Russian Connection 5: In Which We Plan Sleepovers

[AmazonGrace]

 

[Howl]

On 1/7/2019 at 3:36 PM, Howl said:

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Putin said Russia would supply soy beans and poultry meat to China and that the United States had effectively given up on that market.

Another Trump move that ultimately benefits Putin via bolstering the Russian economy.  Gosh, coincidence? 

And I forgot to mention, fucks, totally fucks, American farmers who are losing their farms.  When the tariffs were being initiated, I recall an interview with a soybean farmer who had voted for Trump and who was hoping Trump would do the right thing, or they would lose their very large farm in the US heartland.  

[Howl]

Regarding this NYT story from this weekend, imagine you are a FBI Agent working Russian counterintelligence in 2016 and you witness the following:

Epic twitter thread unroll by Clint Watts about the FBI counter-intelligence operation, laying out all the the things, item by item, that pointed to and actions that continue to point to Trump/Russia involvement starting with -

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you witnessed Russian hackers targeting a wide swath of Americans including the DNC, DCCC, former Secretary of State & a Presidential candidates staff

and ending with 

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You either knew or learned through a redaction error that the President’s campaign manager was alleged to have lied about providing polling data to a Russian whom he owed money, via a former Russian GRU contact

He lists 41 Russia-related actions in the public domain that he recalled from memory.  Can you imagine what the FBI must know?

 

[fraurosena]

Wow. Interesting. Very interesting.

Thread.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[AmazonGrace]

Thanks Trump

 

[nvmbr02]

Ok, the Paul Whelan story has gotten weirder. According to his lawyer he had a thumbdrive of what he thought were Russian churches/other travel type sites, but we actually state secrets.

American Held In Russia Unwittingly Got Thumb Drive With State Secrets, Lawyer Says

[onekidanddone]

5 minutes ago, nvmbr02 said:

Ok, the Paul Whelan story has gotten weirder. According to his lawyer he had a thumbdrive of what he thought were Russian churches/other travel type sites, but we actually state secrets.

American Held In Russia Unwittingly Got Thumb Drive With State Secrets, Lawyer Says

Totally normal happens to me all the time.

[AmazonGrace]

 

[fraurosena]

You may have taken over control of the US, but the EU is still standing against you, mr. Putin.

 

[Howl]

JFC, Ari Melber has a panel on tonight with Carter Page, Jerome Corsi, Michael Caputo and Sam Nunberg, all witnesses questioned in Mueller's investigation.  They are discussing Roger Stone right now.  Jerome Corsi is complaining that Alex Jones and Roger Stone are defaming him, when in the past, Corsi was InfoWars' Washington Bureau Chief 

Michael Caputo is saying that the way the Special Counsel operates needs to be changed. 

Ari Melber is playing an old clip of Sam Numberg talking about he'll never, ever turn on Roger Stone, who was his mentor.  Now, Roger's been jerking everyone around and both Numberg and Corsi are pissed at Roger Stone. 

Carter Page is referring to the Steele Dossier as the Dodgy Dossier. Most of the dossier has been proven accurate.  A few things have not been confirmed, but have not been disproven. 

Michael Caputo thinks that Hillary was so humiliated by losing the election that she came up with the whole Russian collusion thing, and (later in the panel) we'll all move past this silly "Russian collusion" thing and come back together as a nation. 

Ari challenged Jerome Corsi about his birther stance, and Jerome challenged Ari to show him Obama's original birth certificate.

Now Michael Caputo is talking about how the US has failed Carter Page with the FISA warrants, and how the FBI/CIA/Deep State or GoshDarnIt, SOMEBODY spied on the Trump campaign.  

 

 

 

Edited January 24, 2019 by Howl

[fraurosena]

Normally I'd ask how the bleep Bolton got a security clearance and became national security advisor. But in this presiduncial age, I'm like, yeah, so what else is new? Russian connections are a prerequisite.

 

[fraurosena]

This NYT article has many interesting interactive graphs which are worth your click on the link.

Trump and His Associates Had More Than 100 Contacts With Russians Before the Inauguration

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During the 2016 presidential campaign and transition, Donald J. Trump and at least 17 campaign officials and advisers had contacts with Russian nationals and WikiLeaks, or their intermediaries, a New York Times analysis has found. At least 10 other associates were told about interactions but did not have any themselves.

