The Russian lawyer at the heart of the scandal over a meeting with President Donald Trump's eldest son claimed on Wednesday she is ready to testify to the US Congress. Lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya attended a meeting with Donald Trump Jr during the election campaign in June 2016 at which it appears he expected to get incriminating information from the Russian government on his father's rival Hillary Clinton.
Trump Jr had been told by email that a "Russian government attorney" would provide damaging details. Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort and son-in-law Jared Kushner also attended.
Veselnitskaya has rejected claims that she was working on behalf of the Russian government, while Trump Jr insists that no sensitive information was passed on. In an interview with the Kremlin-controlled RT television channel, Veselnitskaya said she was "ready" to speak to the US Congress about the meeting "if my security can be assured". The firestorm around the meeting is the latest chapter in the scandal over possible ties between the Trump campaign and Moscow. US intelligence agencies have accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of approving a hacking and influence campaign to sway the November 2016 vote, allegations rejected by the Kremlin.
Meanwhile, we have the identity of the "eighth person" in Donald Trump Jr's Russia meeting. The Post's Rosalind S Helderman reports that it's Ike Kaveladze, an American-based employee of a Russian real estate company.
According to his lawyer, Kaveladze planned to serve in the June 2016 meeting as an interpreter and the representative of Emin and Aras Agalarov, the Russian pop star and developer who hosted President Trump's 2013 Miss Universe pageant. It's not clear how the presence of Kaveladze, a US citizen, might change perceptions of the meeting, for which Trump Jr was promised opposition research about Democrats courtesy of the Russian government. But the big takeaway here is this: The meeting is now under investigation.
Kaveladze's lawyer, Scott Balber, told Helderman that he received a call over the weekend from Robert Mueller's office seeking an interview with Kaveladze. That means Mueller is looking into the meeting, and it's the first on-the-record indication that he is. That may not be terribly surprising, given Mueller's investigation is examining coordination between the Trump campaign
and Russia. AGENCIES