Russiagate-Trump Gets Solved by Giant of American Investigative Journalism

Lucy Komisar, who is perhaps the greatest living investigative journalist, has discovered — and has documented in detail — that the source of the Russiagate charge against Russia, the source of the charge that Donald Trump’s Presidential campaign had connived with Russians in order to be able to win the U.S. Presidency, can be found in explaining the why’s and wherefore’s of the key event, when Donald Trump Jr., Paul Manafort, and Jared Kushner, met with Russian lawyer Nataliya Veselnitskaya, in Trump Jr.’s Trump Tower office, on 9 June 2016.

Komisar figured it out: Veselnitskaya, thinking that Trump might become America’s President, lured (through George Papadopoulos, the Trump-campaign volunteer whom Komisar unfortunately doesn’t mention, but he was the contact between Veselnitskaya and the Trump team) Trump’s team, into that meeting, by promising (as communicated to them via Papadopoulos) to inform them of dirt against Hillary Clinton. But that wasn’t Veselnitskaya’s real purpose, Komisar has found.

Komisar’s investigation wasn’t into Russia-Trump, but instead into the actual source of the first set of economic sanctions that were instituted against Russia, the 2012 Magnitsky Act, which source was a major former American investor in Russian companies, Bill Browder. He had successfully lobbied into law, both in the U.S. and in the EU, the Magnitsky Act. Komisar’s focus on this Browder-versus-Russia issue caused her not even to mention George Papadopoulos, the Trump campaign volunteer, who had served as Veselnitskaya’s contact and set up that fateful June 2016 meeting.

This non-political focus has also caused Komisar’s brilliant reporting on the matter — her latest such article being published on 10 February 2018, which article will subsequently be linked-to here — to have been ignored in the general news-reports about the Russiagate-Trump story.

Komisar’s investigation found and reported on 20 October 2017, that the reason why Veselnitskaya wanted to meet Trump Jr., Manafort, and Kushner, was to enable them — and she hoped ultimately Donald Trump himself — to come to know that the company she was representing, Prevezon, was being subjected to a lengthy legal battle to defend itself against a lawsuit by the former American, William Browder, the owner of Hermitage Capital Management in Russia, and that:

Veselnitskaya says the Prevezon suit [suit against Prevezon — Prevazon was’t actually the bringer of this suit, but was instead the suit’s target] was a distraction Browder used to cover up his own tax evasion and – she claims – collusion in the tax refund fraud [by Hermitage Capital Management]. She bases her accusation in part on the role of Magnitsky [Hermitage’s accountant]. She has lobbied against the Magnitsky Act, deriding it as Browder’s way of protecting himself from Russian legal trouble.

Browder declined repeated requests for an interview about the Russian charges, his time as an investor in Russia, and his campaigns for the Magnitsky Act. Browder went so far as to have the author of this article banned from a public talk he gave at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton, New Jersey, in December 2016.

The Magnitsky Act placed sanctions against the Russian Government, on the basis of accusations by Browder and his agents, that Hermitage’s ‘lawyer’, who was actually no lawyer at all but instead Hermitage’s accountant, Sergei Magnitsky, had been supposedly beaten to death in prison, because he had been, supposedly, a ‘whistleblower’ against corruption, by those police who, according to Browder’s team, had stolen three companies from Hermitage (i.e., from Browder), not stolen $230 million in taxes from the Russian national Treasury — as was charged by the Russian Government.

Supposedly, these police had supposedly beaten Magnitsky to death, in order to protect themselves. That storyline, that viewpoint, ‘documenting’ ‘corruption’ in Russia, is embodied as sacrosanct and unchallengeable fact, in the Magnitsky Act, but Komisar disproves all of its essential assertions, linking to the actual documents in the case, and proves a damning case against Browder and his team.

The Browder viewpoint was recently reinforced by an article in National Law Journal, as well as in a report by the Council on Foreign Relations, and Komisar exposed their fraudulence, in her 12 January 2018 “Evidence? The National Law Journal doesn’t need it”, and in her 10 February 2018 “CFR Report, with no evidence, promotes fake Browder-Magnitsky story”. The former reported:

The fraud was not uncovered by Magnitsky, who was an accountant, not a lawyer.

Magnitsky talked about the matter for the first time in an interrogation by Russian tax investigators in June 2008. (It identifies him as an auditor.) But, he was not a whistleblower. He was called to answer questions as a suspect. He did not expose the fraud. He cited an article by the Russian business daily Kommersant article, which two months earlier had printed the information with Browder’s response.

