Don’t Believe Everything You Read About Russian Lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya

The New York Times ran an article on Friday with a headline that read, “Lawyer Who Was Said to Have Dirt on Clinton Had Closer Ties to Kremlin Than She Let On.”  In it, journalists (and I use the term loosely) Andrew Kramer and Sharon LaFraniere reported that Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya essentially told NBC news that she was a Russian spy.  That’s right, apparently Russian spies have become so ballsy they’ll admit to virtually anything on national television.  Of course, NBC’s interview and the New York Times’ article are probably meant to deflect from the Strzok texts, Comey sounding like a jackass on his recent media circus tour, or from the fact that Veselnitskaya was recently interviewed by U.S. senators about the Steele dossier.  Don’t forget that the Senate just released a report showing that there was no collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.  But you didn’t really think that they were going to stop beating that dead horse, did you?

Below, I’ve dissected most of the New York Times article although please note that some parts have been omitted.  You can read the article in its entirety here.

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THE NEW YORK TIMES ARTICLE

“MOSCOW — The Russian lawyer who met with Trump campaign officials in Trump Tower in June 2016 on the premise that she would deliver damaging information about Hillary Clinton has long insisted she is a private attorney, not a Kremlin operative trying to meddle in the presidential election.

But newly released emails show that in at least one instance two years earlier, the lawyer, Natalia V. Veselnitskaya, worked hand in glove with Russia’s chief legal office to thwart a Justice Department civil fraud case against a well-connected Russian firm.

Ms. Veselnitskaya also appears to have recanted her earlier denials of Russian government ties. During an interview to be broadcast Friday by NBC News, she acknowledged that she was not merely a private lawyer but a source of information for a top Kremlin official, Yuri Y. Chaika, the prosecutor general.

‘I am a lawyer, and I am an informant,’ she said. ‘Since 2013, I have been actively communicating with the office of the Russian prosecutor general.‘” (New York Times)

Let’s start with the US v. Prevezon case which is what Kramer and LaFraniere were referring to when they wrote “worked hand in glove with Russia’s chief legal office to thwart a Justice Department civil fraud case…”  First, this case was initiated by serial con artist Bill Browder.  He contacted the federal prosecutor’s office in New York and told them that he had evidence showing Prevezon stole and laundered some of the missing money stemming from the Hermitage Capital/Magnitsky case.  Not only that, the evidence that former federal prosecutor Preet Bharara used to file the case against Prevezon came entirely from Browder.  According to Homeland Security Special Agent Todd Hyman’s own testimony, the U.S. government never confirmed that Browder’s evidence was legitimate.  Even Browder choked during his Prevezon deposition because it’s kinda hard to keep up with your own lies and he probably blames Veselnitskaya for making him look like a chump.  Don’t believe me?  Lee Stranahan was awesome enough to post Browder’s deposition on Youtube.  In fact, Stranahan is one of the few independent journalists I know who has a large base and is covering the Bill Browder story.

As for the “I am an informant” statement that Veselnitskaya allegedly made during the NBC interview can we find someone who speaks Russian to get on this interview and verify a. That that is the correct translation and b. If it is, does it translate into English as being a spy because let’s get real, this might be one of the most absurd translations/assumptions I’ve ever heard.  Did NBC leave out part of the interview?

Russia’s Prosecutor General, Yuri Y. Chaika, is another guy that Browder loathes so it should come as no surprise that Browder suggested he be added to his already lengthy Magnitsky Act sanctions list.  In a 2016 letter that Browder submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice, he also stated that Chaika,

“…provided a letter of reply to the newspaper Kommersant, in which he stated; the adoption of the Magnitsky Act was the result of a large scale, deceitful PR campaign orchestrated by Mr. Browder to shift the blame for his crimes to Russian officials; and that the passage of the Magnitsky Act was based on emotions and anti-Russian sentiment rather than objective evidence.”

Browder went on to say that Chaika had referred to the Prevezon case and that if Prevezon was found guilty it would undoubtedly and legally “validate Browder’s version of the entire story — from the embezzlement of Russian Treasury funds to the murder of Sergei Magnitsky.”

Chaika’s assessment is right on point.  The entire Magnitsky narrative from the theft of millions and Magnitsky’s death to the Prevezon case, hinges solely on Bill Browder.  In the same letter to the DOJ, Browder himself admits this very thing—probably because of what can be best described as malignant narcissism.

