Music Promoter Who Arranged Russia Meeting Met Donald Trump In Vegas In 2013
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
By Aiden Pink July 12, 2017
Rob Goldstone, the Jewish-British music promoter who arranged a meeting last year between Donald Trump Jr. and a Russian lawyer promising dirt on Hillary Clinton, had previously met now-President Trump in Las Vegas in June 2013, CNN reported Wednesday.
Videos obtained by the network show Trump dining and speaking with Goldstone, his client the Russian singer Emin Agalarov, and Agalarov’s father Aras, a billionaire property developer with ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin. The elder Agalarov and Trump signed a multi-million-dollar deal in 2013 to bring the Trump-owned Miss Universe pageant to Moscow that year.
Donald Trump Jr. does not appear in the videos, but other Trump associates do, including Michael Cohen, Trump’s lawyer and sometimes-spokesman, and Keith Schiller, Trump’s former security manager who is now the White House Director of Oval Office Operations.
In one of the clips, Trump praised Russia and said that he hoped the pageant would improve ties between the two countries. “”It really is a great country. It’s a very powerful country that we have a relationship with, but I would say not a great relationship, and I would say this can certainly help that relationship. I think it’s very important,” Trump said in response to a question.
Goldstone emailed Trump Jr. — who claimed that he met Goldstone at a golf tournament where Emin Agalarov performed and not at the Miss Universe pageant — last June to say that “The Crown prosecutor of Russia … offered to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father.”
“If it’s what you say I love it,” Trump Jr. replied. He later posted the email exchange on his Twitter account.
Contact Aiden Pink at [email protected] or on Twitter, @aidenpink.
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