of Washington’s lobbying world.’ He was even accused in a lawsuit of organizing a scheme to hack the computers of one his client’s adversaries.”
Grassley complained that both Akhmetshin and Fusion GPS had failed to register as foreign agents.
Friday’s revelations deepen the crisis at the White House after a tumultuous week. Emails released by Trump Jr show that he was told by Goldstone that the meeting was part of a Russian government attempt to interfere in the election, and that Trump Jr responded gleefully instead of alerting authorities.
Goldstone had told Trump Jr that the lawyer had damaging information about Hillary Clinton. Trump Jr, whose version of events has shifted multiple times, says this failed to materialise and he wrapped up the conversation quickly. Trump Jr failed to mention Akhmetshin’s presence in a series of statements and an interview this week in which he insisted he was being fully transparent.
Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House intelligence committee, said the report about an alleged former Russian counter-intelligence officer being present, “if accurate, adds another deeply disturbing fact about this secret meeting”.
He added: “Donald Trump Jr’s denial of any such meetings, his misleading initial representation that it dealt only with adoptions – a statement evidently approved by the White House – and his later admission that the whole purpose of taking the meeting was to receive the support of the Russian government in the form of damaging information about Hillary Clinton paint a portrait of consistent dissembling and deceit when it comes to the campaign’s meetings with Russian officials and intermediaries.”
Joel Benenson, a former senior adviser to the Clinton campaign, told the MSNBC channel: “We are, in real time, living through a case study of crisis mismanagement. The fact that every day we are learning something that is appalling is shameful. From the time this started unfolding, even before he spoke out, he was changing his story.”
(TheGuardian US)