 

 

NATALIA VESELNITSKAYA AND THE TRUMP MEETING

“The previously undisclosed details about Ms. Veselnitskaya rekindle questions about who she was representing when she met with Donald Trump Jr….the meeting, one focus of the special counsel investigation into Russia’s election interference, was organized after an intermediary promised that Ms. Veselnitskaya would deliver documents that would incriminate Mrs. Clinton…” (New York Times)

Okay, full stop.  Early in the NBC interview, Richard Engel also stated that Veselnitskaya met with Trump Jr. to pass along dirt that Russia supposedly had on Hillary Clinton.  This is unequivocally false.  In her November, 2017 statement to the Senate Judicial Committee, she stated that her ultimate goal was a “Congressional investigation into [Bill] Browder’s activities, the motives and sources of funding the lobbying campaign for his interests, and at the same time his involving both parties in his own self-seeking interests, who lied at least twice in 2012 and 2015 in the US House Committee on Foreign Affairs.”

 

YURY YAKOVLEVICH CHAIKA

“‘I operate independently of any governmental bodies,’ she [Veselnitskaya] wrote in a November statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee. ‘I have no relationship with Mr. Chaika, his representatives and his institutions other than those related to my professional functions as a lawyer.‘

But that claim had already been undercut last fall by revelations that her talking points for the Trump Tower meeting — detailing tax and financial fraud accusations against two Democratic Party donors tied to a Kremlin opponent — matched those in a confidential memorandum circulated by Mr. Chaika’s office.” (New York Times)

Funny, here the New York Times admits that Veselnitskaya’s meeting with Trump Jr. was about financial fraud accusations against Bill Browder (and the unnamed Ziff brothers), information that Prevezon’s legal team had obtained from Fusion GPS and that NBC had already reported on back in November, 2017.

Throughout the entire article Kramer and LaFraniere also seem to forget the very thing they quoted from Veselnitskaya’s November testimony, “…I have no relationship with Mr. Chaika…other than those related to my professional functions as a lawyer.”  This article isn’t blockbuster news nor is NBC’s interview; Veselnitskay admitted last year that any relationship she may have had or does have with Chaika and/or his associates is strictly in the capacity as a lawyer.  The bigger point to be made is that the article failed to include the rest of Veselnitskaya’s response to the question, “What is your relationship with Chaika, his office, and/or his representatives?”

“As a lawyer of Denis Katsyv, since 2013 I have sent several appeals to the Russian Federation General Prosecutor’s Office requesting documents within my legal power, and also filed applications to verify the information about Mr. Browder’s activities in Russia that resulted in the wrongful seizure of my client’s assets in the USA and Switzerland, received answers, analyzed them and addressed them anew, should I be refused answers or provision of documents — I appealed to the court.

I was also invited several times to explain the contents of my applications for documents that I collected in the framework of my legal procedure…

Several times I was formally received by the Prosecutor General of Russia.  I have interacted with the RF Prosecutor General several times in the capacity of a lawyer.  For example, this summer, I was granted an audience with the RF Prosecutor General, Yu. Ya. Chaika, to deliver an official statement in connection with my defending an American citizen and a member of the US Jewish community who had been arrested in Moscow…”

I have interacted with the RF Prosecutor General several times in the capacity of a lawyer.  So what we have here is complete transparency on Veselnitskaya’s part about her relationship with the General Prosecutor’s office and yet somehow Richard Engel and the New York Times are still churning out this nauseating propaganda that she somehow hid these facts from the world.  And is it really surprising that the Russian government would take an interest in a Russian company being sued in a foreign country where the prosecutor’s sole evidence came from Bill Browder, the man behind U.S. sanctions against Russia?  As Chaika pointed out, the outcome of the Prevezon case had the potential to “validate Browder’s version of the entire story”—a version which numerous countries have now bought into by passing legislation similar to the Magnitsky Act.

Of course the Russian government was concerned about this case.

As a side note to kill some of the rumors out there, I highly recommend you read Veselnitskaya’s full statement from November in which she also denies (update) “meeting” with Fusion GPS both before and after her meeting with Trump Jr.  Additionally, she did not work for Fusion GPS or vice-versa.  Fusion GPS was hired by Baker Hostetler, an American law firm representing Prevezon, to investigate Bill Browder.  Bottom line?  Fusion GPS was not being paid by Russians for their work on that case but rather by a U.S. law firm headed up by a guy named John Moscow.  But, no, seriously, that’s his real name.  Browder later successfully got Baker Hostetler kicked off the case in a move that some say was Browder’s attempt to bury Fusion GPS’ research.

