Thread: Ex-Soviet Agent at Meeting Between Trump Jr., Russian Lawyer: NBC New

Ex-Soviet Agent at Meeting Between Trump Jr., Russian Lawyer: NBC News

U.S. News & World Report 1h ago

Russian-American Lobbyist Met With Trump Jr., Russian Lawyer: NBC News

July 14, 2017, at 7:46 a.m.


Russian-American Lobbyist Met With Trump Jr., Russian Lawyer: NBC News


FILE PHOTO: Donald Trump Jr. speaks at the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio U.S. July 19, 2016. REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni/File photo REUTERS


By David Alexander

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A lobbyist who was once a Soviet counter-intelligence officer participated last year in a meeting with senior aides to U.S. President Donald Trump, including his son, and a Russian lawyer, NBC News reported on Friday, adding to allegations of possible connections between Moscow and the November election.

NBC News, which did not identify the Russian-American lobbyist, said some U.S. officials suspected him of having ongoing ties to Russian intelligence, something he denied to the network.

The Associated Press said the lobbyist, whom it identified as Rinat Akhmetshin, confirmed that he had attended the June 2016 meeting in New York's Trump Tower. Despite intense media focus on the meeting, his presence had not been reported or disclosed until Friday.

Emails disclosed by Donald Trump Jr. this week showed him eager to attend the meeting with the lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, after learning that she might have information damaging to Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.


Last weekend's revelation of the Trump Tower gathering would be the most tangible evidence of a connection between Trump's 2016 campaign and Russia, a subject that has also prompted investigations by congressional committees and federal special counsel.

Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and former campaign adviser Paul Manafort were also at the meeting.

Accusations that Moscow meddled in the election and colluded with the Trump campaign have dominated the Republican president's first months in office. Russia denies the allegations, and Trump says there was no collusion.

U.S intelligence agencies said earlier this year that Russia sought to help Trump win the election by hacking private emails from Democratic Party officials and disseminating false information online.


A SOVIET PAST

NBC News said the Russian-born American lobbyist who attended the meeting with Trump aides had served in the Soviet military and emigrated to the United States, where he holds dual citizenship. He denied any current ties to Russian spy agencies.

The White House had no immediate comment about the NBC News report.

NBC News said representatives for Kushner and Manafort declined to comment, but that a lawyer for Trump Jr. said he had spoken to the lobbyist.

Democratic Senator Dick Durbin said Trump Jr. was wrong not to mention the presence of the Russian-American lobbyist when he acknowledged this week that the meeting took place.

"Basic rules in Washington: It's not the crime, it's the cover-up, and secondly when you make a disclosure, make it complete," Durbin told MSNBC. "What we have here is a slow bleed, more and more information coming out, discrediting some of the representations that have been made by Donald Trump Jr. and others about this meeting."

Trump Jr.'s lawyer, Alan Futerfas, said he had talked with the person who came to the meeting with Veselnitskaya.

"He is a U.S. citizen,” Futerfas told NBC News. "He told me specifically he was not working for the Russian government, and in fact laughed when I asked him that question."

The lawyer said Trump Jr. knew nothing about the man's

background at the time of the meeting.

Trump told Reuters on Wednesday that he did not know about his son's meeting until recently. But in a conversation with reporters later that day, Trump said: "In fact, maybe (the meeting) was mentioned at some point," adding he was not told it was about Clinton.


The president's legal team was informed more than three weeks ago about the email chain arranging the meeting between Trump Jr. and the Russian lawyer, two sources familiar with the handling of the matter told Yahoo News.

https://www.usnews.com/news/top-news...awyer-nbc-news

California congressman was lobbied by the same former Soviet military counterintelligence officer ...

California politics updates: A California connection to Trump son's Russia meeting

JULY 14, 2017, 1:23 P.M.
REPORTING FROM WASHINGTON

O.C. Rep. Rohrabacher was lobbied by the former Soviet military intelligence officer who attended Trump Jr. meeting

Sarah D. Wire

A former Soviet military counterintelligence officer who met with President Trump's son, son-in-law and campaign manager in June 2016 had previously lobbied Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach) at least twice about U.S. relations with Russia.

News broke Friday that Rinat Akhmetshin, who received U.S. citizenship and became a Washington lobbyist after emigrating from Russia more than a decade ago, was also present at the Trump Tower meeting with campaign officials and Kremlin-linked lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya. The New York Times first reported the news about the meeting aimed at potential negative information about Hillary Clinton.

