Lawyer Who Met With Donald Trump Jr. Has Ties to Russian Officials, Emails Show
By ASSOCIATED PRESS July 26, 2018
(LONDON) — The Moscow lawyer said to have promised Donald Trump’s presidential campaign dirt on his Democratic opponent worked more closely with senior Russian government officials than she previously let on, according to documents reviewed by The Associated Press.
Scores of emails, transcripts and legal documents paint a portrait of Natalia Veselnitskaya as a well-connected attorney who served as a ghostwriter for top Russian government lawyers and received assistance from senior Interior Ministry personnel in a case involving a key client.
The data was obtained through Russian opposition figure Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s London-based investigative unit, the Dossier Center, that is compiling profiles of Russians it accuses of benefiting from corruption. The data was later shared with journalists at the AP, the Swiss newspaper Tages-Anzeiger, Greek news website Inside Story and others.
The AP was unable to reach Veselnitskaya for comment. Messages from a reporter sent to her phone were marked as “read” but were not returned. A list of questions sent via email went unanswered.
Veselnitskaya has been under scrutiny since it emerged last year that Trump’s eldest son, Donald Jr., met with her in June 2016 after being told by an intermediary that she represented the Russian government and was offering Moscow’s help defeating rival presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
Veselnitskaya has denied acting on behalf of Russian officialdom when she met with the Trump team, telling Congress that she operates “independently of any government bodies.”
But recent reporting has cast doubt on her story. In an April interview with NBC News, Veselnitskaya acknowledged acting as an “informant” for the Russian government after being confronted with an earlier batch of emails obtained through the Dossier Center.
The new documents reviewed by AP suggest her ties to Russian authorities are close — and they pull the curtain back on her campaign to overturn the sanctions imposed by the U.S. on Russian officials.
The source of the material is murky.
Veselnitskaya has previously said that her emails were hacked. Khodorkovsky told AP he couldn’t know where the messages came from, saying his group maintained a series of anonymous digital drop boxes.
The AP worked to authenticate the 200-odd documents, in some cases by verifying the digital signatures carried in email headers.
In three other cases, individuals named in various email chains confirmed that the messages were genuine. Other correspondence was partially verified by confirming the nonpublic phone numbers or email addresses they held, including some belonging to senior Russian officials and U.S. lobbyists.
Friends in high places
Veselnitskaya’s role in the drama over the Trump campaign’s Russian connections is rooted in her fight against Bill Browder, the American-born British businessman who has become a leading critic of the Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Browder’s decade-plus crusade against the Kremlin has so enraged Russian officials that Putin demanded his extradition to Moscow during his press conference with President Trump in Helsinki earlier this month.
The feud took off in 2009, when a lawyer working for Browder, Sergey Magnitsky, died in a Moscow prison under suspicious circumstances. Magnitsky had been investigating a multimillion dollar embezzlement scheme allegedly involving Russian tax officials when he was arrested, and Browder turned his death into a cause celebre, successfully lobbying Congress to pass the Magnitsky Act, a 2012 law that slapped the officials implicated in the scandal with visa bans and asset freezes.
Moscow has responded with a ban on U.S. adoptions of Russian orphans and by an unrelenting campaign against Browder, who says he’s been the subject of more than a half-dozen attempts to extradite him to Russia through Interpol.
Browder has refused to back down, pushing for copycat legislation across the world. Veselnitskaya has taken the counteroffensive, battling him in court across Europe and the U.S. and organizing a media and lobbying campaign to undercut his credibility in Washington.
Veselnitskaya told Congress last year that her interest in Browder was “all part of my job defending a specific person” — her client Denis Katsyv, who Browder accuses of laundering money through the company Prevezon.
But the documents obtained through the Dossier Center show she both received Russian government support and provided assistance to high-level authorities in Moscow.
When Swiss officials investigating Prevezon arrived in Moscow on September 2015 to interrogate Katsyv, for example, they were met not just by Veselnitskaya but by Lt. Col. A. V. Ranchenkov, a senior Interior Ministry official previously known for his role investigating the Russian punk band Pussy Riot.
Ranchenkov devoted a chunk of the interview to questions about the legality of Browder’s actions, according to a transcript of the interrogation reviewed by email.
The Russian Interior Ministry did not return messages seeking comment.
Two years later, the emails show, Veselnitskaya was mixed up in the Russian government’s attempt to extract financial information from Browder’s former law firm in Cyprus.
An Oct. 31, 2017, email shows Veselnitskaya’s office preparing a draft version of Russian Deputy General Prosecutor Mikhail Alexandrov’s affidavit to Cypriot authorities. “This is needed by tomorrow,” she wrote a subordinate.
Two weeks later, a finalized version of the same document was sent by a Russian diplomatic staffer to a Cypriot counterpart, the Dossier Center’s files show.
Browder said this reinforced the idea that Veselnitskaya was enmeshed with Russian officialdom.
“If her office is drafting replies for Russian-Cyprus law enforcement cooperation, in my opinion that effectively shows that she’s an agent of the Russian government and not an independent lawyer as she claims,” he said in a telephone interview.
In a written statement, the Russian Embassy in Cyprus called the AP’s questions a “provocation” and that it had “no idea who is Nataliya Veselnitskaya and what she sends or doesn’t send to the Cypriot Officials.”
Alexandrov, reached at the prosecutor-general’s office, refused to speak to the AP.