Knowledge of these interactions is based on New York Times reporting, documents submitted to Congress, and court records and accusations related to the special counsel investigating foreign interference in the election.

[interactive graph]

Among these contacts are more than 100 in-person meetings, phone calls, text messages, emails and private messages on Twitter. Mr. Trump and his campaign repeatedly denied having such contacts with Russians during the 2016 election.

The special counsel has also investigated connections between the Trump campaign and WikiLeaks, which released thousands of Democratic emails that were hacked by Russia before the election.

Donald J. Trump, at least 6 contacts

[graph]

Aras Agalarov, a Russian billionaire who hosted a Miss Universe pageant with Mr. Trump in Moscow, and the billionaire’s son, Emin, reached out to Mr. Trump several times. (Separately, both men helped arrange the now-famous June 2016 Trump Tower meeting with a Kremlin-linked attorney about getting information that could be damaging to Hillary Clinton.) Mr. Trump was also pursuing a plan to build a Trump Tower in Moscow.

Michael D. Cohen, at least 17 contacts

[graph]

Mr. Cohen was deeply involved in the plan to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. His partner in the effort was Felix Sater, a Trump business associate with deep contacts in Russia. Mr. Cohen admitted lying to Congress about the duration of the project’s discussions and the extent of Mr. Trump’s involvement in them. And Mr. Cohen is also now known to have met with a Russian oligarch on a separate matter.

Donald Trump Jr., at least 17 contacts

[graph]

Mr. Trump Jr. had various contacts with Russians and a Russian intermediary regarding the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting, as well as the possibility of setting up a campaign page on a Russian social media site. He also exchanged private messages with WikiLeaks.

George Papadopoulos, at least 12 contacts

[graph]

Mr. Papadopoulos had multiple contacts with Russian operatives who said they wanted to arrange meetings between Mr. Trump, or his campaign, and Mr. Putin, or Mr. Putin’s staff members. He frequently told campaign officials about these conversations. He pleaded guilty to lying to the F.B.I. about these contacts.

Paul Manafort, at least 6 Russian contacts

[graph]

Mr. Manafort had multiple contacts with Konstantin V. Kilimnik, a longtime business associate tied to Russian intelligence, during the period of time he served on the campaign. He had political polling data shared with Mr. Kilimnik and told him he could offer private campaign briefings to a Russian oligarch. He also attended the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting.

Michael T. Flynn, at least 5 contacts

[graph]

During the transition, Mr. Flynn had several conversations with Sergey I. Kislyak, the Russian ambassador to the United States at the time, about Russian sanctions and about blocking an impending United Nations vote criticizing Israeli settlements.

Jared Kushner, at least 6 contacts

[graph]

Mr. Kushner met with Mr. Kislyak during the transition and discussed opening a communications channel with Russian officials. He also attended the Trump Tower meeting.

Roger J. Stone Jr., at least 18 contacts

[graph]

Mr. Stone sold himself to the campaign as a conduit of inside information from WikiLeaks. In an indictment unsealed on Jan. 25, the special counsel disclosed evidence that a top campaign official dispatched Mr. Stone to get information from WikiLeaks about the thousands of hacked Democratic emails.

 

[Howl]

38 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

Mr. Cohen was deeply involved in the plan to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. His partner in the effort was Felix Sater, a Trump business associate with deep contacts in Russia.

Bingo!  Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo has been talking about keeping an eye on Felix Sater since Day 1.  Supposedly, Sater skated on serious prison time for a financial scam be being a government informant on some serious shit.  He allegedly has many connections at the government level and the bad guys level.  Nobody seems to have quite figured him out. 

Just go to TalkingPointsMemo.com and enter "Felix Sater" in the search bar. 

As an aside, apparently Roger Stone, and probably many in the Trump campaign, have used Whats App, an encrypted messaging system.