Several outlets have reported on Akhmetshin's past lobbying of Rohrabacher to help remove Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky’s name from a global anti-corruption law.

Magnitsky was a whistleblower who alleged that officials in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government stole $230 million. He died in prison under suspicious circumstances.

The Magnitsky Act banned officials alleged to be involved in his death from visiting the United States and from using U.S. banks. In response, Putin banned all adoptions of Russian children by U.S. parents. Akhmetshin lobbies for Human Rights Accountability Global Initiative, a group started by Veselnitskaya reportedly to lift the adoption ban.

Rohrabacher has long been known for encouraging improved relations with Russia, something that's made him an outlier in the Republican Party.

(Los Angeles Times)

He has said as chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia and Emerging Threats, he gathers information from a variety of sources and then weighs its accuracy.

He once described Akhmetshin to CNN as someone with "an ulterior motive" who is "involved with people who've got an agenda." He also said he could not rule it out that Akhmetshin was still connected to the Russian security services, something the former official has denied.

Rohrabacher defended the Trump campaign's meeting in a speech on the House floor Friday.

"If someone says to you that they want to give you information, there is nothing wrong with that," Rohrabacher said. "It is not illegal to receive information from someone, especially if you are engaged in an activity that's aimed at trying to secure understanding for policies that you plan to implement as a leader in the United States. Absolutely, there is nothing wrong."

Rohrabacher's opinions on normalizing relations with Russia have been known for decades, and several opponents have tried to make them a campaign issue without much luck.

His district backed Clinton for president in 2018, and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and his opponents have attacked him over the news of his meetings with various people related to Russia or the Baltic states.

http://www.latimes.com/politics/esse...htmlstory.html

8th person at Trump Tower meeting identified

Russians like Trump because he wants to be friends with their country.

Sounds like th State Department and the FBI didn't have a problem with him

New York Times Omits Clinton State Department Link to Trump Jr. Meeting

The Times did not provide any background on Samachornov beyond reporting his name and that he was a “translator.”
Samachornov is more than that. According to his LinkedIn profile, from 2005 until recently, Samochornov was a project manager at the Meridian International Center, which describes itself as a “nonprofit, global leadership organization headquartered in Washington, DC.”
Meridian is a principal partner of the U.S. State Department.
Samochornov’s LinkedIn profile says he was an interpreter and a “partner/owner” in Interpreter Boutique, which provided translation services.
The LinkedIn profile further describes his work on behalf of the State Department, purportedly while he was at Meridian. The timeline of his work at Meridian includes the period when Hillary Clinton was secretary of state.
Samochornov’s LinkedIn profile lists the following activities:

• Represented the U.S. Government in securing cooperation of key U.S. resources in the corporate, governmental and NGO community.
• Collaborated with the U.S. and international aid agencies and stakeholders on devising business plans and training workshops on a variety of different topics.

Samochornov was listed as the program administrator for the State Department’s International Visitor Leadership Program, which is implemented by Meridian. Breitbart News found the draft program book for the March 4-12, 2013 leadership initiative, which listed a State Department email for Samochornov.
An email sent to the State address listed for Samochornov, samochornovav@state.gov, did not bounce back, indicating the address could still be active.
Samochornov was also listed as the “Program Officer” for the State Department’s International Visitor Leadership Program in February 2010. The FBI’s New York field office participated in that month’s program.
Samochornov’s number at the International Visitor Leadership Program is still functional. It is answered by a message from Samochornov saying he will be away starting December 24, 2014 “until further notice.”

https://www.alipac.us/f9/new-york-ti...1/#post1559197

I heard the man is a long-time naturalized US citizen.

"NBC News said the Russian-born American lobbyist who attended the meeting with Trump aides had served in the Soviet military and emigrated to the United States, where he holds dual citizenship."

He may have dual citizenship, but he held government positions under the Obama administration's reign. So, he was OK wto work for the Clinton State Department, but he has a meeting with Trump Jr and he is suddenly a Russian military spy? I find it interesting that all of this "broke" on Trump Jr the week after he gave the media a particularly hard time on twitter.... Pay back?

Get off the RUSSIAN fake news.

NOBODY CARES AND IT BORES THE HELL OUT OF US!