‘My antennae were out’
Veselnitskaya tried to extend her influence to the United States.
The emails obtained through the Dossier Center show her at the center of a multipronged lobbying operation aimed at halting Browder’s momentum in Washington.
One prong was aimed at building a grassroots support for the effort to overturn the Magnitsky Act, or at least create the illusion of one.
A potential ally in this effort was the Families for Russian and Ukrainian Adoption Including Neighboring Countries, or FRUA, a charity that supports families who adopt children from former Soviet bloc nations.
Jan Wondra, the organization’s chairman, said she attended a meeting in Washington on June 8, 2016, that with a group of people including Rinat Akhmetshin, a Russian-American lobbyist who was working with Veselnitskaya to overturn U.S. sanctions against Russia.
The group told her they had evidence that the Magnitsky Act had been propelled by bogus claims spread by Browder and his allies, Wondra said, a revelation the group said could lead to the overturning of the Russian adoption ban.
Wondra told the AP she was suspicious and feared that the lobbyists wanted FRUA’s endorsement for their own purposes.
‘My antennae were out. I looked at this as an attempt to put public pressure on Congress to rescind all or a part of the Magnitsky Act,” she said, emphasizing that she spoke only for herself, not her organization. “The conclusion I drew was that FRUA should not participate. And we didn’t.”
Akhmetshin, who would join Veselnitskaya at the Trump Tower meeting the next day, declined comment.
While the lobbyists were wooing Wondra, Veselnitskaya was overseeing the creation of a new organization called the Human Rights Accountability Global Initiative Foundation, or HRAGI, which billed itself as a grass-roots group devoted to overturning the Russian adoption ban.
A Bloomberg report shows the organization was in fact funded by Russian friends of Katsyv — something Veselnitskaya appeared eager to keep secret.
“Is it possible to open a Fund account here in Russia, so we can collect money from donations and then pay them into an account anonymously in the U.S?” she wrote Mark Cymrot, a lawyer at the U.S. law firm BakerHostetler, in a March 17, 2016, email.
Cymrot represented Prevezon, the Katsyv-owned company accused by Browder of being a conduit for the ill-gotten money Magnitsky was tracking before he died. But Cymrot did more than just fight Veselnitskaya’s corner in American court; he also helped her undercut Browder’s crusading image in the American media.
For this, Cymrot turned to Fusion GPS, a private intelligence firm that prepared a 660-odd page media dossier on Browder for circulation to journalists.
Fusion also was tasked with background research for Veselnitskaya’s work convincing elected representatives to push back against Browder’s campaign in Washington, where the Global Magnitsky Bill, an enlarged version of the 2012 law, was wending its way through Congress.
The emails capture Cymrot writing to Fusion to ask for damning material on Browder to send to a senior staffer on the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.
“Any articles critical of Browder,” Cymrot told Fusion, saying the staffer had asked for “anything we have that could be helpful.”
“Time is of the essence,” he added, noting that the global bill was only two days from the beginning of the amendment process.
Cymrot said his work did not constitute lobbying.
“You’re misinterpreting what occurred,” he said in a telephone interview. When pressed for details, he asked for questions in writing. When these were provided, he did not respond. BakerHostetler also did not respond to written questions.
Whatever Cymrot’s role, Veselnitskaya’s modest American lobbying effort came to naught. The Global Magnitsky Act cleared the Committee on Foreign Affairs amid overwhelming bipartisan support. It was signed into law on Dec. 23, 2016.
Blowback
The campaign to knock the wind out of Browder’s sails began to draw blowback as the political climate changed.
On July 16, 2016, Browder filed a formal complaint with the Justice Department accusing Cymrot, Akhmetshin, Fusion founder Glenn Simpson and many of their colleagues of acting as unregistered agents for Russia.
In October 2016, a judge threw BakerHostetler off the Prevezon case on the grounds of conflict of interest, since the firm had previously represented Browder. It eventually was replaced by Los Angeles-based Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan.
After Trump’s election in November, the once-discreet Fusion was thrust into the white-hot center of Trump’s Washington when it was revealed that the private intelligence company had commissioned the dossier containing explosive claims about the future president’s behavior in Russia.
Republican politicians seized on Browder’s 2016 complaint about Fusion to try to undermine the dossier’s authors, accusing Simpson, for example, of secretly working on behalf of the Russian state, or of letting his work for Prevezon overlap with his opposition research on Trump.
Simpson denied the charges in his testimony before Congress. In a statement Thursday, Fusion’s lawyer Joshua A. Levy said the company had provided litigation support — not lobbying — and that its Trump research had survived determined Republican efforts to discredit it.
Others in Veselnitskaya’s orbit took a little time to get their story straight, a document obtained through the Dossier Center suggests.
The April 2017 document initially has Robert Arakelian, the owner of the HRAGI organization working to overturn the adoption ban, explaining that he is exempt from the requirement to register as a foreign agent and saying he created the organization “at the request of Denis Katsyv.”
The document’s tracked changes suggest a BakerHostetler lawyer rewrote the charity’s origin story wholesale, deleting the reference to Katsyv and saying instead that the adoption group was established after Arakelian met Akhmetshin, the lobbyist, and “learned that the law is unjust and based on false information provided to members of the United States Congress.”
The BakerHostetler lawyer then inserted a sentence explaining that there were no agreements between the adoption group, Katsyv, Prevezon “or any other foreign persons or principals from the Russian Federation.”