 

MIKHAIL KHODORKOVSKY

“And a sheaf of Ms. Veselnitskaya’s email correspondence released Friday appeared to show that her relationship with Mr. Chaika’s office is far closer than she has described.” 

The emails were obtained by Dossier, an organization set up by Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky, a former tycoon who was stripped of his oil holdings, imprisoned and then exiled from his native Russia.  He has emerged as a leading opponent of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.” (New York Times)

If you’re not familiar with Khodorkovsky, just read this.  I promise that it’s not only entertaining, it will give you some great background on this guy (and the Clintons) which is long and lengthy and no one has the time for it right now.  The short version is that Khodorkovsky has ties with George Soros (he named one of his organizations Open Russia), the Clintons, and the U.S. government that date back to the early 1990s.  Through his bank Menatep, he was connected to Avisma, Zbigniew Brzezinski via Soros’ International Crisis Group, Boris Berezovksy, and Benex, the shell company used to launder millions of dollars through the Bank of New York back in the late 1990s—all under Bill Clinton and Jonathan Winer’s watch.  Don’t worry, we’re getting to Winer.

And, of course Khodorkovsky is Putin’s “leading opponent.”  That’s because Putin had him arrested, charged, and successfully prosecuted after Khodorkovsky literally raped and pillaged Russia financially during the 1990s.  Khodorkovsky probably isn’t thrilled that Trump is sitting in the White House either because a Hillary Clinton administration being run in the shadows by monsters like George Soros would have been much more amenable to taking Putin down.  Maybe Khodorkovsky should just be grateful Putin let him out of prison early.

Khodorkovsky presently lives in the U.K. and no, it might not be that much of a stretch to think that he’s been doing a little U.K. intelligence work on the side.  I mean, Jonathan Winer, the State Department official who was the liaison between both Christopher Steele and Cody Shearer (via Sidney Blumenthal) and the State Department, once lobbied for Khodorkovsky.

Do you see where I’m going with all of this?

As for Winer with regards to Veselnitskaya, on April 25th, two days before the New York Times article was published, she posted on Twitter “this is the truth” in response to a tweet made by @BrettHar123 which read,

“Bill Browder, through his close friend Jonathan Winer, the State Department conduit for Steele intel since 1991, arranged for FusionGPS to manage Steele, making Simpson a target for Republicans, to discredit research on Browder’s activities in Russia.”

@BrettHar123 provided a link to a Washington Times article that reported Veselnitskaya insisted Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS had been framed.  Essentially the accusation here is that Simpson, hired in 2014 to dig up dirt on Browder during the Prevezon case, was set up by Steele, Jonathan Winer, and Bill Browder in order to discredit Fusion’s research about Browder.  That indeed may be the case but the Winer/Steele/Fusion story, as we know, goes well beyond just discrediting Fusion’s research.

So Khodorkovsky is the guy who claimed to have anonymously received Ms. Veselnitskaya’s hacked emails through his organization Dossier.  Suspicious?  Obviously.  And although Khodorkovsky nor NBC have authenticated the emails, the New York Times article reported,

“Shown copies of the emails by Richard Engel of NBC News, Ms. Veselnitskaya acknowledged that ‘many things included here are from my documents, my personal documents.’  She told the Russian news agency Interfax on Wednesday that her email accounts were hacked this year by people determined to discredit her, and that she would report the hack to Russian authorities.

The Russian prosecutor general’s office did not respond to requests for comment.  In an email, Ms. Veselnitskaya said she would respond in two weeks.”

First, it doesn’t appear in the NBC interview that Veselnitskaya actually confirmed that the emails Robert Engel showed her were, in fact, her correspondence.  In fact, she flat out says she cannot confirm it.  Second, Engel didn’t have to wait two weeks for Veselnitskaya’s comments because she made several about her hacked account, Engel, and NBC prior to the New York Times article, none of which were included in the story.  On April 20, 2018, the Associated Press published a story detailing how Veselnitskaya “recently” met with U.S. Senate investigators in a Berlin hotel.  According to the article, the meeting focused on “information contained in a collection of memos compiled by a former British spy, whose worked was funded by the Democratic National Committee and the campaign of Hillary Clinton.”  According to a “source” who spoke with the Russian attorney, the dossier was discussed more than her meeting with Donald J. Trump, Jr.

Oh, snap.