Whats App has this information for law enforcement: 

WhatsApp doesn't store your messages on its servers. But in an iPhone, for instance, you can tell WhatsApp to keep a backup of messages in iCloud, Apple's cloud storage service. Once the information is in the cloud, it could be subpoenaedby a government. Apr 6, 2016

 

Edited January 26, 2019 by Howl

[AmazonGrace]

 

Bye opposition

[onekidanddone]

9 minutes ago, AmazonGrace said:

 

Bye opposition

Trump wants to play Fascist Aprentice the American Version

[AmazonGrace]

 

 

[Howl]

Here's a Tweet that links Mitch McConnell's brother-in-law, who's married to Angela Chao, the sister of Elaine Chao, who is Sec of Transportation & McConnell's wife. 

Anyway, McConnell's BiL, Jim Breyer (married to Angela, Elaine Chao's sister), has extensive connections to Russia. Names to keep in mind: Deripaska, Blavatnik, Vekselberg, Glencore (mining & commodities multinational), RUSAL (world's second largest aluminium company by primary production output)

Truly, I'm starting to think that there is no bottom to the pervasive extent of Russian influence in our country.  

Edited January 29, 2019 by Howl

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[Howl]

• UPDATE: After @USTreasury lifted sanctions against OLEG DERIPASKA's companies, the main one (EN+) named 7 new directors, including Chris Burnham, who served on TRUMP's transition team & worked for @AmbJohnBolton at United Nations.
• FT Exclusive: Donald Trump sat down with Vladimir Putin for an 'informal' conversation at the G20 summit in November — with no translator or note-taker from the US to record the talks between the leaders.
• Mitch McConnell’s Ties to Russian Oil Money
• Dana Rohrabacher, called "Putin's favorite congressman" by Politico

From hundreds, if not thousands, of legitimate investigations into pervasive Russian influence and connections among those linked to Trump, Trump's cabinet members, and Trump's direct links to Putin, Russian influenced politicians.  This is the true Deep State.  Books have been written about this. It's no secret.  It's so f**king blatant. It should be a banner headline on every newspaper every day.  Did I mention how blatant this is?

TRUMP IS A RUSSIAN ASSET.  The Russians know how to play a long con; they've been at this for decades and they are very good at it.  From the daily barrage of addled tweets from our Commander in Thief,  the relentless (though appropriate) coverage of the legal sagas of those ensnared in the Mueller investigation,  The Damn WALL,  we've forgotten about how the Russian's co-opted American social media so decisively that their Manchurian candidate was elected.  From Day 1, Trump has been implementing Putin's foreign policy. 

I don't think the Russians anticipated how unhinged and impulsive Trump really is, but still, it's destabilizing to the US.  Advantage: Putin. 

Edited January 30, 2019 by Howl

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[GreyhoundFan]

"Russia secretly offered North Korea a nuclear power plant, officials say"

Spoiler

Russian officials made a secret proposal to North Korea last fall aimed at resolving deadlocked negotiations with the Trump administration over the North’s nuclear weapons program, said U.S. officials familiar with the discussions.

In exchange for North Korea dismantling its nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, Moscow offered the country a nuclear power plant.

The Russian offer, which intelligence officials became aware of in late 2018, marked a new attempt by Moscow to intervene in the high-stakes nuclear talks as it reasserts itself in a string of geopolitical flash points from the Middle East to South Asia to Latin America.

It’s unclear how President Trump will view Moscow’s proposal. For months, he has embraced an unorthodox approach to the negotiations, but his aides are likely to strenuously oppose any major Russian role in a final agreement.

As part of the deal, the Russian government would operate the plant and transfer all byproducts and waste back to Russia, reducing the risk that North Korea would use the power plant to build nuclear weapons, while providing the impoverished country a new energy source.

“The Russians are very opportunistic when it comes to North Korea, and this is not the first time they’ve pursued an energy stake in Korea,” said Victor Cha, a former White House staffer whom the Trump administration considered nominating last year to serve as U.S. ambassador to South Korea.

“Previous administrations have not welcomed these Russian overtures, but with Trump, you never know because he doesn’t adhere to traditional thinking,” Cha said.

After months of delays and canceled meetings, talks between the United States and North Korea have gained new momentum with the announcement of a second summit between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, planned for late February.

Trump has been increasingly upbeat about another round of talks and frustrated by what he views as unfair media coverage of his diplomacy. While he touts North Korea’s suspension of missile launches and nuclear tests, critics have noted a lack of steps on the part of Pyongyang to reduce its nuclear capability.

