"The meeting was of private nature. I asked for help to share information that I was familiarized with due to my professional activity… It was a totally normal request for anyone who could be of any help in Congress to let congresspeople know what had truly happened to Mr. Browder in Russia," she told the Rossiya 24 television channel.
Veselnitskaya repeated that her meeting with Donald Trump Jr on June 9, 2016 in New York City was not related to the US presidential campaign, after US media claimed she had offered him damning materials on Democratic contender Hillary Clinton.
"It did and still has nothing to do with [Trump’s] rivals or the presidential election… It is a lie," the lawyer argued.
Veselnitskaya added the US parliament did not seem all too interested in hearing her side of the story. She said in an interview with the RT broadcaster in mid-June she was ready to testify to Congress about the Trump Tower meeting.
Veselnitskaya was reported to have links to the Kremlin, an allegation she has flatly denied. Reports about her 2016 meeting with the younger Trump – alongside Trump Sr’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and campaign manager Paul Manafort – are part of a larger media hunt for hints of alleged Russian meddling in the presidential election. Moscow has denied this accusation, while presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov has stressed the lawyer did not speak for the Kremlin.
