The following article by Rosalind S. Helderman and Tom Hamburger was posted on the Washington Post website December 14, 2017:
British music promoter Rob Goldstone in 2015 suggested a meeting between Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. (Bastien Inzaurralde/The Washington Post)
About a month after Donald Trump launched his presidential bid, a British music promoter suggested his Russian pop-star client could arrange for the new candidate to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to an email obtained by The Washington Post.
The July 2015 offer by publicist Rob Goldstone came about a year before he set up a meeting for Trump’s eldest son with a Russian lawyer who he said had incriminating information about Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.
Goldstone’s overture came as he unsuccessfully urged Trump to travel to Moscow later that year to attend a birthday celebration for his client’s father.
“Maybe he would welcome a meeting with President Putin,” Goldstone wrote in a July 24, 2015, email to Trump’s longtime personal assistant, Rhona Graff. There is no indication Trump or his assistant followed up on Goldstone’s offer.
The invitation is the latest example to emerge of efforts to broker a meeting between the Kremlin and Trump Tower during the campaign. The timing of Goldstone’s offer served as a reminder of the high-level contacts that Trump had in Russia as he ramped up his White House run.
The email exchange is among thousands of pages of internal Trump documents that have been turned over to investigators examining Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Scott Balber, an attorney for the pop star Emin Agalarov, said Agalarov asked Goldstone to invite Trump to his father’s party but was not aware that the publicist dangled the possibility of meeting with Putin.
“It is certainly not the case that Emin Agalarov can arrange a meeting with Vladimir Putin for anybody,” Balber said.
Goldstone’s attorney, Robert Gage, declined to comment, as did Alan Futerfas, an attorney for Graff.
But Futerfas expressed concern that material provided to investigators has been shared with the media.
“We are disappointed that documents continue to be selectively leaked from confidential investigations,” said Futerfas, who last week called for an investigation into the leaking of information provided to the House Intelligence Committee.
Trump’s relationship with Emin Agalarov and his father, Aras, a wealthy Moscow developer, dated to 2013, when they licensed the Trump-owned Miss Universe pageant and brought it to Moscow. During Trump’s visit to Moscow for the event, he appeared in a music video for an Emin Agalarov song that was filmed at the Ritz-Carlton hotel. Following the pageant, Aras Agalarov discussed a possible real estate development deal with Trump in Moscow, but the project never materialized.
Emin Agalarov is an Azerbaijani singer who moved to Moscow and is at the center of the latest controversy to hit the Trump administration. (Victoria Walker/The Washington Post)
Goldstone, a publicist for Emin Agalarov, reached out several times to Trump’s inner circle during the presidential race. In early 2016, he sent an email to Donald Trump Jr. to discuss the idea of setting up a page for Trump’s campaign on VK, the Russian equivalent of Facebook. Later in the year, he brokered a meeting between Trump Jr. and Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya.
Congressional investigators have sought more information about his interactions with the Trump Organization. Goldstone was interviewed Thursday, according to people familiar with the session. Continue reading “Music promoter dangled possible Putin meeting for Trump during campaign”