‘Ex-Soviet Counter Intelligence Officer’ in Trump Jr’s Meeting Was ‘Accused of International Hacking Conspiracy’

The $450 an Hour Operative Was Called a Russian ‘Gun-for-Hire,’ Allegedly Was Linked to an Opposition Research Firm

The man NBC News just revealed as also having attended Donald Trump Jr.’s June 2016 meeting with a “Russian government lawyer” has been identified by the Associated Press as Russian-American lobbyist Rinat Akhmetshin. 

U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley in March of this year called Akhmetshin a “Russian ex-pat” who “allegedly failed to register” as a foreign agent “while working to dismantle Magnitsky Act.”

Senator Grassley also stated on his official Senate website, “Akhmetshin, a Russian immigrant, has reportedly admitted to being a ‘soviet counterintelligence officer,’ and has a long history of lobbying the U.S. government for pro-Russia matters.”

If you’re wondering why Donald Trump Jr., Paul Manafort, and Jared Kushner agreed to a meeting, or didn’t immediately walk out of the room and call the FBI when they learned who they were meeting with, you should be.

But there’s more. A lot more.

Grassley’s statement is the introduction to a complaint filed with then Acting Attorney General Dana Boente that alleges, as Grassley’s statement reads, “Former Russian Intel Officer Joined Lobbying Effort to Kill Pro-Whistleblower Sanctions for Kremlin.”

But there’s even more.

A Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty news article from 2016 profiled Rinat Akhmetshin. It describes him as a man “who for nearly 20 years has worked the shadowy corners of the Washington lobbying scene on behalf of businessmen and politicians from around the former Soviet Union.”

And a “Russian gun-for-hire.”

“I call him skilled because — though I am certain that they exist — I know of no Russian gun-for-hire who managed to run his campaigns so successfully, running circles around purportedly much more seasoned Washington hands,” says Steve LeVine, a veteran Washington reporter who explored some of Akhmetshin’s past work in his 2007 book The Oil And The Glory.

Akhmetshin “said he was paid $45,000 up front; in a later declaration, he stated his normal billing rate was $450 an hour.”

In other words, he makes more “up front” than the average American earns in a year. 

And there’s even more bombshell news about Akhmetshin.

“The alleged former Soviet intelligence officer who attended the now-infamous meeting with Donald Trump Jr. and other top campaign officials last June was previously accused in federal and state courts of orchestrating an international hacking conspiracy,” The Daily Beast just reported.

There’s no easy way to summarize this without losing a lot of important details, so I urge you to read though this excerpt from The Daily Beast’s reporting by Kevin Poulsen, Nico Hines, and Katie Zavadski:

In court papers filed with New York Supreme Court in November 2015, Akhmetshin was described as “a former Soviet military counterintelligence officer” by lawyers for International Mineral Resources (IMR), a Russian mining company who alleged that they had been hacked.

Those documents accuse Akhmetshin of hacking into two computer systems and stolen sensitive and confidential materials as part of an alleged black ops smear campaign against IMR. The allegations were later withdrawn. 

The U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. was told in July 2015 that Akhmetshin had arranged the hacking of a mining company’s private records—stealing internal documents and then disseminating them. The corporate espionage case was brought by IMR, who alleged that Akhmetshin was hired by Russian oligarch Andrey Melinchenko, an industrialist worth around $12 billion.

A New York law firm paid Akhmetshin $140,000, including expenses, to organize a public relations campaign targeting IMR. Shortly after he began that work, IMR suffered a sophisticated and systematic breach of its computers, and gigabytes of data allegedly stolen in the breach wound up the hands of journalists and human rights groups critical of the mining company. IMR accused Akhmetshin of paying Russian hackers to carry out the hack attack.

IMR went so far as to hire a private investigator to follow Akhmetshin on a trip to London. That private eye, Akis Phanartzis, wrote in a sworn declaration to the court that he eavesdropped on Akhmetshin in a London coffee shop and heard Akhmetshin boast that “he organized the hacking of IMR’s computer systems” on behalf of Melinchenko’s fertilizer producer Eurochem. “Mr. Akhmetshin [noted] that he was hired because there were certain things that the law firm could not do,” Phanartzis said.

Akhmetshin denied the accusation, but admitted passing around a “hard drive” filled with data on IMR’s owners.

Again, If you’re wondering why Donald Trump Jr., Paul Manafort, and Jared Kushner agreed to a meeting, or didn’t immediately walk out of the room and call the FBI when they learned who they were meeting with, you should be.

There’s so much here, it’s stunning.

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Image by Gage Skidmore via Flickr and a CC license