A meeting took place at Trump Tower in New York City on June 9, 2016, between three senior members of the 2016 Trump campaign – Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort – four other U.S. citizens, and Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya. The meeting was arranged by publicist and long-time Trump acquaintance Rob Goldstone on behalf of his client, Azerbaijani singer-songwriter Emin Agalarov. The meeting was first disclosed to U.S. government officials in April 2017, when Kushner filed a revised version of his security clearance form.
Donald Trump Jr. made several misleading statements about the meeting. He initially told the press that the meeting was held to discuss adoptions of Russian children by Americans. On July 8, 2017, after news reports stated that Trump Jr. knew the meeting was political, he admitted in a tweet that he had agreed to the meeting with the understanding that he would receive information damaging to Hillary Clinton, and that he was conducting opposition research. When The New York Times was about to report on email exchanges between Goldstone and Trump Jr., Trump Jr. himself published the emails. In early July 2017, it was reported that then-President Donald Trump himself drafted Trump Jr.'s initial misleading statement. The report was later confirmed by the president's attorneys. In July 2018, the president denied knowledge of the meeting.
Robert Mueller's special counsel investigation examined the emails and the meeting, and their relation to the Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. Mueller concluded the campaign did not receive the information it was interested in. He did not charge anyone over the meeting.
Background
Prior to the Trump Tower meeting, Trump campaign advisor George Papadopoulos met at least twice with Joseph Mifsud, who asserted his awareness that Russians had thousands of emails that were damaging to Hillary Clinton. This occurred before the hacking of the DNC computers had become public knowledge. Papadopoulos later shared this information with at least two other people, including an Australian diplomat to Britain. At a meeting on March 24, 2016, the professor brought along a Russian woman, Olga Polonskaya. Papadopoulos made multiple unsuccessful attempts to set up meetings in Russia between Trump or members of his campaign and Russian officials. He communicated his proposals and interactions to several Trump campaign officials. In October 2017 he pleaded guilty to one count of making false statements to the FBI about his actions.
On June 3, 2016, before the public was made aware of potential Russian interference in the presidential election, Donald Trump Jr. was contacted by Rob Goldstone, a British music publicist whose association with the Trumps dates back to the Miss Universe 2013 pageant held in Moscow; at that time, Trump Jr.'s father, businessman Donald Trump, had been co-owner of the pageant. Goldstone's client, Emin Agalarov, an Azerbaijani singer, performed at the Miss Universe event. His father, Aras Agalarov, is a wealthy real estate developer in Moscow.
In his June 3 email to Trump Jr., Goldstone wrote:
Emin just called and asked me to contact you with something very interesting.
The Crown prosecutor of Russia met with his father Aras this morning and in their meeting 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.
This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump – helped along by Aras and Emin.
Trump Jr. responded:
Thanks Rob I appreciate that. I am on the road at the moment but perhaps I just speak to Emin first. Seems we have some time and if it's what you say I love it especially later in the summer. Could we do a call first thing next week when I am back?
On 7 June 2016, on behalf of Emin Agalarov, Goldstone e-mailed Donald Trump's son Donald Trump Jr., to request a meeting between the younger Trump and Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya (referred to in Goldstone's e-mail as a "Russian government attorney"). According to Goldstone's email, Agalarov wanted to "provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information" that would help Donald Trump's campaign and damage the campaign of his rival, Hillary Clinton.
Meeting
The arranged meeting took place at Trump Tower in the afternoon of June 9, 2016. At least eight people attended. The gathering included the younger Trump; Donald Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner; Trump's campaign manager, Paul Manafort; Aras Agaralov's employee Ike Kaveladze; Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya; former Russian counterintelligence officer Rinat Akhmetshin; and a translator.
When the meeting first became known, conflicting accounts of who attended circulated. With time, more names came forward. At first, Donald Trump Jr. did not disclose that Ike Kaveladze, Rob Goldstone, and Anatoli Samachornov attended the meeting.
At the meeting, Goldstone introduced this person as Moscow-based attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya. She stated that she was not a government official; however, she is known to have ties to the Russian government and later described herself as an "informant" to the office of the Russian prosecutor general. According to Goldstone, she had planned to be in New York for a court appearance on June 9. Trump Jr. offered an in-person meeting that afternoon, which Goldstone confirmed. Trump Jr. forwarded the email thread to Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort.
Participants
Trump campaign officials
- Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law, responsible for the campaign's digital, online, and social media operations.
- Paul Manafort, campaign manager for the presidential campaign of Donald Trump from March 29, 2016, to August 19, 2016. He was formerly a lobbyist.
- Donald Trump Jr., eldest son of Donald Trump, active in the presidential campaign as a key political aide and advisor to his father.
Russian lobbyists
- Natalia Veselnitskaya, a Russian lawyer best known in the United States for lobbying against the Magnitsky Act. According to The New York Times, in Moscow she is regarded as a "trusted insider" who has argued cases for government agencies and high-profile clients including Pyotr Katsyv, an official in the state-owned Russian Railways, and his son Denis, whom she defended against a money laundering charge in New York. She has also been an informant in active communication with Yury Chaika, the Russian prosecutor general, since 2013. Starting in 2014, she had worked with Fusion GPS, the firm that was later hired to do opposition research on Trump, to investigate an unrelated money-laundering case involving Prevezon Holding, and the "dirt" she brought with her to the meeting stemmed from that work. The work on the Prevezon case, and later on the dossier, were completely separate, and Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee that they were unaware that Veselnitskaya would meet with Trump campaign members or share anything from the Prevezon case with them.
