The Round Table at Trump Tower appears more about a gethering of lobbyists, not a covert action from Russian intelligence to infiltrate the Trump team. What was the role of Rob Goldstone and the email content which seems more and more a “nothing burger”.

From the Trump campaign were present Donald Trump Jr. , presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner  and then Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort.

  • Rob Goldstone, a British citizen, agent for Emin Algarov
      The father of Amin is Aras who promoted the Miss Universe Pageant of 2016 in Moscow, a few months ahead of the Winter Olympics at Sochi. Russia was already taking a lot of heat on human rights issues in a series of provocations from the West.
  • Natalia Veselnitskaya, a Russian lawyer who works for gangster Denis Katsyv. She is involved in the Manhattan court case. Mr. Petr Katsyv and his son stand accused of money laundering and have been hampered by sanctions of the U.S. Treasury on the Magnitsky Act. If she lobbied for adoption of Russian children, I’m wondering who is paying her fees.
  • Translator for Ms. Veselnitskaya as she is not fluent in the English language. Most likely someone hired in the New York area. [Anatoli Samochornov – see below]

      Just five days after meeting in June 2016 at Trump Tower with Donald Trump Jr., presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner and then Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, Moscow attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya showed up in Washington in the front row of a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on Russia policy, video footage of the hearing shows.

      She also engaged in a pro-Russia lobbying campaign and attended an event at the Newseum in Washington, D.C. where Russian supporters showed a movie that challenged the underpinnings of the U.S. human rights law known as the Magnitysky Act, which Russian leader Vladimir Putin has reviled and tried to reverse.

      [Source: The Hill today]

      The June 13 showing was the film’s premiere. Other screenings had been canceled in Europe following protests by critics who say it is a crude attempt to smear Magnitsky’s name and that of the Western financier who employed him, William Browder.

      That it was shown at all was a small coup for Rinat Akhmetshin, the man at the back of the room who for nearly 20 years has worked the shadowy corners of the Washington lobbying scene on behalf of businessman and politicians from around the former Soviet Union.

  • Rinat Akhmetshin, dual nationality US and Russian, works across many topics as a registered lobbyist in Washington DC. See article published by RFERL in July 2016.

    And the 8th person at the meeting on June 9, 2016, has now been identified:

  • Ike Kaveladze, a vice president of the Crocus Group working in the state of New Jersey. Kaveladze is a naturlized U.S. citizen and has been contacted by Robert Mueller. The Crocus Group is the enterprise run by Aras Algarov.

Is seems to me Rob Goldstone used his relationship with the Trumps from the Miss Universe Pageant of 2013 to get the arrangement for a meeting with several lobbyists. This is not a setting to make nefarious deals as that by itself would leave all attendees vulnerable to black mail. A Kremlin undercover intelligence operation? Quite unlikely and it would have to be Rinat Akhemetshin as he was depicted as a “gun for hire” with a military background from the Soviet era.  

Russian Official Offers to Become FBI Informant to Assist Son Allegedly Involved in Money Laundering Scandal in Magnitsky Case – Dec. 2015

According to court documents, Pyotr Katsyv, currently Vice President of Russian Railways, and former Vice Premier of the Moscow Regional Government, offered the US Government to meet to provide information on “criminal activity in Russia.” This offer was preceded by a meeting between his son, Denis Katsyv, and FBI Special Agent in Rome, Italy.

Following the offer from Pyotr Katsyv, plans were made by the US Department of Justice to meet him in Hungary in September 2014. However, he did not show up at the meeting.

One month later, in October 2014,  it was announced that Pyotr Katsyv was appointed vice president of Russian Railways, the Russian state company, whose former chairman Vladimir Yakunin is a close ally of President Vladimir Putin and subject of US sanctions. Pyotr Katsyv then informed the US Government that that he wanted to “negotiate a settlement” in the case of his son, Denis Katsyv.

[Update-1] Donald Trump Jr. Met Russian Accused of Laundering $1.4 Billion

Scott Olson, a former FBI counterintelligence agent [squad CD-7], told The Daily Beast that the meeting’s size and attendees would not make much sense as a Russian intelligence operation. “If you’re gonna have a covert meeting, it’s gonna be two people,” Olson said. “If you have more than two people, it becomes exponentially more difficult to keep the meeting confidential, and the content of the meeting confidential.”

And the people at the meeting, from Veselnitskaya to Ahkmetshin to Kaveladze, are not the sort of operatives intelligence agencies usually recruit.

Anatoli Samochornov is an American citizen who has regularly translated for Natalia Veselnitskaya

Samochornov has a long track record of interpreting for governmental agencies and dignitaries, including Russia’s leading human rights activist and the U.S. State Department. He holds an M.A. in linguistics from the Institute of Foreign Languages in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia, and an MBA from the University of Washington.

Samochornov seemed to dislike Republicans like Trump on social media. In 2013, he shared a meme about restarting America in “safe mode,” with free health care and without guns. In another post, he shared a Rachel Maddow post critical of Karl Rove.

Samochornov is bound by professional conduct not to talk publicly about discussions with clients. The American Translators Association (ATA) lists in its code of ethics and professional practice that interpreters’ ethical and professional duty to “hold in confidence any privileged and/or confidential information entrusted to us in the course of our work.”

Samochornov’s work for Veselnitskaya extended outside of the courtroom. Veselnitskaya formed a nonprofit group called the Human Rights Accountability Global Initiative Foundation [website as false front / no content – creation date 2016-03-31 – Oui] which employed Akhmetshin as a lobbyist. The group’s stated purpose is to restart the adoptions of Russian children to the U.S. by repealing the Magnitsky Act.

○ ‘This is off the map’: Former intelligence officials say the reported Kushner-Russia plan is unlike anything they’ve ever seen | Business Insider – May 31, 2017 |

○ Exclusive: Why Akhmetshin and Fusion GPS Should Be Investigated
○ Globalisation: Katsyv links Moscow – London – NY – Tel Aviv

 « click for more info »

… toen kwam de olifant en blies het sprookje uit.

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