Trump Jr. Sewer Had Another Major Player He Forgot to Mention - Oops

Rinat Akhmetshin: USSR-born now Russian-American Citizen
and lobbyist for Russian interests

(and Former Russian Counter-Intelligence Officer)

Breaking News and Update on the Donald J. Trump Jr. meeting and a new player previously not mentioned.

His name is Rinat Akhmetshin has been the man of hour since revelations emerged that he attended the infamous Trump Jr meeting. Akhmetshin is a former Soviet Intelligence Officer who came to the U.S. in 2009. He has been working as a lobbyist since and was involved in a lawsuit that claimed he masterminded a hacking scheme and ran negative public-relations campaigns.

Now it gets better.

In addition to that, it also appears that Akhmetshin worked as a lobbyist along alongside Fusion GPS, the company which put together the infamous Trump dossier. That unverified dossier was published by Buzzfeed and was intended as opposition research against Trump. It got its nickname the “Pee Tape Dossier” because of the claim contained within that Russian intelligence agencies had footage of Trump urinating on a prostitutes in a bed at the Ritz-Carlton in Moscow.

That collaboration was highlighted in a complaint filed by GOP Senator Chuck Grassley last year,  According to Grassley, Akhmetshin also did not register as a foreign agent during his lobbying activities and also in the complaint said: “It is particularly disturbing that Mr. Akhmetshin and Fusion GPS were working together on this pro-Russia lobbying effort in 2016 in light of Mr. Akhmetshin’s history and reputation.  Mr. Akhmetshin is a Russian immigrant to the U.S. who has admitted having been a Soviet counterintelligence officer.”

Also, the Grassley complaint said Akhmetshin lobbied with former Rep. Ron Dellums (D-CA from 1971-1998), who was hired by Natalia Veselnitskaya, the Russian lawyer who just met Trump Jr. They all told staffers “they were lobbying on behalf of a Russian company called Prevezon and asking the Committee to delay the Global Magnitsky Act or at least remove Magnitsky from the name.” (see more below).

Note on Prevezon: It is a Russian holding company that had ties to the money laundering fiasco that Magnitsky uncovered. They paid $6 million to settle and did not admit fault. Even more interesting is Veselnitskaya was Prevezon’s lawyer and came to New York for this case, which is where she was just before her meeting with Trump Jr.

Background on Akhmetshin and *Fusion GPS (see more below) lobbying: They both lobbied against the Magnitsky Act, passed and signed into law by President Obama in 2012.

It gave the U.S. power to defend itself from Russian corruption by withholding visas and freezing financial assets of Russian officials that have violated human rights. The bill is named for Sergei Magnitsky, the man who discovered $230 million missing from Russian tax officials and police officers; later arrested and then died in prison. The U.S. law upset Putin so much that he retaliated by outlawing the adoption of Russia orphans by Americans.

* Fusion GPS: Fusion GPS is a commercial research and strategic intelligence firm based in Washington DC.  The company was co-founded in 2009 by Glenn R. Simpson and Peter Fritsch, both former journalists for The Wall Street Journal.

The company conducts open-source investigations, provides research and strategic advice for businesses, law firms and investors, as well as for political inquiries, such as opposition research.  

Fusion GPS uses “source networks to find information that is not readily accessible or in the public domain.”

Prominent cases:

•  DNC opposition research on Mitt Romney

•  Planned Parenthood Fetus Selling Video

•  USA v. Prevezon

•  Most-current is Trump dossier and Don Jr. meeting

In September 2015, Fusion GPS was hired to do opposition research for Republicans who opposed Donald Trump's bid during for the 2016 presidential election.

When Trump had emerged as the probable Republican candidate for the 2016 U.S. presidential election in the spring of 2016, Republican donors stopped funding the investigation, and Democratic supporters of Hillary Clinton became Fusion GPS's new clients.

In June 2016, after the DNC had been hacked and its emails began to be published online, Fusion GPS retained Christopher Steele, a private British corporate intelligence investigator and former MI-6 agent, to research any Russian-Trump connections. Steele issued a series of memos (June to December 2016) which became known totally as:  The Donald Trump–Russia Dossier.

In January 2017, U.S. intelligence leaders briefed then-President Obama and President-elect Trump on the contents of the dossier.

CNN then reported that U.S. investigators had corroborated some parts of the dossier in February 2017, however to date, none of the information relates to the salacious allegations in the dossier but rather it relates to conversations between foreign nationals.

In March 2017, then FBI Director James Comey (fired on May 9 by Trump) confirmed that the FBI was conducting an official investigation into one of the central allegations in the dossier: That the Trump campaign had coordinated with Russia to influence the 2016 Presidential election.

In March 2017, Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) initiated an inquiry into whether the FBI had relied on the dossier and on Steele to further its investigation into Trump and his Russian ties. Others have credited Steele with raising questions about the alleged collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign. Additionally, both Fusion GPS and Akhmetshin were subject of another complaint by Sen. Grassley for failure to register as foreign agents under the FARA. 

So, how is Rinat Akhmetshin connected since we now know that he is linked to Fusion GPS and involved in the pro-Russian campaign in 2016 which involved lobbying congressional staffers to undermine the Magnitsky Act?

On July 14, 2017, it was confirmed by multiple sources that Akhmetshin was the fifth and previously undisclosed attendee who met with Donald Trump Jr., Paul Manafort, Jared Kushner, and Russian attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya meeting in Trump Tower June 9, 2016.

My Summary: All of this reported elsewhere in this blog – and boy is it getting complex and detailed – by design I suspect … only time will tell for surely those involved will not … I am sure Robert Mueller is up to his eyeballs in this … can’t wait to see his full report – but, what then?

The $64,000 dollar question isn’t it. So, hang on tight – it might get rough.