The only foreign link, the document said, was an “informal representation” by Veselnitskaya.
Arakelian didn’t return an email seeking comment.
“A BAD LIGHT”
As the rewriting of the document shows, BakerHostetler was still involved with Prevezon and its entourage despite the judge having ordered the firm off the case months before.
Faith Gay of Quinn Emanuel told Veselnitskaya on May 1, 2017, that she was still in touch with BakerHostetler even though the firm couldn’t officially participate in trial preparations.
“We have been trying to talk with them informally as much as possible,” she wrote.
Gay no longer works for the firm and declined comment when approached by the AP. But several emails show her former colleagues copying counterparts at BakerHostetler on trial-related matters, as well as BakerHostetler lawyers offering their feedback throughout the first half of 2017.
Cymrot defended his continued work on Prevezon, saying the lawyers at Quinn Emanuel needed help navigating the complex case they had taken on right up until the moment Prevezon settled with the government on May 19, 2017.
“It was all under the transition period,” he said in his interview.
Cymrot refused to divulge whether he or others at BakerHostetler were paid for their work, calling that information privileged.
Worries about the behind-the-scenes assistance becoming public would prove a source of concern after news of Veselnitskaya’s meeting at Trump Tower became public.
Within weeks, she, Akhmetshin, Simpson and others were called before Congress and investigators subpoenaed their emails. Quinn Emmanuel warned Veselnitskaya that the email exchanges could be damaging and urged her to declare them off-limits.
Releasing the messages could result in “a question being raised about BakerHostleter representing Prevezon’s interests well beyond the district court’s disqualification of them as Prevezon’s counsel,” one lawyer wrote.
Veselnitskaya initially shrugged off the issue.
“I can see no reason to worry,” she wrote on Aug. 18.
But five days later, senior Quinn Emanuel lawyer Faith Gay reemphasized the point, arguing that the documents should be kept secret “as it seems to us that it could be your friends at BakerHostetler in a bad light.”
Quinn Emanuel did not respond to a list of questions.
Veselnitskaya’s final response isn’t captured in the messages obtained through the Dossier Center, but she appears to have relented.
The emails between BakerHostetler, Fusion and congressional staffers were never made public. Instead, a two-page email log was produced labeling the material “confidential communication performed at the direction of counsel in anticipation of litigation.”
Unanswered questions
The emails obtained by AP leave some unanswered questions.
In particular, the Dossier Center’s investigation turned up almost no messages about the Trump Tower meeting, its lead-up or its aftermath. The group said it received only a few messages dealing with the media queries when the meeting became public in mid-2017.
That could lend credence to arguments by the Trump campaign and Veselnitskaya that both sides quickly realized the get-together was a waste of time.
“I wanted to go away as soon as possible,” she told Congress. “And I felt Trump Jr. wanted the same too.”
The messages also carry no hint of the Trump dossier, and nothing in the material challenges Simpson’s testimony that Fusion’s work for Prevezon was kept separate from its work on Trump.
Finally, there’s no mention in the documents of the Russian hack-and-leak operation that began rattling the Democrats immediately following Veselnitskaya’s visit.
The only hints of cyberespionage in the documents appear to revolve around concerns that Veselnitskaya or members of her entourage might have their messages hacked by others.
About a week before the Trump Tower meeting, for example, Veselnitskaya’s translator warned Arakelian, the owner of HRAGI, the adoption group, that their emails were vulnerable and suggested switching to more secure channels.
“We need to think about how to send files via Telegram, Signal or PGP,” he said.
Friday, July 27, 2018
Europe must wake up to the looming nightmare of a no-deal Brexit - Guardian
Brexit
Europe must wake up to the looming nightmare of a no-deal Brexit
Henry Newman
A messy EU-UK divorce could rupture the entire western alliance. But will Europe’s big players make Brussels see sense?
@HenryNewman
Fri 27 Jul 2018 22.30 AEST Last modified on Fri 27 Jul 2018 22.31 AEST
Jeremy Hunt, the UK foreign secretary, meets his German counterpart, Heiko Maas in Berlin
A no-deal Brexit will cause a disturbing rupture across not just Europe but the west. That’s the stark reality behind Michel Barnier’s slideshow, UK white papers, and the technical article 50 process that encourages us to see it primarily as a bureaucratic and legalistic exercise.
UK public will blame EU for no-deal Brexit, says Jeremy Hunt
In fact this is a major geopolitical and strategic event. And the prospect of the UK and EU failing to reach agreement on an orderly uncoupling has global implications. So our new foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, was right to raise the growing threat of no deal with his German counterpart. The UK and EU have both drawn red lines limiting their negotiating manoeuvres. Each has limited political space for further concessions. The UK took far too long to say clearly what it wanted, and now has probably asked for too much. Time is running out.
The referendum in 2016 settled the question of whether we were leaving or remaining in the EU. The question now is the nature of our exit, and more importantly our future relationship. We tend to fixate on our future economic relations, neglecting the security, defence and home affairs aspects of Brexit. But they are not neatly separable. An acrimonious exit from the EU will have a major economic impact on both sides of the Channel – and it will also damage security and defence cooperation with probably more lasting consequences.
These are not just threats but statements of fact. It is already evident that leaving the EU may lead to a drop-off in operational cooperation on a host of security issues. It’s more than possible to agree to maintain current joint capabilities, but that’s far from inevitable. The current exit deal on offer from Brussels would lead to a significant drop-off on security cooperation, putting lives at risk.