“With North Korea, we have a very good dialogue,” Trump said this month. “I’m going to not go any further than that. I’m just going to say it’s very special.”

On Tuesday, a new U.S. intelligence assessment of global threats concluded that North Korea is “unlikely to completely give up its nuclear weapons and production capabilities.” The intelligence community has long had a more pessimistic outlook than the White House and the State Department on the nuclear talks.

The State Department, the White House, the CIA, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Russian Embassy in Washington declined to comment on Russia’s secret proposal. It is unclear whether the offer is still under negotiation or if it has affected the discussions between Washington and Pyongyang.

If the Kim regime is interested, Russian officials have asked that Pyongyang provide a realistic timeline for when it could denuclearize, said people familiar with the discussions.

The CIA has assessed that the Russian power plant would produce a very limited amount of weaponizable byproduct, said one official, who like others interviewed spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive information.

Experts said the idea borrows from the original blueprint of the failed 1994 accord between North Korea and the Clinton administration known as the Agreed Framework, which sought to accommodate North Korea’s energy needs.

“It was technically possible for the U.S. to provide light-water reactors to North Korea under the Agreed Framework because Pyongyang agreed to remain a party of the Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and receive safeguards from the International Atomic Energy Agency,” said Duyeon Kim, a Korea expert at the Center for a New American Security.

But she noted that the proposal proved controversial as the discussions transitioned from the Clinton administration to that of George W. Bush. “The Clinton administration was willing to allow them to have a nuclear energy program, but the Bush administration, including John Bolton, was adamantly opposed to light-water reactors,” she said.

Bolton, who was undersecretary of state for arms control under Bush, now serves as Trump’s national security adviser. But the president has not followed Bolton’s hard-line approach to the negotiations.

Diplomats and analysts familiar with Russia’s actions said Moscow has a longtime interest in creating an energy link between Siberia and East Asia, as well as being viewed as a problem-solver for geopolitical crises.

“They want to be a player on the peninsula for economic and security reasons,” said Ken Gause, director of the adversary analytics program at CNA, a defense think tank. “They have aspirations to build a gas pipeline that extends through North Korea all the way down to South Korea, for example. They share a border with North Korea and want a say in how security in Northeast Asia evolves.”

Gause added that he does not think the North Koreans will relinquish their nuclear program until they normalize relations with the United States and end the decades-long conflict between the two nations. “The Russians can do whatever they can to facilitate the situation, but if the United States continues to be adversarial, the North Koreans are going to be very reluctant to take that deal,” he said.

During negotiations with the Bush administration, Russia proposed providing a light-water reactor to North Korea in exchange for the dismantlement of the North’s plutonium production facilities, said Cha, who served in the Bush White House. “The U.S. was opposed to this,” he said, because it wanted Pyongyang to accept an alternative energy solution that did not include nuclear power.

“I imagine the Russians want to provide a light-water reactor, make money off of it and get a foothold on the energy links in East Asia,” said Cha, who had not been briefed on the Russian proposal.

One diplomat who focuses on Russia issues said Moscow’s involvement could help it argue against sanctions placed on it for interventions in Ukraine. “They may be trying to deal themselves back into the global game,” the diplomat said. “ ‘We helped save the world from North Korean nukes, so why the continued sanctions?’ ”

In the past, U.S. officials have opposed a major role for Russia in the denuclearization process because of a long-standing distrust of Moscow, Cha said. China, a key player in the negotiations, has also opposed a prominent Russian energy role, though that could appeal to Trump.

“If this is part of a final deal, Trump could be okay with it if it pokes China in the eye,” said Cha. “The Chinese don’t want the Russians on the peninsula, so if they’re going to be the primary energy supplier, they won’t like it.”

Russia’s offer to North Korea, in late October, came as negotiations between Washington and Pyongyang deadlocked over when the North should disclose an inventory of its nuclear program.

But the tempo of the discussions improved this month with a visit to Washington by Kim Yong Chol, a former spy chief and North Korea’s lead negotiator in the talks. In meetings with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Kim told officials that North Korea had appointed Kim Hyok Chol as the new counterpart for America’s envoy in the talks, Stephen Biegun, said two people familiar with the discussions.

