Ivanka Trump chatted with Russia-linked lawyer, lobbyist in 2016
Ivanka Trump chatted with two Russian-linked participants in a Trump Tower meeting with her brother Donald Jr. as the pair departed the June 2016 sitdown, the Los Angeles Times reported.
The president’s daughter encountered Kremlin-connected attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya and Russian lobbyist Rinat Akhmetshin outside the elevators in the Fifth Ave. skyscraper, the report indicated.
Although a source told the newspaper that nothing more than pleasantries were exchanged, special counsel Robert Mueller is pursuing details on all meetings between the Trump family and the Russians.
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Ivanka did not attend the 30-minute sitdown between the Russians and three top Trump campaign advisers — his namesake son, his son-in-law Jared Kushner and campaign manager Paul Manafort.
Mueller has already indicted Manafort as part of his probe of possible links between Russia and the Trump campaign.
Manafort was charged with fraud, conspiracy and money-laundering tied to his time as a lobbyist in Ukraine prior to joining Team Trump.
The Midtown sitdown returned to the headlines this week via former White House insider Steve Bannon, who ripped the three Trump representatives at the meeting.
“Even if you thought that this was not treasonous, or unpatriotic, or bad ... and I happen to think it’s all of that, you should have called the FBI immediately,” Bannon says in the new tell-all book “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House.”
The Los Angeles paper also reported that at least one of the participants in the meeting between the Russians and the Trump trio was recalled for additional questioning by Mueller.
The special counsel is focusing on Donald Jr.’s misleading statement — issued by the White House — that the Trump Tower summit dealt with “a program about the adoption of Russian children.”
The Trump son later acknowledged he was enticed to the meeting by a promise that Veselnitskaya would deliver damaging information about Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
The paper did not identify the participant summoned back by Mueller.
Defense attorneys involved in the Mueller investigation told the Los Angeles Times that the callback of the witness could signal a change in the probe’s direction.
Mueller could now be looking at possible obstruction of justice by Trump and his administration rather than collusion with the Russians during the 2016 campaign.
Trump, in his latest tweets about the investigation, reiterated that there was no campaign wrongdoing during his run for the White House.
“Russian collusion, after one year of intense study, has proven to be a total hoax on the American public,” he wrote Saturday.
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