Information brought by a Russian lawyer to a June 2016 Trump Tower meeting with Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and then-Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort had been previously discussed with the prosecutor general of Russia, Yuri Chaika, The New York Times reported Friday. The lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, reportedly used points from a memo Chaika's office had given to Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) and Rep. French Hill (R-Ark.) in April 2016 that allegedly tied two of Hillary Clinton's donors to the evasion of millions in Russian taxes.
Veselnitskaya had touted having compromising intelligence on Clinton — Trump Jr. agreed to setting up the meeting with an email that enthused "I love it" — but Trump's allies were ultimately unimpressed by Veselnitskaya's attempt to portray some of Clinton's campaign donations as "stolen" Russian money.
More notably, though, Russia experts told the Times that it was "inconceivable" that Veselnitskaya "would have bypassed her own government to deliver what are now unmistakably official allegations to an American presidential campaign," saying she must have coordinated with the Kremlin in some way. Read the full report at The New York Times.