Emails show lawyer who met Trump Jr. has ties to top Russian officials: report

The Moscow lawyer who met with Donald Trump Jr. and others at Trump Tower during the 2016 presidential campaign had close ties to top Russian government officials, according to a new report from the Associated Press.

Documents reveal Natalia Veselnitskaya served as a ghostwriter for high-level Russian government lawyers and collaborated with senior Interior Ministry personnel, according to the AP, who received the information from a London-based investigative unit, the Dossier Center. 

The Dossier Center is run by Russian opposition figure Mikhail Khodorkovsky. 

Reports emerged in April that Veselnitskaya was closer to the Russian government than she previously admitted. The New York Times reported at the time that Veselnitskaya had worked for Russia’s chief legal office against the U.S. Justice Department in a fraud case against a top Russian firm. 

{mosads}“I am a lawyer, and I am an informant,” she said in an NBC interview in April. “Since 2013, I have been actively communicating with the office of the Russian prosecutor general.”

It has previously been reported that the British music producer who set up the meeting between Trump Jr. and Veselnitskaya told Trump Jr. that the information she could provide — allegedly dirt on then-Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton — was “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.”

“If it’s what you say I love it especially later in the summer,” Trump Jr. replied to Goldstone.

Special counsel Robert Mueller is currently investigating the ties between Russia and the Trump campaign during the 2016 presidential election.