I'm not a regular reader of Rolling Stone, but one writer whose articles are published there is very much worthy of reading. Matt Taibbi appears from time to time on C-Span selling a book, and that's where he got my attention.
In his latest piece, Russiagate and the Magnitsky Affair, Linked Again, he compiles some background on Natalia Veselnitskaya and what she might have been up to.
I never met Veselnitskaya, but just months ago I did cross paths with one of her colleagues. Like Veselnitskaya, this person had been lobbying on behalf of a Russian-directed company called Prevezon to overturn the Magnitsky Act, a 2012 law which sanctions Russia for human rights abuses.
The interview was off the record, so I can't say much about it, except to say that my experience was weirdly similar to the account Trump Jr. offered about his meeting with Veselnitskaya.
I went into the meeting expecting a scoop on another topic, and instead found myself essentially being lobbied about the Magnitsky Act. I came away scratching my head about the Prevezon crew, unsure of whether they represented high-ranking Russian interests, or were instead just a bunch of provincial amateurs trying to get a sanctions regime lifted in order to unfreeze their assets.
The Magnitsky Act, named after Sergei Magnitsky who is alleged to have been beaten to death in a Russian prison following his exposure of fraud committed by Russian officials, put sanctions on certain Russians. And they've been lobbying aggressively to get it repealed with the help of Veselnitskay, who is a lawyer apparently famous in Russian legal circles. So Trump Jr.'s story that that's what she wanted to talk with him about rings true.
Was anything the Trumps did illegal? If so, a lot of politicians, and not just Trump, et al., should be in trouble. Speaking of which, here's another interesting tidbit from Taibbi that got buried in the anti-Trump mania:
Hillary Clinton herself went so far as to oppose the Magnitsky rule at one point in time. Her opposition, as reported by the Wall Street Journal and others, coincided with a trip to Moscow by Bill Clinton in which he was paid $500,000 to give a speech by Renaissance Capital, a firm that Sergei Magnitsky himself had claimed was part of the tax fraud perpetuated against Browder.
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11:48 AM 7/15/2017
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