The FBI monitored a number of highly influential Russians who attended events at President Trump’s inauguration last year, including a Kremlin-linked lawyer who met with Donald Trump Jr. and other campaign associates during the 2016 election campaign, according to a report.
Counterintelligence officials with the FBI became concerned because some of the same Russians had surfaced in the agency’s investigation into Moscow meddling in the election and possible collusion by the Trump campaign, the Washington Post reported Saturday.
One was Natalia Veselnitskaya, the Russian lawyer who met with Trump Jr., former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and the president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, now a top White House adviser, at Trump Tower in June 2016, the newspaper reported.
Veselnitskaya appeared at a black-tie inaugural party hosted by the campaign committee of Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, a Republican from California.
Another of the half-dozen high-profile Russians was Alexey Repik, a wealthy pharmaceutical executive, who with his wife, Polina Repik, watched Trump’s swearing-in at the US Capitol, the Washington Post said.
He even boasted on Facebook that he got close enough to the president at a pre-inaugural event to “check the handshake strength of Donald Trump.”
Repik also posted photos of his inauguration credentials next to a “Make America Great Again” hat, writing that “I believe President Donald Trump will open a new page in American history.”
The Russians were among VIPs from around the world who converged on the Trump International Hotel in Washington, DC.
“It was a great, amazing experience,” Alexey Repik told the newspaper, adding that he was also in the nation’s capital during President Barack Obama’s 2013 inauguration but did not attend any events.
Some of the Russian attendees told the newspaper they got tickets though US political contacts.
Organizers said they kept records of contributors but found it impossible to keep track of all the tickets that went to donors.
They also said they followed all Secret Service protocols.
“The Presidential Inaugural Committee for President Trump, administratively speaking, was conducted in similar, if not identical fashion to previous inaugurations,” the committee told the newspaper.
The Secret Service also said it followed all the usual procedures.
A number of congressional panels, plus special counsel Robert Mueller, are investigating Russian involvement in the election.
Trump has dismissed the allegations as a “hoax” perpetrated by Democrats upset over his defeat of Hillary Clinton.