Last Friday, before all these bombshells about Donald Trump Jr. and his emails over the Russian Government trying to provide his father’s campaign with opposition research on Hillary Clinton, Richard Engle of NBC did a specific report about the corruption and crime to seize assets and power in Russia, and how they often turn to murder to protect what they’ve stolen, which as it turns out explains exactly what the Magnitsky Act is why it would matter to someone like Veselnitskaya.
In brief the story starts with American entrepreneur Bill Browder who began investing in Russia in the late 90’s after the fall of the Soviet Union as many state resources were being sold off on the cheap. Browder made money, but there was much corruption. He cheered when Putin came into power assuming he would “clean things up”, but what he really did was begin to arrest Oligarch’s who opposed him politically, take their assets and hand them to his hand picked puppets.
Eventually he came after Browder, and he was deported. The government then used stamps and seals from his companies to generate a $230 Million tax fraud scheme and the man he hired to track down the stolen money was a lawyer named Sergey Magnitski.
Magnitski found some of the money had found it’s way to Dubai, but eventually he too was arrested and jailed. As he was moved from cell to cell with increasingly worsening conditions his health began to fail, and then eventually — according to Browder — he was chained to a bed and beaten to death with rubber batons by his guards. In response to this Putin said in an interview “Do you think that no one ever dies in American jails or what? Of course they do.”
Browder then lobbied the U.S.Congress to pass the Magnitski Act to sanction any Russia individuals or companies that participated in Human Rights abuses, which was passed and signed by President Obama in 2012.
Putin reacted badly to the sanctions, and ended the adoption program of Russian children by American, which truth be told, was riff with abuses of it’s own.
Another investigator Alexander Parapalitski came to Browder and his lawyer with even more specific about where the stolen money had gone, only to soon end up dead in London from poisoning.
It’s at this point that Russian opposition reformers Vladimir Kara-Murza and his friend Boris Nemtsov enter the picture. Both were strong supporters of the Magnitski act and anti-corruption crusaders. Kara-Murza has been mysteriously poisoned twice over the last two years and barely survived each time, while Nemtsov was violently shot 5 times in the back while walking across a bridge just outside the Kremlin.
Engle also reports that some of the stolen money didn’t just end up in Dubai and Switzerland, some of it ended up being invested in New York Real Estate. Engle talks to Nikolai Vorokov a lawyer who represents Magnitski’s family who found documents in a Moscow court that traced some of the money to New York and went to London to copy them the documents which were eventually provided to U.S. prosecutors. They kept the information and Vorokov’s identify under seal, but he never-the-less found himself mysteriously falling off a four story building, but survived.
That’s what we knew as of Friday. Now we have this lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya in the picture and she has an interesting history with money-laundering. In fact, the same money-laundering that was revealed by Vorokov and had been prosecuted by former U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara under the Magnitski Act.
In fact, Veselnitskaya was already a key figure for the defense in one of the most notorious money-laundering scandals in recent memory, encompassing $230 million in public funds allegedly stolen from the Russians by a network of corrupt bureaucrats and routed into real estate sales, including some in Manhattan, through ironclad Swiss bank accounts. And she was accused of lobbying U.S. officials for a Russian NGO that sought to overturn the Russian ban on U.S. adoptions, according to a complaint filed with the U.S. Justice Department and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA).
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Veselnitskaya received her degree from Kutafin Moscow State Law University in 1998. In 2013, she agreed to represent Denis Katsyv, the son of Russian railroad baron Petr Katsyv and owner of the Prevezon group. The younger Katsyv was accused of collaborating with corrupt Russian officials in the money-laundering scheme. Then-U.S. attorney and “Sheriff of Wall Street” Preet Bharara led the charge against Prevezon; the company, his office said, had used cash from the theft to buy condos in Bharara’s jurisdiction.
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Until this weekend, the closest Veselnitskaya had come to the public eye was as a footnote to the compounding scandal of the Prevezon affair. Veselnitskaya had come to the United States with Katsyv, who was to be deposed by Bharara’s team. Not only wasn’t she deposed herself, she didn’t attend her client’s deposition in person.
So Veselnitskaya was one of the defending attorneys for some of the packs of oligarchs who were directly involved in the corruption that led to the death of Magnitski, Vorokov, Nemtsov and the attempted murders of Kara-Murza and Vorokov.
And then last June, she winds up being the go between for the “Crown Prosecutor of Russia” who has apparently given this red hot information about Hillary Clinton to Arav Agalarov the “richest man in Russia” [not counting Putin himself] and eventually tries to funnel it to Donald Trump through Arav’s son Emil and his manager to Donald’s son Don Jr. As this just released email to Donnie shows.