Magnitsky said: “On 3 April 2008, Kommersant published an article which, referring to the law-enforcement authorities, reported that Parphenion, Limited Liability Company, Realand, Limited Liability Company, and Machaon, Limited Liability Company, had allegedly used «tax evasion schemes» and criminal proceedings were launched to prosecute those at fault.” See Kommersant (in Russian) April 3, 2008 and April 4, 2008 .

Rimma Starova was a hired “name” fronting as a director of the company to which the shells had been transferred. She saw the Kommersant articles. By then the re-registered companies had participated in the $230 million tax refund fraud. Investigators might have discovered the scam. She didn’t want to take a fall and went to the police. Her complaint April 9th detailed the fraudulent theft of three Hermitage companies.

The latter said:

the authors write: “… the summer of 2012, the U.S. Congress passed the Magnitsky Act — a set of tough sanctions on eighteen Russian officials involved in the “torture and death in prison of Russian human rights whistle-blower Sergei Magnitsky.” I don’t comment on the rest of the report, but this part shows they didn’t bother to research, ignored facts, or deliberately reported falsehoods.

Torture? The Wall Street Journal links to the definitive prison report. Not exactly a left-wing media. The report describes awful conditions and medical care, says nothing about torture.

Whistleblower? The first step in the theft of budget funds from the Russian Treasury was reported to police April 9, 2008 by Rimma Starova, a hired director for Boily Systems, a shell controlling Browder’s stolen companies. She returned to testify again July 10th. The companies had been used in the scam to get a fake tax refund [to the benefit of Browder’s Hermitage] from the Treasury. She didn’t talk about the theft of funds, but she gave police a roadmap.

Rimma Starova July 10, 2008 testimony

Then, Paul Wrench, director for Browder companies registered in the offshore tax haven of Guernsey, filed complaints of the tax refund fraud July 23. The story was published in Vedomosti, July 24. This link is on Browder’s own website!

Not till his Oct 7 interrogation did Magnitsky, before his arrest for complicity in tax evasion, refer to “fraud of budget monetary assets in the amount exceeding 5 (five) billion rubles.” A three-months-later whistle-blower? For his Oct 7 testimony, see 100Reporters story with link to what Magnitsky said.

This is what Veselnitskaya was hoping that, if Trump would become President, he’d check out and investigate for himself. But, apparently, Trump wasn’t at all interested.

So: You, dear reader, now can investigate it for yourself (clicking onto those links), if you want to understand what may very possibly produce (either in Syria or in Ukraine or elsewhere) what could easily expand to nuclear war between the U.S. and Russia, World War III, as a result of those sanctions, and the subsequent Ukraine-war-based sanctions, and the subsequent massing of U.S. missiles and troops on and near Russia’s border in Ukraine and elsewhere, on the basis of almost entirely false allegations by the U.S. Government (plus the latter’s own illegal invasion/occupation of Syria, plus the latter’s own illegal and very brutal coup in Ukraine during February 2014). The Magnitsky matter was actually a corporate tax dispute, between U.S. investor (now instead a British citizen in order to avoid some U.S. taxes), Bill Browder, versus Russia’s Government.

The world could end, over that (and over lots of lies about it, which are routinely spread in the mainstream, and in much of the ‘alternative news’ media).

Some people’s greed, apparently, knows no limits — not even when it could produce a world-ending nuclear war.

PS: As regards the leaks that occurred from the computers of the DNC (in June 2016) and from Hillary Clinton’s Campaign Manager John Podesta (in September 2016), here are articles that set forth evidence these leaks probably were from DNC worker Seth Rich, and-or, from another Democratic Party worker on the inside (angered against Hillary Clinton’s theft of the nomination away from Bernie Sanders), and weren’t hacks, at all, but purely leaks:

• What’s Left of Russiagate — Are We Down to the 1,000 Paid Trolls?
• Breaking: Seymour Hersh Cracks ‘RussiaGate’ as CIA-Planted Lie, Revenge Against Trump
• How the Leaks From Clinton & DNC Happened

In other words: These probably weren’t authentically “hacks” — not from Russians, nor from anyone else. The Democratic Party didn’t need whatever the Russian Government did (or not) in order to lose the 2016 election; the Democratic Party managed quite well, on their own, to lose — to lose, by Election Day, enough Sanders-voters (progressive populist Democrats) so that Trump (the pretended-populist Republican) was able to win. Some Sanders-voters hated Hillary Clinton, and were unsure which side of Trump’s mouth to believe and voted for the progressive-populist side of it, because there wasn’t anything at all progressive-populist about Hillary.

That’s no real democracy (but instead a choice between two fascists), no honest choice at all, and Russia didn’t make it that way — and going to war as if it had been Russia’s fault, would be entirely the U.S. regime’s fault, yet another of its many incredibly vicious lies, such as were used to ‘justify’ invading Iraq in 2003, Libya in 2011, and much more.