Ranit Akhmetshin, the Russian-American lobbyist and former Soviet military officer who accompanied a Russian lawyer to a meeting with Donald Trump Jr. last year, is no stranger to scandal.

Akhmetshin is roughly 50 years old and holds dual Russian-American citizenship. He has kept a relatively low profile in Washington, D.C., until recently, but has spent decades embedded in several high-stakes lobbying campaigns on behalf of the former Soviet Union.

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, veteran reporter Steve LeVine told Radio Free Europe in June 2016.

Akhmetshin confirmed to The Associated Press on Friday that he had participated in the now-infamous meeting between President Donald Trumps eldest son and Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya. Jared Kushner , Trumps son-in-law and adviser, and Paul Manafort, Trumps campaign manager at the time, also attended.

The meeting came amid a lobbying campaign against the Magnitsky Act, legislation passed in 2012 that barred several Russian officials accused of human rights abuses from entering the U.S. and infuriated Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Just days after the meeting, Akhmetshin hosted a screening of a Russian propaganda film at the Newseum in Washington. The movie was an effort to undermine evidence that the Kremlin had authorized the imprisonment, torture and eventual murder of a Russian lawyer and whistleblower named Sergei Magnitsky, whose death inspired the Magnitsky Act.