First, the interesting background of the ‘translator.’
Via CBS:
The translator who attended the June 2016 meeting with Donald Trump Jr., Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, and lobbyist Rinat Akhmetshin is a former State Department contractor, CBS News’ Kylie Atwood has learned.
The translator has been identified as Anatoli Samochornov, who a State Department spokesperson confirmed has done contract work for them. Samochornov is not a State Department employee, the spokesperson said, but has worked with the State Department’s Office of Language Services as an interpreter. Samochornov also helped the State Department implement exchange programs when he was working for Meridian International, a nonprofit that has a cooperative agreement with the State Department.
The Meridian contract under which Samochornov worked to support State Department-sponsored exchanges expired at the end of the fiscal year 2016.
At the June 2016 meeting, Samochornov was working as a translator for Veselnitskaya, who reportedly Veselnitskaya does not speak any English.
Media has just reported that Natalia Veselnitskaya can’t speak or read English without question.
Yet, here is Veselnitskaya’s dormant Twitter account which went dormant about 2 years ago.
In it, she retweets English tweets and she tweets in what appears to be very good English.
Check it out and decide for yourself.
Here are some samples.
In fact, her English appears to be better than the translator’s English. He wishes a ‘Sweet New Year to all who celebrates it” and refers to Mitt Romney as a “looser.’ He also uses the same term with regard to Karl Rove.
His Facebook reveals him to be anti-GOP, pro-Democrat.
Veselnitskaya used Samochornov’s translation services in the past during the court case she worked on in New York. Was that for herself or possibly for others?
So did they tell the Trump folks he was there as a translator when he was really there for some other reason?