Good Morning.
Emin just asked me to contact you with something very interesting. The Crown prosecutor of Russia met with his father Aras this morning, and in their meeting offered to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and could be very useful to your father.
This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and it’s government’s support for Mr. Trump — helped along by Aras and Emin.
What do you think is the best way to handle this information and would you be able to speak to Emin about it directly?
I can also send this information to your father via Rhona, but it is ultra sensitive so I wanted to send to you first.
Best,
Rob Goldstone.
It was in fact Don Jr’s idea to have a sit down meeting over this information rather than discuss it over the phone with Emin as Rob had originally suggested. That’s how Veselnitskaya came into the picture as she was described by Goldstone as “a government lawyer who was traveling to New York from Moscow.”
We now can see how and why Veselnitskaya was so interested in Magnitski Act and was essentially offering “vague tidbits” about the Clinton information without fully giving it away in order to solicit a commitment from TrumpCo to take a look at Magnitski, which if repealed would open the door again for the restoration of the adoption program. This was an attempt to trade favors, we’ll give you this if you give us that. Don Jr. didn’t go for the deal but under Federal Election Law he was already in deep trouble just being in the room because accepting the information, which they did, because that could easily be considered an “in kind” political contribution from a foreign government and that’s illegal.
The Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA) prohibits any foreign national from contributing, donating or spending funds in connection with any federal, state, or local election in the United States, either directly or indirectly. It is also unlawful to help foreign nationals violate that ban or to solicit, receive or accept contributions or donations from them. Persons who knowingly and willfully engage in these activities may be subject to fines and/or imprisonment.
The other problem is all the various denials from all the Trumpsters that they had ever had anything to do with any representative of the Russia Government, when Veselnitskaya was specifically said to be a “Government Lawyer” and information she was offering on Clinton supposed came from the “Crown Prosecutor of Russia” who is personally appointed to his position by Putin.
It is true that this meeting happened before the issue of Russian meddling with Clinton and emails was known, but it was only four days later that damn burst big time when the DNC announced they’d been hacked by Russia, and then another few days before DCLeaks began dumping the DNC’s emails all over the web.
This is how it all broke down. [Excerpted from my original Master Timeline.]
- May 2016 —
- June 2016 — Russian Think Tank controlled by Putin publishes a blue print to use cyber bots, trolls and social media to push anti-Clinton/pro-Trump propaganda to help swing the election.
- June 9, 2016 — Donald Jr, Kushner and Manafort secretly meet with a prominent Russia lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya at Trump Tower after being offered “dirt” about the Clinton Campaign and the DNC being funded by Russia. The information comes through their Miss Universe Moscow partner Arag Agalarov via his son’s Emin’s promoter Rob Goldstone who had received it directly from the “Crown Prosecutor” of Russia because the Russian Government “supports Trump.” They also discuss the Russian adoption program in the wake of the Magnitski Act, which is a law that blacklists Russian Human Rights violators.
- June 14, 2016 -— Wapo Reports that the DNC has been hacked by the Russian government, DNC goes public about the cyber intrusion.
- June 16, 2016 -— Guccifer 2.0 uses DCLeaks to reveal the first set of hacked DNC emails, they have Cyrillic characters and Russian urls in their metadata
- July 2016 —
- July 5, 2016 — Influenced by false email intel generated by the Russians alleging that AG Lynch was “throwing the Clinton case”, and apparently the fact that she has suggested he called the Clinton situation a “matter” rather than an “investigation” — even though DOJ rules prohibit confirming an investigation before it is complete — FBI Director James Comey after announcing that the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s server is complete and no charges will be filed goes on to blast her in an extended public statement.
- July 7, 2016 — Comey testifies to Congress about Hillary’s server and manages to debunk just about every Right-wing conspiracy about it.
- July 18-21, 2016 —
- The Republican National Convention takes place during which Trump National Security Advisor J.D. Gordon torpedoes a platform plank supporting the arming of Ukrainian rebels against pro-Russian forces, then lies about it.
- Kislyak attends and briefly meets Sessions again at a Heritage Foundation event, as well as Carter Page and J.D. Gordon.
- Mike Pence chants “Lock Her Up” over Hillary’s emails — even though she’s been cleared already — and he himself has AOL for his email for official business as Governor and his account had been hacked.
