The mysterious Russian lawyer who met with Donald Trump Jr., who thought she had dirt on Hillary Clinton, actually claimed to have damaging information about two billionaire donors to the Democratic Party, The New York Times reported Friday.
In a meeting at Trump Tower in New York last year, Natalia Veselnitskaya produced a memo that she had shared with one of Russia's most powerful officials, prosecutor general Yury Chaika, a close ally of President Vladimir Putin, the Times reported.
Putin repeated the charges contained in the memo last week when he addressed a conference of Western scholars. Russia's state-run television has also reported on the issue in interviews with Veselnitskaya and Chaika.
The Times report is the latest development in the long-running narrative that President Donald Trump's campaign colluded with Russia to defeat Clinton in last year's presidential election. It comes as new reports show that the Democratic Party was behind a largely discredited dossier that claimed Trump was compromised by Russia.
In her memo, Veselnitskaya accused an American firm, Ziff Brothers Investments, of illegally buying shares of a Russian firm and avoiding tens of millions of dollars in Russian taxes.
"The company was the financial vehicle of three billionaire brothers, two of them major donors to Democratic candidates including Mrs. Clinton. By implication, Ms. Veselnitskaya, said, those political contributions were tainted by 'stolen' money,'" the Times reported.
Trump Jr. has said he was unimpressed by the Russian lawyer's charges and considered the 20-minute meeting with her in June 2016 a waste of time.
"Some DNC donors may have done something in Russia and they didn't pay taxes, I was, like, 'What does this have to do with anything?'" the Times quoted Trump Jr.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.