MOSCOW — The Russian lawyer who met with Trump campaign officials in Trump Tower in June 2016 on the premise that she would deliver damaging information about Hillary Clinton has long insisted she is a private attorney, not a Kremlin operative trying to meddle in the presidential election.
But newly released emails show that in at least one instance two years earlier, the lawyer, Natalia V. Veselnitskaya, worked hand in glove with Russia’s chief legal office to thwart a Justice Department civil fraud case against a well-connected Russian firm.
Ms. Veselnitskaya also appears to have recanted her earlier denials of Russian government ties. During an interview to be broadcast Friday by NBC News, she acknowledged that she was not merely a private lawyer but a source of information for a top Kremlin official, Yuri Y. Chaika, the prosecutor general.
“I am a lawyer, and I am an informant,” she said. “Since 2013, I have been actively communicating with the office of the Russian prosecutor general.”
The previously undisclosed details about Ms. Veselnitskaya rekindle questions about who she was representing when she met with Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, Paul Manafort and others at Trump Tower in Manhattan during the campaign. The meeting, one focus of the special counsel investigation into Russia’s election interference, was organized after an intermediary promised that Ms. Veselnitskaya would deliver documents that would incriminate Mrs. Clinton.
Ms. Veselnitskaya had long insisted that she met the president’s son, son-in-law and campaign chairman in a private capacity, not as a representative of the Russian government.
“I operate independently of any governmental bodies,” she wrote in a November statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee. “I have no relationship with Mr. Chaika, his representatives and his institutions other than those related to my professional functions as a lawyer.”
But that claim had already been undercut last fall by revelations that her talking points for the Trump Tower meeting — detailing tax and financial fraud accusations against two Democratic Party donors tied to a Kremlin opponent — matched those in a confidential memorandum circulated by Mr. Chaika’s office.
And a sheaf of Ms. Veselnitskaya’s email correspondence released Friday appeared to show that her relationship with Mr. Chaika’s office is far closer than she has described.
The emails were obtained by Dossier, an organization set up by Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky, a former tycoon who was stripped of his oil holdings, imprisoned and then exiled from his native Russia. He has emerged as a leading opponent of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.
Shown copies of the emails by Richard Engel of NBC News, Ms. Veselnitskaya acknowledged that “many things included here are from my documents, my personal documents.” She told the Russian news agency Interfax on Wednesday that her email accounts were hacked this year by people determined to discredit her, and that she would report the hack to Russian authorities.
The Russian prosecutor general’s office did not respond to requests for comment. In an email, Ms. Veselnitskaya said she would respond in two weeks.
The exchanges document Mr. Chaika’s response to a Justice Department request in 2014 for help with its civil fraud case against a real estate firm, Prevezon Holdings Ltd., and its owner, Denis P. Katsyv, a well-connected Russian businessman.
Federal prosecutors say Ms. Veselnitskaya was the driving force on Mr. Katsyv’s defense team, a description she has echoed in court filings. In a declaration to the court, she identified herself as a lawyer in private practice, representing Mr. Katsyv and his firm.
The Justice Department prosecutors charged Mr. Katsyv’s firm in 2013 with using real estate purchases in New York to launder a portion of the profits from a tax scheme in Russia. They were seeking Russian bank, tax and court records, the type of documents that typically form the crux of civil money-laundering cases. The Justice Department asked the Russian government to keep the matter confidential, “except as is necessary to execute this request,” according to court documents. Russia and the United States have a mutual legal assistance treaty governing law-enforcement requests.
The emails indicate that a senior prosecutor on Mr. Chaika’s staff, Sergei A. Bochkaryov, worked closely with Ms. Veselnitskaya to craft the Russian government response. She knew him well enough to address him in friendly terms.
“Dear Sergei Aleksandrovich!” Ms. Veselnitskaya wrote on Aug. 2, 2014, in one of at least 11 emails exchanged. “I am sending you the edits in the draft response, as per instructions. I am ready to answer any questions that arise, at any time convenient for you.”
The language in their final email exchange matches that of the prosecutor general’s official response to the Justice Department.
The judge in the case later wrote that the Russian government had “spurned” the Justice Department’s request for evidence, instead sending a lengthy treatise on why Ms. Veselnitskaya’s client was innocent.
Ms. Veselnitskaya’s involvement in the official communications with the Russian government “raises serious questions about obstruction of justice and false statements,” said Jaimie Nawaday, a former assistant United States attorney in Manhattan who was a prosecutor on the case.