- Flynn fills out his SF-86 form to reactivate his security clearance related to his being selected by Trump as national security advisor. Flynn fails to include that he had received $530,000 from Turkey or that he had taken another $45,000 from Russia in 2015.
- July 22, 2016 —
- One day after end of RNC Wikileaks reveals their first set of DNC emails.
- Russia Today, Sputnik News, Breitbart and other right-wing outlets begin doing incessant stories about every little negative revelation in them as well as numerous false and inflammatory rumors these are further pushed by bots and trolls on facebook and twitter until they trend.
- The FBI begin to look into the Russia hack based on information from Crowdstrike, they don’t get direct access to DNC servers presumably as that would cause them to shutdown their entire email capability in middle of an election until a replacement set of servers could be installed.
- FBI is also looking into links to Trump due to Steele memos and concerns raised by CIA head Brennan.
And then after all that you had this behavior pattern from the Trumpsters on sanctions after the election.
- November 7, 2016 [One Day before election] — 19.5% of Rosneft is sold to unknown buyers. [This seem to be consistent with the Steele Memo which predicted this sale as an payoff to Trump for lifting sanctions on Russia]
- December 12, 2016 -—
- While in Moscow, Trump’s former campaign surrogate Jack Kingston meets with Russian businessmen to discuss what they might expect from a Trump administration. “Trump can look at sanctions,” Kingston says. “They’ve been in place long enough.”
- December 13, 2016 —
- December 29, 2016 —
- Obama hits Russia with Sanctions for their hacking and involvement in the Election. Flynn talks to Russian Ambassador Kislyak, mentions “We’ll review everything” when Obama’s new sanctions are brought up. This conversation is recorded by the NSA/FBI.
- December 30, 2016 — Putin states he will not retaliate to Obama’s newly imposed sanctions and the expulsion of 30 suspected Russian spies. Trump praises his lack of response.
- January 21st —
- Trump WH officials soon begin pushing State Dept to remove all Russian sanctions. Alarmed State Offiicials Melinowski and Fried begin to contact congress. [1st Attempt]
- February 6th —
- Trump attorney Michael Cohen and Felix Sater negotiate a deal to end sanctions against Russia by stopping the violence in Crimea with a Ukranian named Andrii V. Artemenko. They supposedly deliver a copy of this plan to Michael Flynn’s desk, but there is no evidence he ever reviewed it or passed it on to anyone. [2nd Attempt]
- When this is revealed Artemenko is looked at for possible Treason charges by Ukraine. [Exactly who came up with this idea and tasked them with this? Does anyone believe they went rogue?]
- Februray 7th -— Sens. Cardin and Graham — alerted by Fried and Malinowski at State of Trump efforts to scrap sanctions -— author bipartisan legislation to require the approval of Congress for all changes to sanctions.
- February 16th —
- March 17th —
- Even with Flynn fired for lying about discussing sanctions sometime during the later part of the month members of the NSC email the State dept asking if sanctions on Russian Oil could be lifted which would have allowed the Exxon/Rosneft deal to go forward, State informs them this would be bad of U.S. oil companies and also bad to drop the sanctions without getting anything in return. [3rd Attempt]
- April 19th —
- April 21st — Exxon/Mobil’s sanctions waiver is denied.
- May 26th —
- June 2nd —
- June 14th —
With just a month things had turned completely upside down. Don jr. may have turned down that deal, but there are allegations — via Steele — that Page was offered another deal, and indications that by blocking the RNC plank to support arming the Ukranian Rebels Trump showed that he was willing to accept that deal, and hat immediately after which all the “vague” allegations that had been made by Veselnitskaya came pouring out of DCLeaks, then Wikileaks, Russia Today and Sputnik news like a firehose.
Goldstone had specifically said that the Russian Government preferred Trump over Clinton, and then we get all this activity by Russians to make that happen right after Trump does them a solid on the Ukrainian plank. All of this really could’t possibly be just coincidence.
This explains why Donald has so vehemently denied anything to do with Russia. It explains why Michael Flynn Steve Bannon, Jeff Sessions and Jared Kushner weren’t reporting all their meetings and contacts with Kislyak and trying to setup a secret secure back-channel to the Kremlin through the Russian embassy that couldn't be tracked by U.S. intelligence who they presume were part of the Obama-centric “Deep State.”
And it explains why Trump associates have attempted to have sanctions on Russia raised at least four separate times without getting anything for them, unless the truth is they already got what they wanted during the election.
They knew up front that Russia was trying to help them. They knew before the DNC knew. They knew before the FBI knew.
And they lied about it the entire time.