Donald Trump Jr.’s overeager response to a Russian intermediary’s offer for dirt on Hillary Clinton—“I love it”—essentially ensured that his subsequent meeting with Kremlin-connected lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya would become a key focus for federal investigators. Trump Jr., his lawyers, the White House, and his father have all dismissed that meeting, which took place at Trump Tower in June 2016, as meaningless. “It was a 20-minute meeting, I guess, from what I’m hearing,” Trump said in defense of his son. “Many people, and many political pros, said everybody would do that.” But in a two-and-a-half-hour long interview with Bloomberg in Moscow, Veselnitskaya offered a much more damning account of the meeting, in which she says Don Jr. hinted at a quid pro quo deal.

The “dirt” Veselnitskaya was peddling was information that the Clinton campaign may have received money from the wealthy Ziff family that evaded U.S. taxes. (A spokesperson for the Ziffs said it had no comment.) In exchange for proof that the Clinton campaign received said illegal donations, Veselnitskaya said Trump Jr. indicated that, if his father won the election, the Magnitsky Act—a retaliatory measure the U.S. leveled against Moscow, blacklisting suspected human-rights abusers—would be re-examined. “Looking ahead, if we come to power, we can return to this issue and think what to do about it,’’ Veselnitskaya recalled Trump Jr. saying. He allegedly added, “I understand our side may have messed up, but it’ll take a long time to get to the bottom of it.” (A lawyer for Trump Jr., Alan Futerfas, told Bloomberg that the eldest Trump son had no comment on Veselnitskaya’s interview.)

After Veselnitskaya presented her case to Trump Jr., she says he asked, “This money the Ziffs got from Russia, do you have any financial documents showing that this money went to Clinton’s campaign?” When she conceded that she did not, the meeting quickly unraveled. “The meeting was a failure; none of us understood what the point of it had been,’’ the lawyer said. Now, Veselnitskaya wants to share her account with the Senate Judiciary Committee on the condition that her testimony be made public—a condition that the committee has not yet agreed to, Bloomberg reports. She added that she would also speak to special counsel Robert Mueller. (The Clinton Global Initiative didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.)

Veselnitskaya’s account follows a sharp escalation in the special counsel’s probe; last Monday, Paul Manafort and his deputy and longtime business associate, Rick Gates, were indicted on charges of money laundering and conspiracy. (Manafort and Jared Kushner also attended the June 2016 meeting with Veselnitskaya.) That same day, unsealed court documents revealed that George Papadopoulos, who served as a foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign, pleaded guilty to lying to the F.B.I. about his Russian contacts. Papadopoulos’s case in particular fits with a broader pattern of Trump aides making contact with Russian operatives that has come into focus in recent weeks. As The Washington Post reports, no fewer than nine figures in Trumpworld were in touch with Russians at some point during last year’s campaign or transition. Veselnitskaya’s account of the meeting could help Mueller and Congress determine whether this string of contacts amounts to collusion, or whether it’s pure coincidence.