She said Ms. Veselnitskaya’s actions should be referred to the United States attorney’s office for investigation, including whether she misrepresented herself to the court. “It’s completely outrageous,” Ms. Nawaday said.
Asked about the Russian government’s culpability, Andrew Keane Woods, a professor at the University of Kentucky law school who specializes in international law, said, “If there was funny business, then they are not really complying with the terms of the treaty.” But, he added, “there is no clear sanction” for failing to comply.
Moscow’s refusal to provide records to the American prosecutors dealt a severe blow to the case. In the end, the Justice Department agreed to settle it for about $6 million. Prevezon, which did not admit fault, has yet to pay.
Although Ms. Veselnitskaya appears to have influenced how the Russian prosecutor general’s office justified its decision, its refusal to cooperate was not unexpected. The tax fraud was uncovered by Sergei L. Magnitsky, a Russian lawyer who was imprisoned and died in custody after disclosing the theft. Russian officials contend that the Magnitsky case, which became a cause célèbre in Washington, was a fraud concocted by the West to justify sanctions against Russian citizens.
The release of Ms. Veselnitskaya’s emails by Mr. Khodorkovsky marks a second foray by Russian opposition figures into the controversy over Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. In a telephone interview, Mr. Khodorkovsky said someone had deposited the email records anonymously into an electronic drop box maintained by his organization.
This year, Aleksei A. Navalny, a key opposition leader in Russia, also publicized videos that he said hinted at a role for Oleg V. Deripaska, a well-known Russian oligarch, in the Russian government’s efforts to meddle in the American political process. A spokesman for Mr. Deripaska said Mr. Navalny’s accusations were utterly false.
Andrew E. Kramer reported from Moscow, and Sharon LaFraniere from Washington.
Follow Andrew E. Kramer on Twitter at @AndrewKramerNYT and Sharon LaFraniere at @SharonLNYT.
> Judge says Manafort should pursue claims in criminal case
> Mueller defended authority to indict former Trump aide
VIDEO Why Mueller Is Seen as the Perfect Man for the Job
Paul Manafort lost his civil lawsuit attacking Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s authority to charge him with crimes unrelated to his role as President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman.
U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson in Washington threw out the suit Friday, saying the criminal cases against Manafort are the proper venue for his assault on the Justice Department’s May 17 order that granted Mueller authority to investigate Russian meddling in the 2016 election.
"A civil case is not the appropriate vehicle for taking issue with what a prosecutor has done in the past or where he might be headed in the future," Jackson wrote in the 24-page decision.
In the January lawsuit, Manafort claimed Mueller overstepped his authority to investigate Russian meddling and "any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation."
Manafort’s attorney Kevin Downing didn’t immediately return a call for comment.
Manafort, 69, is accused in Washington federal court of money laundering and failing to report his lobbying in Ukraine. He faces a separate bank and tax fraud indictment in Alexandria, Virginia. Manafort has launched similar attacks on Mueller’s authority in both criminal cases.
The lawsuit initially sought to set aside Mueller’s May 2017 appointment as special counsel and nullify his actions related to Manafort.
But at an April 4 hearing, Downing scaled back his request, saying he didn’t want to overturn Mueller’s appointment entirely. Rather, he wanted to bar future actions by Mueller while also invalidating the section granting Mueller authority to probe “any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation.”
In her ruling, Jackson said that “in the wake of the surgery” that Manafort “has performed on his own complaint,” not much was left to his lawsuit.
“The only aspect of this case that is left standing is Manafort’s effort to forestall unspecified and as yet unknown future developments in the special counsel investigation,” the judge wrote. Such “purely speculative” harm raises significant questions on whether he has standing to sue.
Exceeding Scope The Justice Department and Acting Attorney General Rod Rosenstein were accused in the complaint of violating the Administrative Procedure Act by appointing Mueller without following the agency’s internal regulations. Mueller was also accused of exceeding the scope of the appointment order without seeking additional authority.
But the Justice Department argued the civil suit could interfere with the criminal cases, and that the agency’s internal regulations don’t grant anyone the right to sue.
Jackson, who’s overseeing the Washington criminal case, said her ruling shouldn’t be seen as weighing in on the merits of Manafort’s parallel complaints in the criminal cases, despite "obvious overlaps" of the issues being raised.
The case is Manafort v. U.S. Department of Justice, 18-cv-00011, U.S. District Court, District of Columbia (Washington).
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