The personnel change was welcomed by the U.S. side, which had struggled for months to secure meetings between Biegun and his previous counterpart, Choi Sun Hee. After Pompeo’s meetings with Kim Yong Chol, Biegun met with Kim Hyok Chol for the first round of working-level talks between the Trump administration and the North Koreans.

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[AmazonGrace]

Cool cool 

 

[fraurosena]

That Trump Tower meeting was about adoptions! Adoptions, I tell you! And a smidgin of treason. Ok, a lot of treason.

Lobbyist at Trump Tower Meeting Received Half A Million Dollars In Suspicious Payments

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A Russian-born lobbyist who attended the controversial Trump Tower meeting in June 2016 received a series of suspicious payments totaling half a million dollars before and after the encounter.

Documents reviewed by BuzzFeed News show that Rinat Akhmetshin, a Soviet military officer turned Washington lobbyist, deposited large, round-number amounts of cash in the months preceding and following the meeting, where a Russian lawyer offered senior Trump campaign officials dirt on Hillary Clinton.

The lobbyist also received a large payment that bank investigators deemed suspicious from Denis Katsyv, whose company Prevezon Holdings was accused by the US Justice Department of laundering the proceeds of a $230 million Russian tax fraud.

The Trump Tower meeting and those who attended it have become a focus of special counsel Robert Mueller’s inquiry into whether the president’s campaign colluded with Russia to interfere in the 2016 election. As part of that inquiry, banks were asked to pull financial information on the meeting attendees, and investigators at Wells Fargo handed over documents on Akhmetshin to the US Treasury in 2017. Those records were passed to Mueller's team, but Peter Carr, a spokesperson for the special counsel, declined to say whether the transactions are under investigation. Congressional investigators also requested the financial information from the Treasury Department.

Just last month, Natalya Veselnitskaya, the Russian lawyer with whom Akhmetshin attended the meeting, was accused by US authorities of secretly coordinating with the Russian government while defending Katsyv in a money laundering case in New York.

Katsyv, the son of a powerful Russian figure, backed a lobbying campaign by Akhmetshin and Veselnitskaya against the Magnitsky Act, a US law imposing sanctions on a group of Russians officials connected to the suspected $230 million fraud.

In the months before and after the meeting with the Trump campaign, documents show that Akhmetshin made unexplained cash deposits totaling $40,000, and received a wire transfer of $100,000 directly from Katsyv along with $52,000 from a foundation funded by Katsyv and other wealthy Russians to try to undermine that law. Bankers examining the lobbyist’s accounts flagged these transactions for a variety of reasons, including the inability to explain them, their overseas origin, and a suspicion that they showed Akhmetshin had violated federal lobbying law.

A half-million dollars of payments to that nonprofit, the Human Rights Accountability Global Initiative Foundation, have also come under scrutiny. Wired by Katsyv and other backers, the payments came two months before the Trump Tower meeting. Investigators at Bank of America, where the foundation held an account, cited the transactions as potential evidence of corruption and bribery in the bid to overturn the sanctions law, and provided them to Treasury, documents show. Mueller is investigating the foundation, Bloomberg reported.

“Want to support more reporting like this? Become a BuzzFeed News member today.”

Bankers at Wells Fargo said the transactions raised concerns that Akhmetshin may have violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) by failing to register as a foreign lobbyist for the network of clients whose money flowed his way. That accusation has been echoed by the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who in 2017 requested information on Akhmetshin from the Department of Justice, which enforces FARA. Akhmetshin told the Associated Press that the Justice Department had contacted him in April 2017 telling him he should have registered under FARA.

With a broad mandate to investigate any matters that arise during the Russia inquiry, the special counsel’s office has given that lobbying regulation new bite. Paul Manafort, the president’s former campaign chair, and his partner, Rick Gates, were both charged with violating it and pleaded guilty to charges that encompassed the unregistered foreign lobbying claims.

Beyond his work with Katsyv and Veselnitskaya, investigators discovered that Akhmetshin had received large, mostly unexplained wire transfers from companies in Latvia and Panama, and payments from longtime American political insiders, one of whom is a veteran Republican operator with ties to the Trump campaign. (fraurosena comment: could this be Roger Stone?)

