Natalia Veselnitskaya says she did not go to meeting in Trump Tower with information about Clinton campaign

Natalia Veselnitskaya – the lawyer who was present at a Trump Tower meeting last June which has become the latest instalment of the Russia scandal engulfing the US presidency – has denied she has ever had links to, or worked for, the Russian government.

Veselnitskaya met Donald Trump Jr, Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and Trump’s then campaign chief, Paul Manafort, last June. After the meeting was first reported by the New York Times (NYT) at the weekend, Trump Jr said he met the Russian lawyer because he believed she could have information on the Clinton campaign.

However, on Tuesday, Trump Jr published on his Twitter account an email exchange with Rob Goldstone, a publicist and former British tabloid journalist who helped broker the meeting. Goldstone referred to Veselnitskaya as a “Russian government attorney”.

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Goldstone told Associated Press earlier this week he had set up Veselnitskaya’s meeting at Trump Tower on behalf of his client Emin Agalarov. Emin and his father, Aras Agalarov, were Trump’s Russian partners in hosting the 2013 Miss Universe contest in Moscow and had also expressed interest in building a Trump hotel in Russia.



In the email exchange published by Trump Jr, Goldstone wrote that the Agalarovs had “high-level and sensitive information” to share that was “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr Trump”.

Veselnitskaya told NBC on Tuesday that she had not gone to the meeting with information about the Clinton campaign. “It’s quite possible that maybe they were looking for such information, they wanted it so badly,” she said, but denied that she had any to offer. She also answered “no” when asked if she had ever worked for the Russian government.

The Russian criminal defence lawyer has had clients with links to Russian government officials, however. Her highest profile case was the defence of Denis Katsyv, a Russian businessman accused of laundering a portion of the proceeds from a $230m tax fraud uncovered by the lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who later died in jail.

Q&A What is the Magnitsky Act? Show Hide Sergei Magnitsky was a Russian lawyer who investigated a massive $230m tax fraud in 2007.

After he revealed the scam, Magnitsky was arrested by the same officials whom he had accused of covering up the racket and was imprisoned. He died in jail after being denied medical treatment. Russia accused him of committing the fraud himself and even put him on trial posthumously.

After a long campaign by his associates, the Magnitsky Act was passed by Congress in 2012, banning entry to the US and freezing assets of officials believed to have been involved in Magnitsky's persecution and death. Russia responded by banning a list of US citizens it deemed hostile to Russia, and blocking the adoption of Russian children by US citizens – a controversial move that led critics to suggest the Kremlin was punishing Russia’s most vulnerable children.

The US imposed sanctions on officials considered complicit in Magnitsky’s death, which caused so much anger in Moscow that the Kremlin banned US adoptions of Russian children in response. This is the context in which Veselnitskaya might have raised “adoptions” with Donald Trump Jr, which is the first reason Trump Jr gave for the meeting, before later adding that he had expected to receive information about the Clinton campaign.

Katsyv’s Prevezon Holdings settled the case earlier this year by paying nearly $6m to the US government without admitting guilt. Veselnitskaya’s defence of Katsyv also fed into other parts of a campaign to discredit Magnitsky and Hermitage Capital, the investment fund that had retained him. She was involved in promoting a controversial film that attacked Magnitsky, attempting to organise its showing in the European parliament, and securing a screening in Washington last June, shortly after the meeting at Trump Tower.

A source involved with the Katsyv case believed the businessmen paid for their defence from their own funds, and were not financially supported by the Russian state, but conceded the government took a healthy interest in the case. “The Russian state definitely perceived it as being a battle they wanted to win,” said the source.

Those who know Veselnitskaya say it is absurd to suggest she was linked to the Kremlin, portraying her as a mid-level Russian corporate lawyer who was passionate about her work and strongly believed the Katsyvs were innocent. The lawyer works from offices in Khimki, just outside Moscow, and had not been involved in high-profile international cases until she took on the Katsyv brief.



What is unclear is why and how Veselnitskaya ended up in Trump Tower, meeting three important members of the Trump team in the midst of a presidential campaign. It is not known what connections she has to the Agalarovs. She did not respond to requests for comment from the Guardian on Tuesday.

Her publicly visible Facebook page is a collection of moody photographs, jokes and occasional political statements, as well as pictures from her multiple trips to the US. Although she frequently posts updates on her work for the Katsyvs and the Magnitsky film, she did not mention her meeting with Trump Jr, Kushner and Manafort. The day after the meeting, she posted a series of photographs from an early-morning run in Central Park.

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Veselnitskaya told NBC that she was only expecting to meet Trump Jr. She said Kushner left the room a few minutes after the meeting started, while Manafort was reading something on his phone and not paying attention.



In addition to his business interests, Emin Agalarov is also a pop star and socialite, who was previously married to the daughter of the autocratic president of Azerbaijan. During a visit to Moscow in 2013, Donald Trump played a cameo role in one of Emin’s music videos, and Emin has said he and his father subsequently stayed in touch with Trump.

The Agalarovs are not part of the Kremlin inner circle, but they are well connected in Moscow. Neither the Agalarovs nor Veselnitskaya have commented on how they know each other, nor on why Emin wanted Veselnitskaya to meet the Trump campaign team, as Goldstone wrote in his email to Trump Jr. It is also unclear whether the Agalarovs had any involvement in the Katsyv case.

Veselnitskaya was not the only person retained by the Katsyvs; the businessmen also engaged a number of western consultants to fight their cause in US courtrooms.



These reportedly included Fusion GPS, the American firm run by former investigative journalists which is believed to have initially commissioned the “Steele dossier”, a series of reports into potential links between Trump and Russia by Christopher Steele, the former MI6 Moscow bureau chief.

Mark Corallo, a spokesman for the US president’s lawyer, issued a statement to the NYT at the weekend implying the meeting had been a setup, and that Veselnitskaya had employed a private investigator from Fusion GPS as part of her anti-Magnitsky campaign.

In a statement to the NYT at the weekend, the firm said: “Fusion GPS learned about this meeting from news reports and had no prior knowledge of it. Any claim that Fusion GPS arranged or facilitated this meeting in any way is false.”