How a pageant led to Trump son’s meeting with Russian lawyer,
During the summer of 2013, Donald Trump mused about whether President Vladimir Putin of Russia would meet him at the Miss Universe pageant in Moscow that fall. “If so, will he become my new best friend?” Trump posted on Twitter.
Putin did not make it, but the beauty competition in Moscow put the Trump family in touch with other people with connections to the Kremlin.
On Sunday, The New York Times reported the president’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., had met with a Kremlinconnected lawyer during the 2016 presidential campaign after being promised information damaging to Hillary Clinton. Trump’s campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, and his son-inlaw, Jared Kushner, also attended the meeting.
The younger Trump issued a statement that he had agreed to the meeting at the request of an acquaintance from the 2013 Miss Universe pageant.
The acquaintance was Rob Goldstone, a former British tabloid journalist and the president of a marketing company called Oui 2 Entertainment, who has
worked with the Miss Universe pageant, according to two people briefed on the meeting. Goldstone told The Washington Post he had arranged the June 9, 2016, meeting with Donald Trump Jr. on behalf of a client and had attended it along with the lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya. On Monday, Goldstone identified the client as Emin Agalarov, a pop star in Russia.
Goldstone, who did not respond to an email seeking comment, has worked with Agalarov, who along with his father, Aras, develops major real estate projects in Russia. Trump, an owner of the Miss Universe pageant at the time, selected the Agalarovs to host the worldwide competition in 2013 in Moscow, and has discussed collaborating on a tower
in Moscow with them. He also appeared in one of Agalarov’s music videos, which featured pageant contestants.
The beauty competition put Trump in contact with influential people in Russia, as he explained in a September 2015 interview on “The Hugh Hewitt Show.”
“I was with the toplevel people, both oligarchs and generals, and top of the government people,” he said. “I can’t go further than that, but I will tell you that I met the top people, and the relationship was extraordinary.”
The Agalarovs appear to have a good relationship with Putin. Shortly before the Miss Universe pageant, Putin presented Aras Agalarov with the Order of Honor, one of Russia’s highest civilian awards.