Akhmetshin and his lawyers did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Reached on his doorstep, the lobbyist told BuzzFeed News, “Get the fuck out of here, okay?”

Veselnitskaya also declined to answer questions. “Don’t bother with questions,” she told BuzzFeed News in Russian. “Your article is paid for and you have your text ready. Don’t be distracted from what you consider the meaning of life.”

Wells Fargo and Bank of America declined to comment. The Treasury Department did not return a request for comment.

The Senate Intelligence Committee, which is leading the congressional probes into Russian election interference, has scrutinized Akhmetshin’s Magnitsky-related lobbying work, chair Richard Burr confirmed to BuzzFeed News. “Given that the June 9 meeting” — in Trump Tower, with senior campaign staff — “was about that, I think we’ve explored every possibility relative to that topic,” Burr said.

Asked if the committee has investigated the nonprofit that backed Akhmetshin’s lobbying efforts, Burr said: “I think everybody’s been of interest to us; every group, every individual that was tied to that.”

In testimony before another Senate committee, Akhmetshin downplayed his role in the Trump Tower meeting, saying he just happened to be in New York City to see a play, and he showed up in a t-shirt and jeans after receiving a last-minute invitation from Veselnitskaya.

But that invitation would thrust him to the center of the Trump-Russia investigation and shine a light on his highly secretive finances.

Akhmetshin says it was in late 2015 that he met Denis Katsyv and his lawyer Natalya Veselnitskaya. They wanted his help.

The US government had sued Katsyv’s company, Prevezon Holdings, and accused it of being part of a global money laundering machine. Federal prosecutors said Russian government officials and gangsters had stolen $230 million in a tax refund fraud and used Katsyv to funnel some of it through Manhattan real estate.

Akhmetshin is a well-established Washington power broker who has worked to advance the agendas of Kremlin apparatchiks and influential clients from former Soviet states. When they need someone to bend the ear of a US lawmaker, prod a reporter to write a favorable story, or launch a campaign to discredit their enemies, they turn to Akhmetshin — and pay him handsomely.

So when Prevezon hired a powerful US law firm, Akhmetshin was brought on to review documents, he testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The firm was BakerHostetler, which investigators at Wells Fargo found paid him $97,400 over five months. The payments were flagged along with the others in Akhmetshin’s account as evidence that he might have violated FARA. BakerHostetler did not return a request for comment.

Akhmetshin said an old friend was also working on the case: Ed Lieberman, a Washington attorney with a wealth of experience on matters related to Russia and post-Soviet states. Lieberman and Akhmetshin have known each other for more than two decades, Akhmetshin said, and the duo worked on behalf of organizations connected to a former Kazakh prime minister. Fusion GPS, the Washington research firm that commissioned the famous Trump dossier, was also hired to conduct research.

It was during this time that Katsyv and Veselnitskaya asked Akhmetshin to go a step further. They wanted him to help them change US legislation bearing the Magnitsky name.

The first Magnitsky law, passed in 2012, was named after Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian tax lawyer who was reportedly tortured to death in prison after uncovering the massive fraud. The law placed sanctions on powerful Russians for their involvement in Magnitsky’s death and the vast scheme that Katsyv stood accused of abetting. Now, the US Congress was set to pass a second Magnitsky Act targeting human rights abusers worldwide.

Akhmetshin said he told Katsyv and Veselnitskaya that he had discovered “inconsistencies” in Magnitsky’s story while working on the Prevezon case. “They asked me what was my advice, and as a long-time D.C. resident, I know there’s nothing better like taking these things to the Hill,” Akhmetshin told the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Akhmetshin received his final check from BakerHostetler in March 2016. That same month, he deposited $20,000 cash into his account, the first in a series of cash deposits totaling $78,900 that his bank flagged as suspicious because there was no way to determine their origin or purpose.

In April, Akhmetshin registered to lobby — though not as a foreign agent — on behalf of the Human Rights Accountability Global Initiative Foundation, a Delaware nonprofit that rented office space in the same building as BakerHostetler’s Washington offices. Akhmetshin told congressional investigators the foundation was established by lawyers for Katsyv.

