The Russian lawyer Trump Jr met with once worked with the FSB. But what does that mean? I explain:
Julia Ioffe?Verified account
What It Means to Have Russian Spies as Clients
The lawyer who met with Donald Trump Jr. once represented the FSB. But that story is less about espionage than about money.
A disputed office facility taken over by Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB), reportedly with the help of Natalia VeselnitskayaSergei Karpukhin / Reuters
JULIA IOFFE 4:34 PM
The story, reported out of Moscow, provides evidence that Veselnitskaya “counted Russia’s FSB security service among her clients for years,” and has been taken by some American observers to emphasize Veselnitskaya’s ties to the world of Russian intelligence. And they could be forgiven for thinking that, given the article’s splashy headline: “Exclusive: Moscow lawyer who met Trump Jr. had Russian spy agency as client.”
The Russian Attorney at the Center of the Trump Jr. Scandal
But the actual story says something very different about Veselnitskaya and the work she did for the FSB from 2005 to 2013. “The documents show that the lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, successfully represented the FSB's interests in a legal wrangle over ownership of an upscale property in northwest Moscow between 2005 and 2013,” it says. The work, according to the story, concerned a real-estate dispute in which Veselnitskaya helped the FSB wrest ownership of a valuable building from a private company by alleging that the original sale was based on fraudulent documents.
This is a classic technique used in Russia to raid businesses and extort property owners, and it is a tactic at which both Veselnitskaya and the FSB excel. Veselnitskaya is currently going after IKEA in Russia, on behalf of a private client, using the same legal tactic—the land it sits on is extremely valuable—and the FSB has built an empire in the same way, making minigarchs out of rank-and-file FSB officers whose salaries don’t square with the posh lifestyles they lead.
[ Another thing Trump the Vile would like about Russia ... they practice civil asset forfeiture too. Remember Crooked Donnie saying he liked the Kelo decision? ]
Under Putin’s leadership, first as FSB head in the 1990s, and then as president of Russia, the FSB has become not just a seat of political and geopolitical power, but also a powerful economic empire. With the specter of state violence and the courts at their backs, officers of the FSB, as well as other security services agencies, have expropriated thousands of small and medium businesses, seized land, run protection rackets, embezzled state funds, and employed every trick under the sun to enrich themselves.Of course, the FSB has denied everything, but extensive reporting in countless independent outlets has borne all this out. And if Americans see the FSB, accurately, as a den of spies, Russians have come to see the FSB, also accurately, as a den of thieves. When I speak to young Russians today, many say they want to work for the FSB precisely because of the economic opportunities it offers, rather that because they are ardent patriots who want to spy on the West.
In other words, the Reuters story is not about espionage but about corruption. It fills in a portrait of Veselnitskaya as well as her connections to the organs of the Russian state, and the methods by which she operated. But it is yet another example of how American readers, frenzied by the drip-drip of Trump-Russia revelations, can take a bit of information, tear it out of its context, strip it of its real meaning, and run with it toward all kinds of political conclusions about the administration’s dealings with Russia. There is plenty of damning information out there, but this particular story isn’t damning quite in the way some people want it to be.
theatlantic.com
[ Russia is a country run by crooks and gangsters. The countries spies are crooks as well as spies, too. The ruling class of crooks and gangsters, loot the country and move their ill gotten gains out of the country to Cyprus, Caribbean - Panamanian banks, and to upscale real estate owned by secret entities. This is the business of most of the Russians at the Trump Tower meeting (one of them, Kaveladze, set up 2000 companies and bank accounts owning $1.4 billion owned by looters) AND the Trumps themselves. Selling property to Russian crooks has been a big part of the Trump family's business for years. The Trump's are known for not doing due diligence, they don't care if their customers and partners are crooks. ]
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