In July 2017, US media reported that during the 2016 presidential campaign, the US President's son, Donald Trump Jr., met with Russian attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya in a bid to obtain confidential information about his father's political rival Hillary Clinton.
After the meeting, Trump Jr. reportedly said that the conversation with Veselnitskaya focused solely on the issue of US nationals adopting Russian children.
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In an interview with Sputnik on Saturday, Veselnitskaya confirmed her meeting with investigators of the US Senate, which she said was initiated by the US, given that they could not promise to guarantee her security in the US.
She underscored that her meeting with Trump Jr. was of "an absolutely private nature," which she said was organized in June 2016 following a personal request from her clients, who were not related to the interests of the client, who she represented in the US.
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"It was a meeting with Donald Trump Jr. which had nothing to do with any election campaign, Hillary Clinton's personality or Donald Trump Jr.'s father's personality. He was not even a single presidential candidate at that time," Veselnitskaya pointed out.
According to her, the New York Times presented this meeting last July as part of Russia's collusion with US President Donald Trump.
"And their versions then began to differ: some alleged about my embarrassing material on Hillary Clinton, while others claimed I tried to use such material against Trump in order to blackmail him to cancel the sanctions. In general, they are trying to destroy themselves, like cockroaches in a barrel," Veselnitskaya said.
She also said that the investigators asked her about Glenn Simpson, whose research firm Fusion GPS was reportedly tasked with making an embarrassing dossier on then-presidential candidate Donald Trump in 2015. The dossier was allegedly compiled by former spy turned private investigator Christopher Steel, who was hired by Fusion GPS.
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"All the [alleged] interference in the US elections revolves around this Steel dossier, and I told the investigators that this document is a fake. I explained to them why this is a fake, citing specific examples," Veselntiskaya noted.
The investigation of Russia's alleged interference in the 2016 US election, as well as the purported links between Trump and Russia – has been denied both by the White House and the Kremlin. It is beings conducted by independent special prosecutor Robert Mueller, as well as by both chambers of the US Congress.
Moscow has repeatedly denied allegations it interfered in the US election, with the Russian President's Dmitry Peskov calling the accusations "absolutely groundless."
