After meeting with Donald Trump Jr. during the 2016 campaign, Russian lawyer Natalia V. Veselnitskaya denied coordinating with the Russian government but a report released this week says that she shared talking points with the Kremlin.
The New York Timesreported on Friday that Veselnitskaya claimed to be the sole author of her notes for a meeting in which Trump Jr. expected to receive damaging information about then-Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. She later blamed anti-Russia "hysteria" for allegations that she was acting on the wishes of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
But interviews and records obtained by the Times allegedly show that Veselnitskaya had been in cahoots with the Kremlin from the beginning.
The Times reports:
But interviews and records show that in the months before the meeting, Ms. Veselnitskaya had discussed the allegations with one of Russia’s most powerful officials, the prosecutor general, Yuri Y. Chaika. And the memo she brought with her closely followed a document that Mr. Chaika’s office had given to an American congressman two months earlier, incorporating some paragraphs verbatim.
The paper adds:
The matching messages point to a synchronized information campaign. Like some other Russian experts, Stephen Blank, a senior fellow with the nonprofit American Foreign Policy Council in Washington, said they indicate that Ms. Veselnitskaya’s actions “were coordinated from the very top.”