A messy Brexit without any deal would be far worse. It would by definition mean relations had broken down to such an extent that agreement couldn’t be reached even to tie up the terms of our exit, let alone our future. Inevitably, bilateral relations would be soured, leaving Europe damaged.
Some might argue that this is an inherent risk of Brexit, or that it’s the UK’s fault for voting to leave. Perhaps. But the EU isn’t a prison. Under the Lisbon treaty members have a lawful right to choose to leave the EU. Anyway, opposing or regretting Brexit isn’t an answer to the current predicament. Politics and diplomacy are about dealing with the world as it is, not as you want it to be. An accommodation needs to be found.
For understandable reasons EU members have tended so far to trust the European commission to drive the Brexit talks. Their diplomats in London often tell me candidly that their capitals are too distracted to focus on Brexit, and are willing to leave it to Brussels. That needs to change.
A German diplomat agreed that a compromise is needed, but observed that Germany often picked fights on too many fronts
Member states need to give the British decision to leave a little more sober reflection – perhaps when David Cameron came asking for flexibility during his renegotiation it might have been better to give a little more. Now there’s another inflection point where a British prime minister is asking for flexibility.
It’s incumbent on all member states – above all the largest – to focus on Brexit. They need to look beyond the details of customs arrangements and participation in this or that agency, important though they are, to the bigger canvas: the future shape of this continent. And though the UK is but one departing state, it’s Europe’s second biggest economy and its major defence, development and security player. It’s too big to ignore.
Despite the soya bean breakthrough in Washington, President Trump’s trade war with the EU remains a serious threat, and the trans-Atlantic relationship is more strained than at any point since the second world war. Relations with Russia are at their lowest since the cold war, and Turkey is drifting away from the western alliance. Further afield China is slowly shifting its stance and signalling an intention to play a more active global role.
I recently discussed with a senior German source my worry that if Brexit negotiations went wrong, Germany risked a simultaneous “battle” with the US and Russia and a collapse in relations with the UK, at the same time as the EU faced its own internal threats from Poland and Hungary to Italy and the eurozone. And therefore it made sense to find a compromise with Britain based somewhere near the Chequers plan. My friend didn’t disagree, but wrily observed that Germany had often picked fights on too many fronts.
As we leave the EU, the metaphorical width of the Channel is an open question. Berlin, Paris, Rome and the other key capitals should reflect that the UK remains a fundamentally European ally. EU membership was rejected by our political system. But European values aren’t the four freedoms of the single market. They are the respect for the rule of law, liberal democracy, a free press, and powerful institutions – and these run deep through the UK.
There’s still time to agree a fair and sustainable new partnership that works for both sides, and avoids the nightmare of a total collapse in the Brexit process.
• Henry Newman is director of the thinktank Open Europe
Trump denies knowing of 2016 Trump Tower meeting with Russians - Reuters
JULY 27, 2018
Trump denies knowing of 2016 Trump Tower meeting with Russians
Reuters Staff
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday denied knowing about the 2016 meeting his son, Donald Trump Jr., and other campaign staff held at Trump Tower with a group of Russians who offered damaging information about Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.
FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump walks from Marine One as he returns to the White House in Washington, U.S., July 26, 2018. REUTERS/Mary F. Calvert
“I did NOT know of the meeting with my son, Don jr,” Trump wrote in a post on Twitter, after a CNN report cited his longtime lawyer Michael Cohen as saying Trump had known about the meeting in advance.
CNN, citing unidentified sources with knowledge of the matter, said Cohen was willing to make that assertion to Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who is investigating whether Trump’s presidential campaign had worked with Russia to sway the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
Federal prosecutors in New York are investigating Cohen for possible bank and tax fraud, and for possible campaign law violations linked to a $130,000 payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels, a person familiar with the investigation has told Reuters. The payment to Daniels, who says she had an intimate relationship with Trump, was meant to buy her silence over the affair.
Cohen has not been charged with any crime.
Trump, who has said in the past he did not know about the meeting in advance, suggested Cohen was implicating Trump in exchange for possible immunity on unrelated charges related to his businesses.
“Sounds to me like someone is trying to make up stories in order to get himself out of an unrelated jam,” Trump speculated on Twitter, without supporting his claim.
The Republican president has been infuriated by the suggestion he might owe his White House victory to Russia, and has focused on the rebutting the collusion question rather than on concerns about the U.S. intelligence community’s findings that Moscow intervened on his behalf.
In a series of angry Tweets on Friday morning, he again denied any collusion with Moscow and denounced the Mueller probe as a witch hunt. Russia has denied meddling in the election.
Cohen did not immediately return a request for comment on Trump’s tweet.
The role Cohen, a longtime personal confidant of Trump, might play in the Mueller probe is unknown. On Wednesday, Trump expressed disbelief that Cohen would have taped conversations with him, a day after an audio recording of a conversation between the two men was aired on U.S. television.
A lawyer for Cohen, Lanny Davis, released the recording of Trump and Cohen discussing paying for the rights to former Playboy model Karen McDougal’s story about an alleged affair with Trump and it aired on CNN on Tuesday night.
Before the election, Trump’s campaign denied any knowledge of payment to McDougal, but the taped conversation could undermine those denials.
