The Apprentice: Trump, Russia and the Subversion of American Democracy. Greg Miller
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Название: The Apprentice: Trump, Russia and the Subversion of American Democracy
Автор: Greg Miller
Издательство: HarperCollins
isbn: 9780008325763
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Within that thirty-four-minute time frame, Trump Jr. made or received another call, though with whom remains a mystery. (Phone records showed the number as “blocked.”) Democrats in Congress would wonder whether Trump Jr. had conferred with his father—whose Trump Tower residence had a blocked number—over how to proceed. In testimony before congressional committees, Trump Jr. professed not to remember whom he’d spoken with.
Trump Jr. and Agalarov—whose developer father was sometimes referred to as the “Trump of Russia”—connected by phone again on June 7. That afternoon, Trump Jr. spoke with both Manafort and his brother-in-law, Jared Kushner, another scion of a wealthy real estate family who had married into the Trump clan and become part of the candidate’s inner circle. Trump Jr. wanted Manafort and Kushner to attend the meeting. He then emailed Goldstone to set a time and place: “How about three at our offices?”
In later testimony, Trump Jr. would claim that he did not know the names or backgrounds of those being ushered into a suite of offices on the twenty-fifth floor of Trump Tower on June 9. The event was marked on his calendar only as “Meeting: Don Jr./Jared Kushner.” Trump Jr. said Kushner and Manafort knew even less about the guests or their purpose, and had been asked merely to “drop in.” But the fact that Trump Jr. coordinated schedules with them and insisted on their attendance suggests that he saw the meeting as important enough to convene his father’s top aides.
The meeting occurred as planned on June 9, though the time was bumped to four P.M. Trump Jr., Kushner, and Manafort found themselves sitting across a large conference table from Goldstone and four Russian-speaking associates. Among them was a lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, with ties to senior officials in the Kremlin; Rinat Akhmetshin, a Russian-American lobbyist; Ike Kaveladze, a U.S.-based executive in the Agalarov company; and an interpreter.12
Veselnitskaya’s ties to the Kremlin are unquestioned if hard to accurately assess. She had earned a law degree in Moscow, worked in the office of a Russian prosecutor, and represented a roster of influential oligarchs—including a railway magnate who faced money-laundering charges in New York. “I am a lawyer and I am an informant,” she would later say in a television interview.13
But Veselnitskaya was best known in the United States for her campaign to overturn a set of banking and travel restrictions imposed on senior Russian officials suspected of human rights abuses. The sanctions were imposed as part of a congressional act named for a Russian lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, who died in prison in 2009. Magnitsky was incarcerated by the Russian government while working for a U.S.-born businessman, William Browder, who claimed that he had been cheated out of hundreds of millions of dollars in an elaborate Russian tax fraud.
After Magnitsky’s death, Browder led a years-long crusade that culminated in the 2012 sanctions. Veselnitskaya became the point person in a Kremlin-orchestrated counter-campaign that involved lobbying members of Congress and orchestrating efforts to damage the reputations of Browder and Magnitsky. (Putin also retaliated by banning American adoptions of Russian children, a move that underscored how few levers are available to Moscow in sanctions showdowns.)
“I believe you have some information for us,” Trump Jr. said, getting straight to the point.14
Veselnitskaya launched into a meandering discussion about “individuals connected to Russia supporting or funding Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton,” Trump Jr. testified later. “It was quite difficult for me to understand what she was saying or why.” It eventually became clear that she was referring to a trio of male heirs to the Ziff Davis publishing empire and one of their companies, a firm that had invested with Browder in Russia and come under investigation by Russian authorities.
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