October 21, 2017

AM Joy's panel discussed the latest news that Natalya Veselnitskaya, the Russian attorney who met with the Trump campaign, was representing the Kremlin, and how Rep. Dana Rohrabacher is connected.

Joy Reid talked to former Watergate prosecutor Nick Akerman.

"So, Nick, if you were Robert Mueller, if you were the prosecutor here, this name Dana Rohrabacher keeps coming up, this congressman whose name keeps coming up. Folks will remember he had a recent meeting in London in the hideout where Julian Assange is, along with a white nationalist blogger -- which made it sort of interesting.

"He keeps coming up as somebody who's opposed to the Magnitsky Act, who seems to want to repeal sanctions. Would you want to interview him if you were Mueller?"

"No question about it, I'd absolutely want to interview him if I were Mueller," Akerman said.

"This whole thing really has to come down from the Russian government. if you look at the June 3rd email from Ron Goldstein to Don Jr., he says in that email that the Russian government is backing Donald Trump and that this is part of their effort to get him elected.

"That's why this lawyer shows up at Trump Tower with documents. So there's no question about it, this Magnitsky Act is an extremely important hot button. It's not just about adoption. It really has to do with the Russian government being an organized crime organization where Magnitsky's boss, Bill Brower, found out that the Russian government had ripped off the government to the tune of $250 million by putting in a phony tax claim that they should never have had.

"Brower blew the whistle on that, Magnitsky was involved as a lawyer doing the same thing, and he was the only one that did not get out of Russia at the time. So he was thrown into jail, tortured for a year. It involved not only the Russian government but it involved the lawyers that were involved. It involved the courts in Russia.

"This Russian government doesn't act like a normal government like we know it. People don't always have titles and positions, like we expect people to have in the U.S. government. These are people that are just part of what is an organized crime organization. And this lawyer was part of that organization.

"I would say she was probably the consigliere of the organization that showed up in New York that showed up to take care of this matter for the Russians."
 

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