Reporting by Doina Chiacu; editing by Franklin Paul, Bernadette Baum and Jonathan Oatis
Trump denies knowing of 2016 Trump Tower meeting with Russians
Reuters Staff
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday denied knowing about the 2016 meeting his son, Donald Trump Jr., and other campaign staff held at Trump Tower with a group of Russians who offered damaging information about Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.
FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump walks from Marine One as he returns to the White House in Washington, U.S., July 26, 2018. REUTERS/Mary F. Calvert
“I did NOT know of the meeting with my son, Don jr,” Trump wrote in a post on Twitter, after a CNN report cited his longtime lawyer Michael Cohen as saying Trump had known about the meeting in advance.
CNN, citing unidentified sources with knowledge of the matter, said Cohen was willing to make that assertion to Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who is investigating whether Trump’s presidential campaign had worked with Russia to sway the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
Federal prosecutors in New York are investigating Cohen for possible bank and tax fraud, and for possible campaign law violations linked to a $130,000 payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels, a person familiar with the investigation has told Reuters. The payment to Daniels, who says she had an intimate relationship with Trump, was meant to buy her silence over the affair.
Cohen has not been charged with any crime.
Trump, who has said in the past he did not know about the meeting in advance, suggested Cohen was implicating Trump in exchange for possible immunity on unrelated charges related to his businesses.
“Sounds to me like someone is trying to make up stories in order to get himself out of an unrelated jam,” Trump speculated on Twitter, without supporting his claim.
The Republican president has been infuriated by the suggestion he might owe his White House victory to Russia, and has focused on the rebutting the collusion question rather than on concerns about the U.S. intelligence community’s findings that Moscow intervened on his behalf.
In a series of angry Tweets on Friday morning, he again denied any collusion with Moscow and denounced the Mueller probe as a witch hunt. Russia has denied meddling in the election.
Cohen did not immediately return a request for comment on Trump’s tweet.
The role Cohen, a longtime personal confidant of Trump, might play in the Mueller probe is unknown. On Wednesday, Trump expressed disbelief that Cohen would have taped conversations with him, a day after an audio recording of a conversation between the two men was aired on U.S. television.
A lawyer for Cohen, Lanny Davis, released the recording of Trump and Cohen discussing paying for the rights to former Playboy model Karen McDougal’s story about an alleged affair with Trump and it aired on CNN on Tuesday night.
Before the election, Trump’s campaign denied any knowledge of payment to McDougal, but the taped conversation could undermine those denials.
Reporting by Doina Chiacu; editing by Franklin Paul, Bernadette Baum and Jonathan Oatis
Facebook: Explaining the company's massive share slump - BBC News
July 27, 2018
Facebook: Explaining the company's massive share slump
Other tech companies shares fell as Facebook stock plummeted
It was one of the biggest one-day losses in US corporate history.
At the start of the day, Facebook was valued at $630bn (£481bn). By the end, it had dropped to $510bn (£389bn).
Company founder Mark Zuckerberg personally lost more than $15bn (£11.5bn) in one day, seeing him fall from fourth to sixth on Forbes' list of global billionaires.
The drop came after the social media giant published its second quarter results.
Although still positive, they came in below investor expectations - and company shares had plummeted nearly 20% by the end of the day.
So why the weaker numbers? Why did markets react so badly? And what does this mean for Facebook?
What did Facebook say?
The firm announced that its user growth rose at its slowest rate in two years.
It also warned that billions in spending, planned to improve privacy and track advertisers, would outweigh revenue gains.
Eight reasons Facebook has peaked
Those revenue gains had themselves been limited by a fall in user numbers outside the US and people making use of new options to limit advertising.
What role did recent scandals play?
Facebook attributed their results to a new advertising format and giving users more control over privacy.
But the elephant in the room was the swirl of scandals surrounding the company.
The biggest involved Facebook sharing the data of 87 million users to a researcher at Cambridge Analytica, a political consulting firm.
How the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data scandal unfolded
In May, Mr Zuckerberg appeared before the US Senate to apologise for his company's role in the data breach.
He also spoke about "fake news", and allegations that Russia used Facebook to interfere in the the 2016 US presidential election.
Facebook faces maximum fine for data misuse
Who's policing Facebook?
How Trump's Russia trouble unfolded
Craig Erlam, senior market analyst at Oanda, said these scandals have had a "negative impact" for the firm.
"Trust is so important with consumer trends," Mr Erlam told the BBC, "and people may feel that Facebook betrayed their trust."
How relevant was GDPR?
Facebook announced that the number of its users in Europe fell by 3 million in the first quarter, to 279 million. North American users stayed flat at 185 million.
This follows the introduction in late May of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
WATCH: What GDPR will mean for you?
The new rules make it easier for consumers to find what data organisations hold on them, increases maximum fines for privacy breaches, and makes it mandatory to report any breaches to the authorities.
The great GDPR panic
How will privacy law affect you?
According to US news network CNBC, Facebook CEO Sheryl Sandberg said GDPR has not hugely affected advertising revenue, but the full effects of the new law may not be felt until the next quarter.
Is competition a factor?
Facebook has been the dominant social media giant for years, and remains vastly popular.
In its results, the company said it had more than 2.2 billion monthly active users at the end of June.
But their latest data does suggest user number growth is slowing.
A study from the US-based Pew Research Center suggests young people are ditching Facebook for Snapchat, Instagram and YouTube, with 85% of teens preferring the video platform to Facebook.
