Natalia Veselnitskaya, the Russian lawyer at the center of Donald Trump Jr.’s clandestine meeting at Trump Tower in 2016, claims she met with Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA)—nicknamed “Putin’s Favorite Congressman”—in April 2016 to discuss the Maginsky Act, Foreign Policy reports.
Veselnitskaya said she spoke with Rohrabacher in Moscow to discuss the Magnitsky Act, a 2012 bipartisan bill which prohibited 18 Russian officials from using the U.S. banking system. It was implemented in retaliation for the death of Russian tax accountant Sergei Magnitsky, who died in a Moscow prison in 2009. In response to the Magnitsky Act, the Kremlin barred Americans from adopting Russian children.
Veselnitskaya is the same lawyer who met with Trump Jr. after promising incriminating information on Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential campaign. In a statement issued immediately after that meeting came to light—and “personally dictated” by Donald Trump—Trump Jr. insisted attendees (including top White House adviser Jared Kushner and former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort) “primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children that was active and popular with American families years ago and was since ended by the Russian government.”
It was later revealed the meeting was initiated after Trump Jr. was told Veselnitskaya would proved dirt on Clinton. Trump Jr. was ultimately forced to correct his initial misleading statement three times.