Akhmetshin wrote in his lobbying registration that he would be working on “international adoptions.” That innocent-sounding issue had become a battleground between Russia and the US, with Putin exacting revenge for the sanctions levied under the Magnitsky Act by blocking US adoptions of Russian children. Resuming the adoptions and criticizing the sanctions were among Veselnitskaya’s talking points at the Trump Tower meeting — to the disappointment of Trump campaign officials who had come in search of information about Clinton.

The same month Akhmetshin registered to lobby for the foundation, Katsyv and two of his business partners, plus a Russian bank executive and a company registered in the British Virgin Islands, sent a series of wire transfers totaling nearly $500,000 to the nonprofit’s account.

Examiners at Bank of America later turned a record of these transactions over to US Treasury officials, alerting them that the payments could be evidence of bribery or political corruption related to the Magnitsky Act. The examiners noted it was odd that all five of the deposits happened so close to one another — and not long before the Trump Tower meeting.

At Wells Fargo, officials noted that Akhmetshin received $52,686 from the foundation. The amount is at least $30,000 more than he declared earning on lobbying disclosure forms that year.

Akhmetshin canvassed Capitol Hill, telling lawmakers that the stories they heard about Magnitsky and Russian money-laundering were wrong. The foundation also hired Cozen O’Connor, a high-powered US lobbying firm, and the late Democratic Rep. Ron Dellums. A spokesperson for Cozen O’Connor did not answer questions from BuzzFeed News. "The substance of our brief engagement with HRAGIF is disclosed in our Lobbying Disclosure Act filings," the firm’s spokesperson said. Veselnitskaya says she worked as an advisor to the foundation, while Lieberman came on board as its legal advisor, Akhmetshin said.

Akhmetshin and Dellums spent May 2016 looking for sympathetic members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, which was working on the new Magnitsky law. “I had a ton of people that the Russians sent through my office to feed me a bunch of bullshit,” Rep. Jim McGovern, a Democrat on the committee who worked on the legislation, told BuzzFeed News.

There was no talk of adoptions when Akhmetshin and Dellums got the attention of Democratic Rep. Gregory Meeks, another member of the committee, outside his office. “This was Magnitsky,” Meeks said.

By the early summer, Veselnitskaya was working on a far more audacious approach. The lawyer was busy setting up a meeting in Manhattan with Trump’s top campaign officials, including his son Donald Trump Jr; his son-in-law, Jared Kushner; and his campaign chair Manafort.

Trump Jr. said that when he got to the Trump Tower meeting with the Russians, he quickly realized that Veselnitskaya had little of the promised dirt on Hillary Clinton. “It was clear to me that her real purpose in asking for the meeting all along was to discuss Russian adoptions and the Magnitsky Act,” he told the Senate Judiciary Committee in September 2017. “I proceeded to quickly and politely end the meeting by telling Ms. Veselnitskaya that because my father was a private citizen there did not seem to be any point for having this discussion.”

Akhmetshin made the second large, round-number cash deposit into his account two months later, in August. Bank examiners flagged the $20,000 deposit as suspicious because they could not determine the origin of the funds. The lobbyist also received his final check from the Human Rights Accountability Global Initiative Foundation that month.

Efforts to change the new Magnitsky Act had failed. In December 2016, the US passed the expanded legislation, and a few days later, Akhmetshin filed paperwork saying he was no longer lobbying for the foundation. But payments from those connected to the foundation didn’t stop.

Akhmetshin continued receiving checks and wires from Wiles Consulting, a Florida-based company controlled by Lanny Wiles, a longtime Republican operator. Those payments, which began in January 2016, extended to April 2017, and totaled $72,500.

Investigators at Akhmetshin’s bank said the direction of the payments — from Wiles to Akhmetshin — contrasted with how their working relationship had been portrayed publicly. Investigators, citing unspecified public information, said Wiles claimed he was paid by Akhmetshin to work on the Magnitsky lobbying issue, not the other way around. The investigators did not cite their source, but a 2016 Politico article quoted Wiles saying he had been paid by Akhmetshin. Investigators at Bank of America did find that the foundation had issued checks to Wiles, but the amount is unclear. Wiles, whose wife was the chair of Trump’s Florida campaign, did not return messages seeking comment.

In the same Politico article, Wiles said he didn’t want to register as a foreign agent, but that Akhmetshin had told him it wouldn’t be necessary, as he would be working for BakerHostetler.

