Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort’s notes from a June 2016 Trump Tower meeting he attended with Donald Trump Jr. and two Russian lobbyists include references to “donations” and the “RNC.”
Manafort’s notes, which he surrendered to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, contain the word “donations” and “RNC” in close proximity to each other, two sources briefed on the information told NBC News Thursday. One source described the notes, recorded on Manafort’s smartphone, as “cryptic.” (RELATED: Manafort Memo Raises New Questions About Trump Tower Meeting)
Trump Jr. and Manafort met with Russian lobbyists Natalia Veselnitskaya and Rinat Akhmetshin in June 2016 to obtain damaging information related former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. Special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigators are focusing on the meeting in an effort to determine whether contributions to the RNC were discussed, as foreign political donations are federally illegal.
“It is 100 percent false to suggest this meeting included any discussion of donations from Russian sources to either the Trump campaign or the Republican Party. Mr. Manafort provided the Senate Intelligence Committee with the facts and his notes so this speculation and conjecture is pointless and wrong,” Manafort’s spokesman Jason Maloni told NBC News.
Akhmetshin, a political operative and former Soviet intelligence officer, testified in early August in front of a Washington, D.C. grand jury empaneled by Mueller.
Trump Jr., Manafort and Veselnitskaya have maintained that the Magnitsky Act, a Russia human rights sanctions bill, was the sole topic of conversation during the meeting.
Mueller’s investigators have become keenly interested in Trump’s knowledge of the meeting and whether he tried to conceal the meeting’s purpose.
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