5 Things You Should Know About Trump Jr. and Russia

By Michael Gryboski, Mainline Church Editor Wednesday, July 12, 2017

4. Russian Lawyer Has Ties to Anti-Trump Democrat Group

Russia's President Vladimir Putin holds a glass during a ceremony of receiving diplomatic credentials from foreign ambassadors at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, November 9, 2016. | (Photo: REUTERS/Sergei Karpukhin)

Natalia Veselnitskaya, the Russian lawyer who met with Trump Jr. last year, has a connection to a group that garnered headlines for releasing various highly disputed anti-Trump claims via a dossier.

Fusion GPS, a research group that has a history of supporting candidates opposed to Trump, previously worked with Veselnitskaya on a legal case.

Fusion GPS has refused to cooperate in a Senate Judiciary investigation into the anti-Trump dossier. It was also hired by Planned Parenthood to write a report aimed at discrediting an undercover investigation into Planned Parenthood's selling of aborted baby parts.

Trump spokesman Mark Corallo said in a statement that Fusion GPS' link to the Russian attorney should bring to question her original purpose with the meeting.

"Specifically, we have learned that the person who sought the meeting is associated with Fusion GPS, a firm which according to public reports, was retained by Democratic operatives to develop opposition research on the president and which commissioned the phony Steele dossier," stated Corallo.

For their part, Fusion GPS told The Washington Post in a statement that they "learned about this meeting from news reports and had no prior knowledge of it," adding that any "claim that Fusion GPS arranged or facilitated this meeting in any way is false."