The Russian spies living next door


By Thom Patterson, CNN
Updated 10:28 AM ET, Wed July 19, 2017

Program note: CNN's "Declassified" reveals the story of Russia's secret network of deep-cover spies living in the United States on Saturday July 22, at 9 p.m. ET/PT.

(CNN)For unsuspecting residents of a suburban Montclair, New Jersey, neighborhood, it seemed too crazy to be believed: their quiet, unassuming neighbors had turned out to be Russian spies.

The couple, known as Richard and Cynthia Murphy, had appeared to be part of a typical American family, living in a beige, two-story colonial-style home with their two young daughters at 31 Marquette Road.

Cynthia's business card said she worked as a financial planner at an accounting company in nearby Manhattan. Richard told neighbors he was a stay-at-home dad raising Lisa, age nine, and her 11-year-old sister, Kate.

The shocking truth emerged when the FBI raided the house in 2010: Richard and Cynthia's real names were Vladimir and Lydia Guryev.

"You could have told me they were Martians from space and I would have been less surprised," said Elizabeth Lapin, a poetry professor who still lives down the street from the home now known as "the spy house."

The Guryevs had been gathering information since the 1990s for Russia's SVR, which the FBI describes as the modern equivalent of the KGB. The KGB, if you remember, was the widely feared national security agency of the now-defunct Soviet Union, tasked during the Cold War with running a domestic secret police force and operating a network of spies throughout the world.

On June 27, 2010, the FBI arrested the Guryevs along with eight other alleged Russian spies in Manhattan, Yonkers, Boston and northern Virginia. The announcement triggered headlines reminiscent of the Cold War, and even inspired the creation of FX's 1980s-era spy drama "The Americans."




Photos: The spies next door

In 2010, Richard and Cynthia Murphy were raising two daughters in their two-story colonial home in Montclair, New Jersey. The FBI said they were spying for Russia. Their real names, according to the FBI, were Vladimir and Lydia Guryev.

But while the deep-cover Russian spies on "The Americans" "do all sorts of reckless, wild things," said neighbor Virginia Bailey, that wasn't the impression she got from the Guryevs.

"By all accounts," Bailey told CNN, "these neighbors were neither reckless nor wild."

This is what it was really like to live next door to a Russian spy, according to various Montclair residents who spoke to CNN.

Hiding in plain sight

Looking back, neighbors say the Guryevs' "spy house" was a perfect place to hide in plain sight. Manhattan was just 30 minutes away by shuttle bus. And the house property backed up against a 21-acre wildlife preserve where meetings with agents and exchanges of information could easily be hidden from prying eyes.

The family wasn't overly social -- but they weren't exactly hiding either. Neighbors say they sometimes attended summer neighborhood block parties.

Before the raid, Bailey and her daughter, Jessie Gugig, remember seeing their neighbor "Cynthia" walking her dog many mornings down Marquette Road. Although they never stopped to have a conversation, Bailey remembered her as being "very attractive and very well put together. She always dressed very nicely."

Some neighbors said the couple spoke with accents, but Lapin said she never heard one.

"The girls built a lemonade stand one summer," Lapin said. "That was such an American thing."

Lapin said she had a "premonition" that "something strange" was going on long before the raid. A few months before, she noticed unusual, prolonged construction under the neighborhood streets.

The Friday before the raid, she said a police car had been parked in front of her house.

But espionage? It never occurred to her, Lapin said.

How they got caught

The FBI and CIA first learned about the collection of deep-cover SVR spies in the United States in the early 2000s. They were living as so-called "illegals," meaning they had no diplomatic protection.

Deep-cover Russian spies explained 01:35

US authorities secretly surveilled all the spies for years, bugging the Guryevs' house and even secretly searching it when they weren't around. The FBI told CNN's original series "Declassifed" that the Guryevs tried so hard to blend into American society that they didn't even speak Russian inside their own home.

Eventually, the United States cracked a secret code the spies used to communicate with Moscow, allowing the FBI to learn more about the Guryevs' comings and goings. In 2009, the FBI shot video of a meeting between Vladimir and a Russian government official.

Authorities decided it was time to arrest the spy ring.

Russian deep-cover spy caught on camera00:55

Jessie Gugig remembers being a 15-year-old experiencing the shock of watching FBI vans stop at the Guryevs' home, just a stone's throw from her own residence.