Younger people are turning to other social media sites
"Social media is such a rapidly evolving world, and it's very hard to pull people back once they've moved platform," Mr Erlam said.
And while Facebook owns Instagram and Whatsapp, it cannot financially rely on those apps yet, according to Mr Erlam.
"I don't think Instagram offers enough to offset advertising loss at this time," he said.
Michael Hewson, chief market analyst at CMC Markets, told the BBC that the challenge now facing the company was how to monetise its other platforms.
Do investors expect too much?
Mr Hewson did however warn the market reaction to the results may have been overblown.
Despite its warnings and weaker numbers, Facebook announced year-on-year revenue growth of more than 40% in the most recent quarter.
Facebook CEO Sheryl Sandberg still has reason to be happy
"Investor expectations of growth strategy was out of whack," he said, adding that company management would be well-advised to "temper" expectations to prevent "irrational exuberance" from investors.
So how bad is it?
The company's market value dropped around $120bn in one day.
To put that in context, McDonald's is in total worth $122bn on the New York Stock Exchange, with US industrial giant General Electric worth $114bn.
So it is a loss that Facebook can absorb.
"It's not the end, not on the basis of one set of numbers," Mr Hewson said. "There needs to be a sense of perspective."
Facebook: Explaining the company's massive share slump
Other tech companies shares fell as Facebook stock plummeted
It was one of the biggest one-day losses in US corporate history.
At the start of the day, Facebook was valued at $630bn (£481bn). By the end, it had dropped to $510bn (£389bn).
Company founder Mark Zuckerberg personally lost more than $15bn (£11.5bn) in one day, seeing him fall from fourth to sixth on Forbes' list of global billionaires.
The drop came after the social media giant published its second quarter results.
Although still positive, they came in below investor expectations - and company shares had plummeted nearly 20% by the end of the day.
So why the weaker numbers? Why did markets react so badly? And what does this mean for Facebook?
What did Facebook say?
The firm announced that its user growth rose at its slowest rate in two years.
It also warned that billions in spending, planned to improve privacy and track advertisers, would outweigh revenue gains.
Eight reasons Facebook has peaked
Those revenue gains had themselves been limited by a fall in user numbers outside the US and people making use of new options to limit advertising.
What role did recent scandals play?
Facebook attributed their results to a new advertising format and giving users more control over privacy.
But the elephant in the room was the swirl of scandals surrounding the company.
The biggest involved Facebook sharing the data of 87 million users to a researcher at Cambridge Analytica, a political consulting firm.
How the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data scandal unfolded
In May, Mr Zuckerberg appeared before the US Senate to apologise for his company's role in the data breach.
He also spoke about "fake news", and allegations that Russia used Facebook to interfere in the the 2016 US presidential election.
Facebook faces maximum fine for data misuse
Who's policing Facebook?
How Trump's Russia trouble unfolded
Craig Erlam, senior market analyst at Oanda, said these scandals have had a "negative impact" for the firm.
"Trust is so important with consumer trends," Mr Erlam told the BBC, "and people may feel that Facebook betrayed their trust."
How relevant was GDPR?
Facebook announced that the number of its users in Europe fell by 3 million in the first quarter, to 279 million. North American users stayed flat at 185 million.
This follows the introduction in late May of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
WATCH: What GDPR will mean for you?
The new rules make it easier for consumers to find what data organisations hold on them, increases maximum fines for privacy breaches, and makes it mandatory to report any breaches to the authorities.
The great GDPR panic
How will privacy law affect you?
According to US news network CNBC, Facebook CEO Sheryl Sandberg said GDPR has not hugely affected advertising revenue, but the full effects of the new law may not be felt until the next quarter.
Is competition a factor?
Facebook has been the dominant social media giant for years, and remains vastly popular.
In its results, the company said it had more than 2.2 billion monthly active users at the end of June.
But their latest data does suggest user number growth is slowing.
A study from the US-based Pew Research Center suggests young people are ditching Facebook for Snapchat, Instagram and YouTube, with 85% of teens preferring the video platform to Facebook.
Younger people are turning to other social media sites
"Social media is such a rapidly evolving world, and it's very hard to pull people back once they've moved platform," Mr Erlam said.
And while Facebook owns Instagram and Whatsapp, it cannot financially rely on those apps yet, according to Mr Erlam.
"I don't think Instagram offers enough to offset advertising loss at this time," he said.
Michael Hewson, chief market analyst at CMC Markets, told the BBC that the challenge now facing the company was how to monetise its other platforms.
Do investors expect too much?
Mr Hewson did however warn the market reaction to the results may have been overblown.
Despite its warnings and weaker numbers, Facebook announced year-on-year revenue growth of more than 40% in the most recent quarter.
Facebook CEO Sheryl Sandberg still has reason to be happy
"Investor expectations of growth strategy was out of whack," he said, adding that company management would be well-advised to "temper" expectations to prevent "irrational exuberance" from investors.
So how bad is it?
The company's market value dropped around $120bn in one day.
To put that in context, McDonald's is in total worth $122bn on the New York Stock Exchange, with US industrial giant General Electric worth $114bn.
So it is a loss that Facebook can absorb.
"It's not the end, not on the basis of one set of numbers," Mr Hewson said. "There needs to be a sense of perspective."
