US lawmakers quiz businessman at 2016 Trump Tower meeting

WASHINGTON: A Georgian-American businessman who met then-Miss Universe pageant owner Donald Trump in 2013, has been questioned by congressional investigators about whether he helped organise a meeting between Russians and Trump’s eldest son during the 2016 election campaign, four sources familiar with the matter said.

The meeting at Trump Tower in New York involving Donald Trump Jr and other campaign advisers is a focus of probes by Congress and Special Counsel Robert Mueller on whether campaign officials colluded with Russia when it sought to interfere in the US election, the sources said.

Russia denies allegations by US intelligence agencies that it meddled in the election and President Donald Trump denies any collusion.

The Senate and House of Representatives intelligence committees recently questioned behind closed doors Irakly Kaveladze, a US citizen born in the former Soviet republic of Georgia, the sources said.

He is a US-based representative of Azerbaijani oligarch Aras Agalarov’s real estate firm, the Crocus Group.

The panels knew Kaveladze was at the June 9, 2016 meeting but became more interested in him after learning he also attended a private dinner in Las Vegas in 2013 with Trump and Agalarov as they celebrated an agreement to hold that year’s Miss Universe pageant in Moscow, the sources said.

Committee members now want to know more about the extent of Kaveladze’s contacts with the Trump family and whether he had a bigger role than previously believed in setting up the Trump Tower meeting when Trump was a Republican candidate for president.

The White House declined to comment. Mueller’s office also declined to comment. — Reuters