The US Justice has filed charges against a Russian lawyer who was in contact with today’s President Donald Trump’s team during the 2016 election campaign. Attorney Natalia Weselnizkaja is accused of obstructing US justice in connection with a money laundering case, New York prosecutor Geoffrey Berman said today.
Weselnizkaja met in June 2016 with Trump’s son Donald junior, his son-in-law Jared Kushner and the former campaign manager Paul Manafort in New York’s Trump Tower. Prior to the meeting, Trump’s son had been offered incriminating material about Trump’s election campaign rival Hillary Clinton. The meeting has fueled suspicions of possible illegal collusion between the Trump team and Moscow.
However, the charges against Weselnizkaja are not related to their contacts with Trump’s campaign team. Rather, it is about her role as legal representative of the Russian company Prevezon, against which the US judiciary took action for money laundering allegations. Weselnizkaja is charged with having made „deliberately misleading“ statements to the US investigators about this case.