Korea remains: Pyongyang returns US troops slain in Korean War - BBC News
July 27, 2018
Korea remains: Pyongyang returns US troops slain in Korean War
The remains arrived at a US airbase in South Korea
North Korea has returned remains believed to be of 55 US troops killed during the Korean War, bringing renewed hope to families who have waited decades for closure.
The return of the remains, brought to a US base in South Korea, is the latest move in the cautious diplomacy between Washington and Pyongyang.
The repatriation was agreed at the June summit between US President Donald Trump and North Korea's Kim Jong-un.
It is hoped more will follow.
"It's hard to live your life not knowing what happened to your loved one," the daughter of one missing serviceman told the BBC ahead of Friday's news.
Reality Check: How many dead US soldiers in North Korea?
Searching for the father they barely knew
The Singapore summit, where Mr Trump and Mr Kim agreed to work towards the "complete denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula", has been criticised for a lack of detail on when or how Pyongyang would renounce nuclear weapons.
US airmen salute to vehicles transporting the remains
But the return of US remains was one of four points actually listed in that June declaration, and comes on the 65th anniversary of the signing of the armistice that ended the 1950-1953 Korean War.
It is believed that 55 soldiers have been returned this time, but their remains will need to be forensically tested to ensure they are indeed slain US troops - and it's possible the identification process could take years.
Why North Korea is in no hurry to please the US
John Zimmerlee, the son of a US serviceman who is among the missing, told the BBC there was no guarantee these were the remains of American soldiers.
Mr Zimmerlee, the founder of the Korean War Prisoners Of War and Missing In Action Network, said: "Keep in mind that these 55 remains that are coming back, these are people that they [North Korea] suspected were their enemy during the (Korean) war - not necessarily Americans.
"They could be British, they could be Australians, Belgians - could be a lot of different people."
'An emotional and symbolic gesture'
By Laura Bicker, BBC Seoul correspondent, Osan air base
The small wooden caskets were draped in the UN flag and carried carefully one by one from the aircraft onto US soil.
Hundreds of US soldiers and some of their families from the Osan base came to salute and line the route of their final journey.
Before the ceremony they'd been told they would be watching a key moment in history. They stood silently and watched.
Earlier I'd asked Korean War veterans from the US and the UK what this meant to them. Amazing news, they told me.
"This is an emotional and symbolic gesture," said another.
Why are US remains in North Korea?
More than 326,000 Americans fought alongside soldiers from South Korea and a UN coalition during the war to support the South against the Communist North.
Thousands of US military personnel from the Korean war remain unaccounted for and most of them - about 5,300 - were lost in what is now North Korea.
The missing US soldiers are among around 33,000 coalition troops still unaccounted for.
There are thought to be around 5,300 remains of US soldiers in North Korea
The remains are believed to be located at:
prisoner of war camps - many perished during the winter of 1950
the sites of major battles, such as the areas around Unsan and Chongchon in the north-west of the country - said to contain approximately 1,600 dead
temporary UN military cemeteries - China and North Korea returned about 3,000 dead Americans in an effort called Operation Glory in 1954, but others remain
the demilitarised zone that separates North and South Korea - said to contain 1,000 bodies
Between 1990 and 2005, 229 sets were returned, but this halted as relations deteriorated with the development of North Korea's nuclear ambitions.
What happens now?
A US military aircraft took the remains to the US base at Osan in South Korea where, according to the White House, a repatriation ceremony will be held on 1 August after some initial testing.
The remains will then be brought to the US to undergo thorough forensic testing.
Donald J. Trump
✔
@realDonaldTrump
The Remains of American Servicemen will soon be leaving North Korea and heading to the United States! After so many years, this will be a great moment for so many families. Thank you to Kim Jong Un.
1:50 PM - Jul 27, 2018
The White House said it was "a solemn obligation of the United States Government to ensure that the remains are handled with dignity and properly accounted for so their families receive them in an honorable manner".
What has the reaction been?
The US government said it was "encouraged by North Korea's actions and the momentum for positive change".
The return of the dead soldiers was "a significant first step to recommence the repatriation of remains from North Korea and to resume field operations in North Korea to search for the estimated 5,300 Americans who have not yet returned home".
Nukes, Trump Towers and human rights - what might peace look like between the US and North Korea?
North Korean propaganda changes its tune
What were the results of the Trump-Kim summit?
Is North Korea sticking with its nukes?
The repatriation will be welcomed by relatives who have waited decades for progress.
But Bill Richardson, a former UN ambassador who secured the return of six bodies in 2007, remains sceptical.
He told the Washington Post: "They'll give a certain amount of remains for free right away, but then they'll say, 'The next ones, we need to find them, locate them, restore them.' And then they'll start charging."
It is thought North Korea has about 200 sets of remains collected already.
What about North Korea's wider intentions?
The 12 June summit between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un saw both sides speak with ambition about concrete steps to improve relations but experts have cast doubt on whether Pyongyang is genuine in its apparent commitment to "denuclearise".
Last week North Korea appeared to begin dismantling part of a key rocket launch site but there have been reports it secretly continues its weapons programme. Meanwhile, Pyongyang has accused the US of "gangster-like" tactics.
There's also been little clarity about what exactly the two sides mean by "complete denuclearisation" and no details on a timeline for this to take place.
Nevertheless, Friday's repatriation will likely be seen as a concrete goodwill gesture after years of efforts by relatives and US authorities to retrieve the remains.