"Eventually another car pulled up and guys in suits with earpieces showed up with some papers that must have been a warrant," Gugig, now a 22-year-old law student, recalled. Agents suddenly poured into the home, turning on the lights and searching it from top to bottom.

"The house got lit up like it was Christmas," she said.

For at least a week after the raid, the press seemed to be everywhere throughout the neighborhood, said Gugig's mother Bailey. "I mean hordes of them," she said. "It was just a carnival."

Lapin gathered up enough courage to approach the house after the arrest and peer into the window. Inside she saw several items on a table — including Lisa's textbook on Chinese grammar, stacks of coins and a copy of a 1953 post-World War-II memoir, "Woman in Berlin."

On the wall next to a piano was a "beautiful painting" of a young girl, which Lapin believes was a self-portrait by Kate.

The Guryevs' two girls, Bailey said, were taken away to stay with a family friend.

What happened to the kids?

Two weeks after the FBI arrests, Moscow and Washington made a deal.

After all ten of those arrested pleaded guilty to being Russian agents, the United States agreed to transfer them to Russian custody. In exchange, Moscow agreed to release "four individuals" who were "incarcerated in Russia for alleged contact with Western intelligence agencies," the Justice Department said.

Kate and Lisa -- who were born in the United States -- eventually accompanied their parents back to Russia. US Attorney General Eric Holder told CBS' "Face the Nation" in 2010 that the Guryevs' kids and all other children of the Russian agents were "repatriated."

"That whole aspect was very sad," said Bailey. "To all of a sudden have their lives completely and utterly changed. The children didn't know Russia ... They have to leave their friends abruptly and suddenly. ... Everything would have just been so radically different."

Former FBI operative Eric O'Neill, who helped catch FBI double agent Robert Hanssen, said in 2010 that it's unusual for spies serving overseas to have children, because they could suffer from divided loyalties.

"When you're a parent, you're supposed to take care of your kids.

You are supposed to put them first in your life. And a spy can't do that," O'Neill said.

Are other spies still living among us?

At the time, having Russian spies in the neighborhood felt like a weird throwback to the Cold War, neighbors said.

But now that people on Marquette Road are hearing more about heightened tensions between Russia and the United States, they say the idea of Russian spies living among Americans doesn't seem so surprising. Some of them are following the current US government investigations into Russia's meddling in the 2016 election and potential collusion with members of Donald Trump's presidential campaign.

US investigations about Russia: Everything you need to know

In fact, Russian spies are ramping up their intelligence-gathering efforts inside the United States, current and former US intelligence officials told CNN this month.

Former Soviet KGB spymaster Oleg Kalugin told CNN he "would not be surprised" to learn that Russia is still running illegal deep-cover spies in the United States. But he suspects these programs would be less active now than in 2010. Kalugin, who says he never ran illegal deep-cover programs, criticized them as wasteful and inefficient.

"It's risky and lonely and a really difficult job," he said.

One of the key pieces of evidence uncovered by the FBI in the 2010 case was a message Russian spymasters sent the Guryevs shortly before their arrest.

"You were sent to USA for long-term service trip," the message said. "Your education, bank accounts, car, house etc. -- all these serve one goal: fulfill your main mission, i.e. to search and develop ties in policymaking circles and send intels to C."

"C" is thought to refer to "The Center," an espionage information clearinghouse in Russia.

What's next for the 'spy house'

Built in 1950, the beige, two-story house is a typical middle class home for the area. It measures a bit more than 1,800 square feet and the county valued it this year at $425,700, according to Essex County tax records.


The 'spy house' where the Guryevs lived in 2010.


So much time has passed that "it's hard to believe it happened," said Bailey.

"Nature is kind of taking the house back," Gugig said. "Ivy is starting to eat into the house. The garden is completely overgrown."

"The house just sits there and it's empty," she added. "It's just a constant reminder."

Lapin -- who has lived near the house for 11 years -- said the neighborhood was friendlier before the raid. "I liked the neighborhood -- until this event happened," she said.

But the old vibe has slowly been coming back, she said. Several of her neighbors have left since the raid -- replaced by new residents who don't associate the house with the spies.

A local realtor said the home has recently been sold.

Perhaps a new family will move in soon, which will help Montclair close the book and move on from its connection to international espionage.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/07/19/us/rus...ied/index.html