FARA offers several exemptions, including one for those representing foreign individuals or entities in a legal capacity. However, the exemption “has several technical requirements and has been interpreted by DOJ relatively narrowly in the past,” said Dan Pickard, a DC lawyer who specializes in FARA. Another exemption allows those representing foreigners to register under the less stringent Lobbying Disclosure Act, as Akhmetshin did. “However, this exemption is not applicable if the agent is working for a foreign principal that is either a government of a foreign country or a foreign political party,” Pickard said.

In August 2017, Akhmetshin made a third cash deposit into his account, this time for $22,900. Again, bank investigators could not readily explain the deposit. That same month, the Financial Times reported, Akhmetshin testified before a grand jury in Mueller’s investigation.

Akhmetshin received another wire transfer in October 2017 — this time directly from Katsyv, whose father, Pyotr Katsyv, is vice president of the state-owned Russian Railways and a former transportation minister. Representatives for Pyotr Katsyv did not return a detailed message.

Pyotr Katsyv was recently revealed to have been involved, at least peripherally, in his son’s US money laundering case. In December 2018, Veselnitskaya was indicted on obstruction of justice charges for allegedly helping the Russian government draft a document claiming that Magnitsky was the true perpetrator of the massive tax fraud. Prevezon, which Veselnitskaya defended, submitted the document in court as evidence. Veselnitskaya emailed drafts of the document to “a supervising Russian prosecutor in the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office,” the indictment says, and in one case copied the “father of the owner of Real Estate Company 1” — identifiable as the senior Katsyv.

The $100,000 from Denis Katsyv to Akhmetshin was listed only as payment for consulting work, the documents show. Given what was already known at the time about Akhmetshin’s work on the Magnitsky Act and Prevezon case, bankers listed the transaction as another example of his alleged undeclared foreign lobbying. Veselnitskaya, who has represented Katsyv, did not answer questions for the Prevezon owner.

Investigators at Wells Fargo reviewed the previous two years of Akhmetshin’s account activity in search of evidence that could be helpful to Mueller’s inquiry. One of the earliest transactions they flagged was a $30,000 wire from a company based in Latvia. Examiners said the transaction referenced a short-term loan, but they could find little information about the company. Bankers labelled the transaction, like other wires into Akhmetshin’s account, as suspicious because it came from overseas and could be connected to Akhmetshin’s alleged undeclared foreign lobbying.

The company was Laudato SIA, a firm connected to Igor Pobereschski, a Russian-German lobbyist who is reportedly wanted in Russia for failing to pay debts to a Moscow law firm. Pobereschski did not answer detailed questions from BuzzFeed News.

A couple months later, in July 2015, a Panamanian shell company called EGH International had wired Akhmetshin $17,774 for what it listed as travel expense reimbursement, examiners found. They could find little other public information about EGH International, either.

Investigators at Wells Fargo noted that beginning in January 2015, Akhmetshin began collecting checks from his old friend Lieberman as well, totaling $52,000 by June 2017. Investigators said one of the checks appeared to reference a rich Russian business owner. Lieberman did not return requests for comment.

Meanwhile, Akhmetshin cashed two checks, worth a total of $7,500, related to another foreign entity — one from an institute he told Congress is “centered around” the former Kazakh prime minister and another from a DC lawyer who has represented him in the US.

Wells Fargo and Bank of America submitted their findings to the Treasury Department in early November 2017. By then, Congress was scrutinizing Akhmetshin, too. The Senate Judiciary and House Intelligence committees questioned Akhmetshin that month. The Senate Intelligence Committee interviewed Akhmetshin in the fall of 2017, a source close to the committee confirmed to BuzzFeed News.

The Senate Intelligence and Judiciary committees both requested financial documents on Akhmetshin, but it’s unclear what, exactly, they have gotten. Burr, the Intelligence Committee chair, has said his panel has received “every financial document” requested from Treasury.

A source familiar with the House Intelligence Committee’s Russia investigation said Akhmetshin’s aggressive Hill lobbying came up during the probe, but was not looked at in great detail. Republicans on the committee shuttered its Russia investigation last year, but Democrats have retaken control of the House, allowing them to reopen the inquiry.