8th person disclosed
on the front lawn.
Kaveladze’s involvement is more evidence of the role that Moscow’s powerful Agalarov family played in arranging the meeting with Trump Jr. that is a key focus of Mueller’s investigation. The former FBI director appears to be exploring the relationship between the Trumps and the Agalarovs, who were partners on a project for a Trump hotel in Moscow that was never built.
Aras Agalarov, a billionaire developer, and his son Emin, a Russian pop star, also hosted the Trumpowned Miss Universe contest in Moscow in 2013, which Trump attended.
The family runs a real estate development firm favored by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government. It was President Trump’s most visible Russian business connection before he was elected to the White House.
Kaveladze has worked for the Agalarovs’ holding company, the Crocus Group, since 2004, Balber said. He is now a vice president focusing on real estate and finance.
Kaveladze emigrated from the Republic of Georgia to the U.S. shortly after the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991 and later became a U.S. citizen. He was asked to take part in the Trump Tower meeting by Aras Agalarov, Balber said.
Neither the White House nor Trump Jr. had disclosed Kaveladze’s presence at the 2016 meeting despite repeated public statements about a sit-down that involved three of Trump’s closest aides — his eldest son, Donald, his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort, Trump’s then-campaign manager.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said Tuesday that Mueller had told the Senate Judiciary Committee that he didn’t object to the panel publicly questioning Trump Jr. and Manafort.
Lawyers for the two have said they are willing to cooperate with congressional panels looking at Russian interference in the 2016 election and possible ties between the Trump campaign and Moscow, but it is unclear whether they will agree to testify. Neither Trump Jr. nor Manafort are in the Trump administration.
During the meeting, Natalia Veselnitskaya, the Russian lawyer who had traveled from Moscow, handed Trump Jr. a sheaf of documents that she said showed improper donations to the Democratic National Committee, information that she said could be used against Trump’s Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton.
Kaveladze “was asked to attend the meeting purely to … make sure it happened,” said Balber, who is based in New York. “He literally had no idea what the meeting was about until he showed up right before.”
Kaveladze did not recall saying anything at the meeting, which lasted less than half an hour, and does not understand why the meeting has become so controversial, Balber said.
Balber said Veselnitskaya asked one of the Agalarovs to provide an introduction to the Trumps. The Agalarovs then asked a British music publicist, Rob Goldstone, to contact Trump Jr., he said.
“This was not a highly important item to the Agalarovs,” said Balber, who also represents the Agalarovs. “If it were, I suspect it would have happened very differently.”
But Balber’s account of who set up the meeting is at odds with email exchanges between Trump Jr. and Goldstone, which Trump Jr. released last week. They indicated the Agalarovs, not Veselnitskaya, pushed for it.
Goldstone told Trump Jr. in an email dated June 3, 2016, that Aras Agalarov had met that morning with a Russian prosecutor who had “offered to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary.”
Goldstone called the offer “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump — helped along by Aras and Emin.” Goldstone told Trump Jr. that “Emin just called me and asked me to contact you.”
Trump Jr. responded a few minutes later, agreeing to talk to the younger Agalarov and later to meet Veselnitskaya in person.
Others at the meeting included Goldstone, Rinat Akhmetshin, a Washington lobbyist with dual U.S.-Russian citizenship, and Anatoli Samochornov, an interpreter.
After giving Trump Jr. papers purporting to describe illegal donations, Veselnitskaya and Akhmetshin shifted the conversation to the Magnitsky Act, a U.S. law that imposes sanctions on Russian businessmen, which both have lobbied against.
During the 1990s, Kaveladze headed a Delawarebased company called International Business Creations and set up 2,000 U.S. corporations for Russian brokers, according to a critical report in November 2000 by an arm of Congress now known as the Government Accountability Office.
Some of the corporations operated as shell companies and moved about $1.4 billion through wire transfers to 236 accounts at Citibank of New York and the Commercial Bank of San Francisco, the report said.
It concluded that it was “relatively easy” to anonymously move large amounts of money though U.S. banks to launder ill-gotten gains.
The banks said at the time that “no illegal activity in the Kaveladze-related accounts” was found, but they closed the accounts after investigators contacted them.
Kaveladze denounced the inquiry as “another Russian witch hunt in the United States.”