BuzzFeed News has new reporting detailing the 2015 death of Vladimir Putin's media czar the night before he was scheduled to talk with U.S. Justice Department officials about the Russian media outlet RT. Though Mikhail Lesin’s death was ruled an accident, one FBI agent told the news outlet, "Everyone thinks he was whacked."
Mikhail Lesin’s battered body was discovered in his Dupont Circle hotel room on the morning of November 5, 2015 with blunt-force injuries to the head, neck, and torso. After an almost year-long "comprehensive investigation," a federal prosecutor announced last October that Lesin died alone in his room due to a series of drunken falls “after days of excessive consumption of alcohol.” His death was ruled an "accident," and prosecutors closed the case.
But the two FBI agents — as well as a third agent and a serving US intelligence officer — said Lesin was actually bludgeoned to death. None of these officials were directly involved in the government’s investigation, but they said they learned about it from colleagues who were.
“Lesin was beaten to death,” one of the FBI agents said. “I would implore you to say as much. There seems to be an effort here to cover up that fact for reasons I can't get into.”
He continued: “What I can tell you is that there isn’t a single person inside the bureau who believes this guy got drunk, fell down, and died. Everyone thinks he was whacked and that Putin or the Kremlin were behind it.”
BuzzFeed is filing a lawsuit in an attempt to unearth the records related to Lesin's death that have thus far been kept under wraps.
But the new reporting raises serious questions about just how much of a foothold Russian assassins have in the U.S. and whether they could kill (or even have been killing) with impunity on U.S. soil the way they have been in other countries—the UK, in particular.
The episode also puts a spotlight on little-noticed Senate testimony this week from Bill Browder, the financier who hired Russian attorney and whistleblower Sergei Magnitsky to look into Russian corruption.
Magnitsky was ultimately arrested by Russian officials and died in custody. (A Russian lawyer investigating Magnitsky's death later took a mysterious fall from a fourth-floor window, but survived.) The 2012 Russia sanctions law that bears Magnitsky's name and was enacted by Congress in response to his death is also at the heart of the highly scrutinized meeting that took place last year between Kremlin-linked lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, Don Jr., and Trump's top campaign brass, Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort. Vladimir Putin wants those sanctions lifted and Browder said he was certain that Russian intelligence officials would have known about that meeting and monitored it.
"I can tell you with 100% certainty that the Russian intelligence services would have been aware of that meeting in advance as they were plotting it out, there would have been weeks spent studying how to best achieve the results in that meeting," Browder told the Senate judiciary committee Thursday.
Browder, who has been the target of death threats himself for his investigations into Russian corruption, sought to illuminate for the Senate Judiciary Committee how Russian operatives compromise people and manipulate them.
“I hope that my story will help you understand the methods of Russian operatives in Washington and how they use U.S. enablers to achieve major foreign policy goals without disclosing those interests,” Browder offered in his written testimony.
During questioning at his testimony, he shared this exchange with Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse:
WHITEHOUSE: You mentioned that the Russians use either bribery or blackmail. Once they have got a person in a foreign country where they want to exert influence enmeshed in a bribery scheme, are they perfectly willing to use their own bribery scheme against that individual?
BROWDER: Oh, absolutely, of course. Effectively, once you enter their world, you're theirs. Once you get stuck in with them, you can never leave.
This is the seedy world that Donald Trump, his campaign, and his ties to Russia are illuminating. It's likely to get a lot darker as more light is shed on it.