When you hear hoofbeats, don't think of zebras... By William Rivers Pitt
Some years back,
Sergei Magnitsky, an auditor for a Russian law firm, uncovered a tax fraud scheme in his country so vast as
to beggar historical precedent. The perpetrators were stealing whole
corporations, looting them, and then using the stolen corporations to launder
vast sums of dirty money. In some cases, Russian security forces were involved
in these crimes. Other instances of
money laundering involved "Manhattan real estate" entities, according
to the criminal complaint filed by former US Attorney Preet
Bharara, who was fired by Trump not long after the inauguration. That Bharara
complaint, by the way, was filed against a man named Denis Katsyv, who was the
alleged mastermind of the scheme uncovered by Magnitsky.
The story did not end
well for Sergei Magnitsky. He was arrested for tax evasion and jailed at the
behest of the very oligarchs he was investigating, and later died in prison
under very suspicious circumstances. In retaliation for his death, Congress in
2012 passed a law freezing the assets of 18 Russians involved in the annihilation
of Magnitsky. His investigation went nowhere, and when Preet Bharara lost his
job as US Attorney, the whole thing quietly blew away.
Or did it? Vladimir
Putin was not happy when those 18 Russians had their assets frozen, and
retaliated by ending all adoptions of Russian children by US families. To
promote this edict, Putin tapped an attorney named Natalia Veselnitskaya to
help with the public relations push. Natalia Veselnitskaya was also the
attorney for Denis Katysyv, author of the scheme uncovered by Magnitsky, in the
matter being pursued by Bharara. Natalia Veselnitskaya
was the Russian lawyer who met with Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and Paul
Manafort at Trump Tower in June of 2016 as part of the Russian government’s
effort to help Donald Trump win the election.
On Friday morning, the
story took a remarkable twist when NBC News revealed the existence of a fifth person present at
the meeting with Trump Jr., Kushner, Manafort and Veselnitskaya. Rinat
Akhmetshin, a Russian-American lobbyist and former counter-intelligence officer
with the Soviet military, accompanied Veselnitskaya to the meeting. Red flags
began waving immediately upon this revelation: Not only were Veselnitskaya and
Akhmetshin associates in the lobbying effort to undo the
sanctions against those 18 Russians involved in the Magnitsky affair, but
Akhmetshin has been accused of orchestrating a massive international hacking conspiracy at the behest
of a billionaire Russian industrialist. It is worth noting that Akhmetshin is a
US citizen, and Robert Mueller's subpoena power absolutely includes US
citizens.
… and then, just
before 9:00am on Friday morning, Trump Jr.'s own lawyer revealed the existence
of a sixth person who was present at the Trump Tower meeting. At the time of
this writing, the name of that sixth person remains unknown. Before 5:00pm on
the same day, CNN was reporting that eight people or more actually attended the meeting. Magnitsky to Katsyv to
Veselnitskaya and Akhmetshin to Trump Tower, with Vladimir Putin hovering over
it all and an indeterminate number of others along for the ride. Junior's first
explanation for the meeting was that Veselnitskaya wanted to talk about
"adoptions," which may well have been code for a push to have the
sanctions lifted against those 18 Russians involved in the Magnitsky matter,
should Trump emerge victorious in November. Veselnitskaya and Akhmetshin have
been working for years, the former at the behest of Putin, to undo those
sanctions.
It is all of a piece, and as the old saying goes, when you hear
hoofbeats, don't think of zebras. We are dealing with
some very grim possibilities here. In the worst case scenario, the president of
the United States, his son and top campaign/administration staffers got
themselves involved with an agent for the Russian government who is neck-deep
in a massive money laundering scandal that may very well have gotten a guy
killed in prison. These issues could explain why Robert Mueller has tapped the best money laundering prosecutors and
investigators in all of US jurisprudence to join his team.
It would seem that whatever
slivers of credibility the Trump administration ever possessed have been
consumed by this bonfire of hubris, lying and shady dealing (though much of
his base remains loyal). Congressional Republicans are trying
to pretend the White House doesn't actually exist as their legislative agenda
founders like a rot-riddled rowboat. The only statement coming out of 1600
Pennsylvania Avenue is "Talk to the lawyers," lather rinse repeat. Junior is about to
have a series of incredibly unpleasant conversations with some very serious
people, whereupon he may come to learn -- perhaps for the first time in his
life -- the meaning of the word "consequences." Messrs. Kushner and
Manafort, who were actual campaign employees when that fateful meeting took
place, and are therefore subject to a whole raft of other laws, can expect the same… read more