Korea remains: Pyongyang returns US troops slain in Korean War
The remains arrived at a US airbase in South Korea
North Korea has returned remains believed to be of 55 US troops killed during the Korean War, bringing renewed hope to families who have waited decades for closure.
The return of the remains, brought to a US base in South Korea, is the latest move in the cautious diplomacy between Washington and Pyongyang.
The repatriation was agreed at the June summit between US President Donald Trump and North Korea's Kim Jong-un.
It is hoped more will follow.
"It's hard to live your life not knowing what happened to your loved one," the daughter of one missing serviceman told the BBC ahead of Friday's news.
Reality Check: How many dead US soldiers in North Korea?
Searching for the father they barely knew
The Singapore summit, where Mr Trump and Mr Kim agreed to work towards the "complete denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula", has been criticised for a lack of detail on when or how Pyongyang would renounce nuclear weapons.
US airmen salute to vehicles transporting the remains
But the return of US remains was one of four points actually listed in that June declaration, and comes on the 65th anniversary of the signing of the armistice that ended the 1950-1953 Korean War.
It is believed that 55 soldiers have been returned this time, but their remains will need to be forensically tested to ensure they are indeed slain US troops - and it's possible the identification process could take years.
Why North Korea is in no hurry to please the US
John Zimmerlee, the son of a US serviceman who is among the missing, told the BBC there was no guarantee these were the remains of American soldiers.
Mr Zimmerlee, the founder of the Korean War Prisoners Of War and Missing In Action Network, said: "Keep in mind that these 55 remains that are coming back, these are people that they [North Korea] suspected were their enemy during the (Korean) war - not necessarily Americans.
"They could be British, they could be Australians, Belgians - could be a lot of different people."
'An emotional and symbolic gesture'
By Laura Bicker, BBC Seoul correspondent, Osan air base
The small wooden caskets were draped in the UN flag and carried carefully one by one from the aircraft onto US soil.
Hundreds of US soldiers and some of their families from the Osan base came to salute and line the route of their final journey.
Before the ceremony they'd been told they would be watching a key moment in history. They stood silently and watched.
Earlier I'd asked Korean War veterans from the US and the UK what this meant to them. Amazing news, they told me.
"This is an emotional and symbolic gesture," said another.
Why are US remains in North Korea?
More than 326,000 Americans fought alongside soldiers from South Korea and a UN coalition during the war to support the South against the Communist North.
Thousands of US military personnel from the Korean war remain unaccounted for and most of them - about 5,300 - were lost in what is now North Korea.
The missing US soldiers are among around 33,000 coalition troops still unaccounted for.
There are thought to be around 5,300 remains of US soldiers in North Korea
The remains are believed to be located at:
prisoner of war camps - many perished during the winter of 1950
the sites of major battles, such as the areas around Unsan and Chongchon in the north-west of the country - said to contain approximately 1,600 dead
temporary UN military cemeteries - China and North Korea returned about 3,000 dead Americans in an effort called Operation Glory in 1954, but others remain
the demilitarised zone that separates North and South Korea - said to contain 1,000 bodies
Between 1990 and 2005, 229 sets were returned, but this halted as relations deteriorated with the development of North Korea's nuclear ambitions.
What happens now?
A US military aircraft took the remains to the US base at Osan in South Korea where, according to the White House, a repatriation ceremony will be held on 1 August after some initial testing.
The remains will then be brought to the US to undergo thorough forensic testing.
Donald J. Trump
✔
@realDonaldTrump
The Remains of American Servicemen will soon be leaving North Korea and heading to the United States! After so many years, this will be a great moment for so many families. Thank you to Kim Jong Un.
1:50 PM - Jul 27, 2018
The White House said it was "a solemn obligation of the United States Government to ensure that the remains are handled with dignity and properly accounted for so their families receive them in an honorable manner".
What has the reaction been?
The US government said it was "encouraged by North Korea's actions and the momentum for positive change".
The return of the dead soldiers was "a significant first step to recommence the repatriation of remains from North Korea and to resume field operations in North Korea to search for the estimated 5,300 Americans who have not yet returned home".
Nukes, Trump Towers and human rights - what might peace look like between the US and North Korea?
North Korean propaganda changes its tune
What were the results of the Trump-Kim summit?
Is North Korea sticking with its nukes?
The repatriation will be welcomed by relatives who have waited decades for progress.
But Bill Richardson, a former UN ambassador who secured the return of six bodies in 2007, remains sceptical.
He told the Washington Post: "They'll give a certain amount of remains for free right away, but then they'll say, 'The next ones, we need to find them, locate them, restore them.' And then they'll start charging."
It is thought North Korea has about 200 sets of remains collected already.
What about North Korea's wider intentions?
The 12 June summit between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un saw both sides speak with ambition about concrete steps to improve relations but experts have cast doubt on whether Pyongyang is genuine in its apparent commitment to "denuclearise".
Last week North Korea appeared to begin dismantling part of a key rocket launch site but there have been reports it secretly continues its weapons programme. Meanwhile, Pyongyang has accused the US of "gangster-like" tactics.
There's also been little clarity about what exactly the two sides mean by "complete denuclearisation" and no details on a timeline for this to take place.
Nevertheless, Friday's repatriation will likely be seen as a concrete goodwill gesture after years of efforts by relatives and US authorities to retrieve the remains.
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