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Associated Press

Donald Trump Jnr’s unusual campaign-season meeting with a Russian lawyer is said to have covered an obscure sanctions law that has infuriated the Kremlin.
The Magnitsky Act, passed by Congress in 2012, was a US response to the dubious death of a different Russian lawyer named Sergei Magnitsky. He died in prison after exposing a tax fraud scheme. The law has allowed the US to impose sanctions on Russians deemed as human rights violators.
The law also led Moscow to respond by banning Americans from adopting Russian children, devastating some would-be US parents.
Trump Jnr ‘was told Kremlin was source of promised Clinton dirt’
After changing his initial story, President Donald Trump’s eldest son now says he met lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya last year to hear damaging information she said she had on Hillary Clinton. Trump Jnr said it quickly became clear Veselnitskaya had nothing valuable to offer on Clinton and the discussion turned to the Magnitsky Act and adoption ban.
“The claims of potentially helpful information were a pretext for the meeting,” Trump Jnr said in a statement.
So what is the sanctions law Trump Jnr and Veselnitskaya supposedly discussed?

What prompted the law?
Sergei Magnitsky was a Russian lawyer hired by Hermitage Capital, a London-based hedge fund. Magnitsky accused Russian officials of a US$230 million tax fraud scheme involving tax rebates. He was then charged by Russian officials with tax evasion and put in prison, where he died at 37.
An official Russian probe blamed a heart attack. But Russia’s presidential council on human rights concluded he’d been beaten and denied medical treatment. A prison doctor, the only official charged in the case, was acquitted.
Magnitsky’s death drew widespread criticism from rights activists, triggering efforts to punish Russian officials associated with abuses of human rights.

What does the law do?
The law initially allowed US sanctions on Russian officials believed to be complicit in the Magnitsky case. It expanded in 2016 to include human rights abusers anywhere. Several dozen people are now subject to US sanctions under the law.
Americans are prohibited from doing any business with these individuals. Any assets they may have in the United States are frozen.
Watch: why is Donald Trump in this Russian pop video?
How did Moscow respond?
In December 2012, soon after then-president Barack Obama signed the Magnitsky Act, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a law banning American citizens from adopting Russian children.
Russia justified its adoption ban by pointing to cases of mistreatment of Russian children in the US, including the death of a seven-year-old who authorities said was beaten and starved to death, and another whose adoptive family put their unruly child on a flight back to Moscow, raising accusations of abandonment.
Yet it was widely viewed as retaliation for the Magnitsky law. The ban abruptly halted plans for 50 children to join new families in the US and led to worsening US-Russian relations.

What’s the connection to Trump Jnr's meeting?
Veselnitskaya, the lawyer with whom Trump Jnr met, opposes the Magnistky sanctions. She has represented Denis Katsyv, the son of a top executive in state-owned Russian Railways. He was charged in the US with money laundering after investigators suspected his company bought ritzy New York real estate using proceeds from the US$230 million tax fraud scheme that Magnitsky exposed.
Trump Jnr said that after initially discussing Clinton, Veselnitskaya “changed subjects” to the adoption ban and the Magnitsky Act. He said he interrupted her to say that since his father wasn’t yet an elected official, the conversation should wait until “if and when he held public office.”


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Explainers

What is the Magnitsky Act and why does the Kremlin hate it so much?

In this November 30, 2009 file photo, Nataliya Magnitskaya holds a portrait of her son, Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer who died two weeks earlier in jail, supposedly of a heart attack. He was 37. Photo: AP

FILE - In this April 17, 2017, file photo, Donald Trump Jr., the son of President Donald Trump, speaks to media during the annual White House Easter Egg Roll on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington. At the heart of Donald Trump Jr.’s unusual campaign-season meeting with a Russian lawyer was an obscure sanctions law that has infuriated the Kremlin. The Magnitsky Act, passed by Congress in 2012, was a U.S. response to the dubious death of a different Russian lawyer named Sergei Magnitsky. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, File)

(FILES) -- A handout file photo provided on Novenber 15, 2010 by Hermitage Capital Management and taken on December 29, 2006 shows Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky in Moscow. A Moscow court on July 11, 2013 convicted lawyer Sergei Magnitsky for tax evasion, despite his death in pre-trial detention in 2009 which became a symbol of prison abuses in Russia and strained ties with Washington. AFP PHOTO / HO / HERMITAGE CAPITAL MANAGEMENT RESTRICTED TO EDITORIAL USE AND EDITORIAL SALES -- MANDATORY CREDIT "AFP PHOTO / HO / HERMITAGE CAPITAL MANAGEMENT"

Widow Natalia Zharikova (L) grieves over her husband Sergei Magnitsky's body during his funeral at a cemetery in Moscow November 20, 2009. Magnitsky, a suspect in a tax evasion case against Hermitage, once Russia's biggest investment fund, died of heart failure in prison on Monday, state prosecutors said. REUTERS/Mikhail Voskresensky (RUSSIA CRIME LAW POLITICS)

‘Trump aides wanted dirt on Clinton so badly’: Russian lawyer recalls meeting US president’s son

Kremlin-linked lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya. Photo: AP

FILE - In this Friday, Nov. 4, 2016 file photo, Donald Trump Jr. campaigns for his father Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump in Gilbert, Ariz. Donald Trump’s eldest son, son-in-law and then-campaign chairman met with a Russian lawyer shortly after Trump won the Republican nomination, in what appears to be the earliest known private meeting between key aides to the president and a Russian. Representatives of Donald Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner confirmed the June 2016 meeting to The Associated Press after The New York Times reported Saturday, July 8, 2017 on the gathering of the men and Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya at Trump Tower. (AP Photo/Matt York, File)

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Explainer | What is the Magnitsky Act and why does the Kremlin hate it so much?