In another April 20, 2018 article, ria.ru reported that Veselnitskaya had confirmed the meeting to RIA Novosti and that it had been originally proposed by members of the U.S. Senate.  Not only is this meeting interesting (and the fact that the New York Times utterly failed to mention it), Veselnitskaya’s emails, possibly the same ones Richard Engel confronted her about, were hacked the night before she met with the U.S. senators.  According to Veselnitskaya, she believes the attack was in response to her willingness to testify in front of the U.S. Senate about the “financial frauds of [Bill] Browder and others.”  She went on to say that the same people supporting Browder, whom she called “a project of the US State Department,” are the same people behind the Steele dossier because this can NOT get any freakin’ juicier, folks.

As for Richard Engel and NBC News, Vaselnitskaya says that she wrote a letter to the media outlet stating that Engel was either involved in the hacking or that he knew who was involved.

 

MORE FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES

“Federal prosecutors say Ms. Veselnitskaya was the driving force on Mr. Katsyv’s defense team, a description she has echoed in court filings. In a declaration to the court, she identified herself as a lawyer in private practice, representing Mr. Katsyv and his firm…” (New York Times)

Of course she was one of the driving forces on Mr. Katsyv’s defense team and listed in court documents.  She was his attorney.  This isn’t rocket science nor a crime, obviously.

“…The emails indicate that a senior prosecutor on Mr. Chaika’s staff, Sergei A. Bochkaryov, worked closely with Ms. Veselnitskaya to craft the Russian government response. She knew him well enough to address him in friendly terms…The language in their final email exchange matches that of the prosecutor general’s official response to the Justice Department.” (New York Times)

So let me get this straight…again.  The U.S. Justice Department asked Russia for documents that pertained to the Prevezon case which was a sham case built on evidence provided solely from Bill Browder, the guy who worked with Jonathan Winer to get U.S. sanctions passed against Russia.  Veselnitskaya was representing Prevezon and in the process she spoke with representatives in Chaika’s office as related to her “professional function as a lawyer” because (obviously) the Russian government was concerned about the case and its outcome as it related to the country’s foreign affairs.  And this is some sort of big conspiracy?

“The judge in the case later wrote that the Russian government had ‘spurned’ the Justice Department’s request for evidence, instead sending a lengthy treatise on why Ms. Veselnitskaya’s client was innocent…” (New York Times)

Well, if the Russians didn’t have any evidence they didn’t have any evidence.  And even if they did, most of Bill Browder’s so-called evidence came from Swiss documents that were allegedly provided to him by Alexander Perepilichny, a Russian businessman living in the UK at the time who was murdered before giving one statement about the documents.  So there’s that.

“…Ms. Veselnitskaya’s actions should be referred to the United States attorney’s office for investigation, including whether she misrepresented herself to the court. “It’s completely outrageous,” Ms. [Jaimie] Nawaday said.” (New York Times)

For what exactly?

“Moscow’s refusal to provide records to the American prosecutors dealt a severe blow to the case.  In the end, the Justice Department agreed to settle it for about $6 million. Prevezon, which did not admit fault, has yet to pay.” (New York Times)

Notice how the U.S. media is now blaming Russia for Preet Bharara’s failed court case that was built out of Browder’s lies?  As for Prevezon not paying yet, their foreign bank accounts were frozen and the U.S. won’t unfreeze them so they can pay.  See how that works?

“Although Ms. Veselnitskaya appears to have influenced how the Russian Prosecutor General’s office justified its decision, its refusal to cooperate was not unexpected.” (New York Times)

How in the world does Ms. Veselnitskaya’s work relationship with the Prosecutor General’s office, which she has been perfectly candid about, translate to her influencing Chaika’s alleged refusal to cooperate with the U.S.?  But then again, critical thinking is a lot like common sense—it’s not so common.

It should also be noted that Ms. Veselnitskaya, like Julian Assange, has never been contacted by Robert Mueller.  That doesn’t make them guilty, that makes Mueller’s investigation shady.

So to wrap this thing up, I know there are a lot of people out there who do NOT support the Russian narrative but are being roped into this new narrative that Veselnitskaya is a Russian spy who shockingly admitted it on national television.  My only piece of advice is to take a step back before buying into what NBC, The New York Times, and other news outlets are feeding you.  Bill Browder, Jonathan Winer, and others are and have always been the enemy here, not Veselnitskaya.  If I’m wrong (which I’m not) feel free to tell me “I told you so” if future evidence proves otherwise.