Story highlights The Senate judiciary committee held a hearing on Russian interference in the US election

Bill Browder said Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya has connections to Vladimir Putin

(CNN) Bill Browder, a businessman behind a Russian sanctions law, testified Thursday that he believes a Russian lawyer went into a June 2016 meeting with top aides to the campaign of President Donald Trump with something to offer, and that Russian intelligence likely monitored the meeting.

"I can tell you with 100% certainty that the Russian intelligence services would have been aware of that meeting in advance as they were plotting it out, there would have been weeks spent studying how to best achieve the results in that meeting," Browder told the Senate judiciary committee Thursday.

Browder added that he has no first-hand knowledge of the details of the meeting but was commenting on his experience with the Russian government.

"I have no direct evidence, but I know how Russian security services behave, and this was a big ask, to repeal a major legislation," Browder told the committee. "They wouldn't have gone in without being prepared to offer something in return. What the offer was I don't know. But the KGB and FSB would have studied their targets carefully."

Browder, who worked with the Senate to pass the sanctions almost a decade ago, told members of the judiciary committee Thursday that Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya is the family lawyer for a Russian family closely aligned with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

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