- Rinat Akhmetshin, a Russian-American lobbyist and former Soviet counterintelligence officer suspected of "having ongoing ties to Russian Intelligence", although he denies it. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, he immigrated to the United States in 1993 and became a U.S. citizen in 2009. According to The New York Times, Akhmetshin has "a history of working for close allies of President Vladimir V. Putin."
Other participants
- Rob Goldstone (b. 3 December 1960), the publicist of Emin Agalarov, who said that Agalarov asked him to contact Trump Jr. New York attorney Scott S. Balber, who was retained by Emin and Aras Agalarov, denied that Goldstone's emails accurately outlined the origins of the meeting. Goldstone was born in Whitefield, Bury, Greater Manchester, where his father was a founding member of the Hillock Hebrew Congregation. He attended Delamere Forest School in Cheshire and Heys Boys' County Secondary School in Prestwich. He left school at age 16 to become a trainee sports reporter at the Jewish Gazette. He then worked for the Radcliffe Times and, later, for the Birmingham Evening Mail then in the newsroom at Birmingham's BRMB Radio. In 1987, Goldstone founded Oui 2 Entertainment, a publicity, marketing, and event-planning company. Clients of the company have included the New York Friars Club, the Madison Square Boys and Girls Club, Steinway & Sons, the Russian Tea Room, and Azerbaijani pop star Emin Agalarov. Oui 2 assisted the Trump Organization in bringing the 2013 Miss Universe Pageant to Moscow with Agaralov's father, billionaire Aras Agalarov, as host. He later authored Pop Stars, Pageants & Presidents: How an Email Trumped My Life (Oui2 Entertainment, 2018).
- Anatoli Samochornov, a translator for Veselnitskaya. In the past, Samochornov worked for Meridian International and did contract work for the U.S. State Department as an interpreter. Samochornov is a citizen of the United States.
- Ike Kaveladze, a Georgian-American, US-based senior vice president at Crocus Group, the real estate development company run by Aras Agalarov. Kaveladze's lawyer Scott Balber, who also represents Aras and Emin Agalarov, stated that Kaveladze attended the meeting as the Agalarov family's emissary "just to make sure it happened and to serve as an interpreter if necessary."
Purpose
Trump Jr. initially told reporters that the meeting had been "primarily about adoptions". He then released a statement saying it had been a "short introductory meeting" concerning "a program about the adoption of Russian children". A few days later Trump Jr. acknowledged that he went into the meeting expecting to receive opposition research from Veselnitskaya that could hurt Clinton's campaign, adding that none was presented and that the conversation instead focused on the Magnitsky Act. Later a statement from Trump Jr.'s lawyer said Veselnitskaya had claimed to have information "that individuals connected to Russia were funding the Democratic National Committee and supporting Mrs. Clinton" but "it quickly became clear that she had no meaningful information". Trump Jr. said he felt the adoption issue was her "true agenda all along" and the claims of helpful political information were a pretext. After learning that The New York Times was about to publish the series of emails setting up the meeting, Trump Jr. himself published the email chain via Twitter, and explained that he considered the meeting to be "political opposition research". He summarized the meeting as "such a nothing... a wasted 20 minutes".
Both Donald Trump and Trump Jr. have claimed this was "opposition research", but Steven D'Amico, an expert on the subject, denies the claim and describes proper opposition research: "All information gathered must be lawfully obtained....and you certainly don't sit in on meetings where a foreign attorney promises sensitive information obtained by a rival government."
Veselnitskaya said that she intended to provide allegations to the Trump campaign about a firm connected to William Browder, a financier who lobbied for the Magnitsky Act. She said that the firm committed tax evasion in Russia and donated to Democrats. She said in an interview, "I never had any damaging or sensitive information about Hillary Clinton. It was never my intention to have that." She initially denied the allegation that she was or is connected to the Russian government. At a later date she disclosed that she was in regular contact with the Russian Prosecutor General's office and with Prosecutor General Yury Chaika, about sharing information she acquired in her investigation relating to the Magnitsky Act.
On July 14, Akhmetshin stated in an interview that Veselnitskaya had claimed to have evidence of "violations of Russian law by a Democratic donor", and added that she "described her findings at the meeting and left a document about them with Trump Jr. and the others."
Disclosure timeline
The meeting first came to the attention of authorities in April 2017, when Kushner reported on a revised security clearance form that he had met with Veselnitskaya.
The existence of the meeting was reported in July 2017. Some news outlets took the meeting as evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. On July 8, 2017, The New York Times first mentioned a June 2016 meeting with "a Russian lawyer who has connections to the Kremlin", arranged by Trump Jr. and including Kushner and Manafort. Later that day, Trump Jr. released a statement calling it a "short introductory meeting" about American adoption of Russian children and "not a campaign issue". The next day it emerged that Goldstone had told Trump Jr. that the meeting would provide the Trump campaign with negative information about Clinton, and that this offer was "part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump", without mentioning adoptions or the Magnitsky Act. Trump Jr. reacted by acknowledging that he had been expecting information about Clinton. Over the next few days the identity of the attendees was established.