WASHINGTON – Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley today wrote to Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in order to ask how the Russian attorney who met with Donald Trump, Jr. at Trump Tower in June of 2016 was allowed to enter the United States.
According to her sworn declaration, former Russian prosecutor Natalia Veselnitskaya was denied a U.S. visa to travel to the United States from Russia to participate in litigation. Although she was subsequently granted immigration parole to make the trip, her parole was set to expire on January 7, 2016. Her request to extend was denied on January 4, 2016. Recent reports suggest that she met with Trump campaign officials nearly six months after the expiration of her parole in June of 2016. In that meeting, she reportedly discussed the Russian ban on adoptions of Russian children by Americans, a retaliation for the U.S. enactment of the Magnitsky Act, a U.S. law that blacklisted Russians who were determined to have engaged in certain human rights violations. Veselnitskaya’s role in the Russian lobbying effort to undermine the Magnitsky was later cited in a complaint alleging that she and her comrades failed to register as Russian agents under the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA). Among the other unregistered agents cited in the complaint is Fusion GPS, the firm that orchestrated the unsubstantiated anti-Trump dossier.
Grassley has repeatedly expressed concerns about the Justice Department’s enforcement of FARA and its heavy reliance on publicly available material and “voluntary compliance.”
In his letter to Secretary Tillerson and Secretary Kelly, Grassley seeks information relating to how Veselnitskaya may have been able to stay in the United States until June, about any visa applications, visas held, or visa application denials relating to Veselnitskaya and any documentation relating to the conditions of her parole into the United States.
Full text of the letter
