Disgraced former President Donald Trump desperately attempted to obstruct the Russia investigation led by former Special Counsel Robert Mueller. New evidence linked to his campaign’s infamous meeting with Russian agents at Trump Tower in 2016 may reveal why he was so desperate to cover it up.
In June of 2016, Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya and an associate met with Donald Trump Jr., Paul Manafort, and Jared Kushner at Trump Tower in New York City to discuss a quid pro quo. In exchange for supposed dirt on Trump’s Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton, Trump would consider killing the Magnitsky Act and thwart any investigation into Russian dictator Vladimir Putin’s illicit international activities.
Passed in 2012, the Magnitsky Act and similar laws enacted around the globe were a response to the murder of Sergei Magnitsky, who blew the whistle on a $230 million money-laundering scheme tied to the attempted murder of Putin rival Alexei Navalny.
We know this because the Biden Administration recently slapped sanctions against a German chemical company linked to the chemical used against Navalny.
According to the Daily Beast:
This month, the Biden administration said it was sanctioning a German chemicals company called Riol-Chemie because of its “activities in support of Russia’s weapons of mass destruction programs…[T]he Biden team announced sanctions against seven senior Russian officials and 14 other entities involved in chemical and biological weapons production on March 2.
One of the entities singled out by the U.S. government as a cog in Russia’s weapons of mass destruction program was Riol-Chemie. Investigative files compiled by the authorities in Lithuania—and reviewed by The Daily Beast—show that Riol-Chemie received hundreds of thousands of dollars from a British Virgin Islands-registered company accused of laundering some of the stolen money that was uncovered by Magnitsky.
The investigation has uncovered a web of corruption tying the Russian government to black market chemical weapons around the world. It’s little wonder why Putin was so desperate to have Trump in his pocket. The two even discussed the Magnitsky Act in Helsinki, where Trump had a secret meeting with Putin, the details of which have never been revealed.
Putin desperately tried to shut down Magnitsky investigations worldwide, even sending a fixer to do it for him whose protégée just so happens to be Veselnitskaya, whom Putin sent to Trump Tower in 2016 to persuade Trump to do his bidding.
The man given the task of shutting down the Magnitsky-inspired investigations that were blooming all over the world was Yury Chaika, one of Putin’s top fixers and Russia’s prosecutor-general up until last year. President Obama signed the anti-corruption Magnitsky Act into law in 2012, and Chaika’s protégée, Veselnitskaya, was sent to make the case against the law at the notorious Trump Tower meeting with Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort in 2016.
As we all know, Russia interfered with the 2016 Election to help Trump win. Trump also spent his entire term appeasing Putin, including by ignoring Russian bounties placed on the heads of American troops abroad and allowing Russia to hack our government. Perhaps these gifts were meant to make up for Trump’s failure to get the Magnitsky Act repealed?
Clearly, the Russia investigation ended prematurely and should be revived. This time, investigators can do their jobs properly without interference from a president desperate to cover up his illicit activities. The biggest difference of all is that Trump can absolutely be indicted this time.
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