MUSIC PUBLICIST SPENDS HOURS WITH THE MUELLER INVESTIGATORS

…Publicist, Rob Goldstone

It never occurred to Goldstone that the Russian offer might be illegal.

One of the most unusual individuals to become involved in the Donald Trump / Russian Investigation is Mr. Rob Goldstone.

In this last year, Goldstone has been interviewed four times by congressional investigators, he has sat for hours with prosecutors working for special counsel Robert Mueller and he was questioned in front of a federal D.C. grand jury.  In addition, Rob’s collection of selfies in goofy hats has become the butt of jokes by every US and British late-night comedian. He has been falsely called a Russian spy, a traitor, and a white supremacist.

Goldstone was the British music publicist that used his iPhone to send a message to Donald Trump Jr. about incriminating information about Hillary Clinton as part of a Russian government effort to help the Trump campaign.

He admits that he “puffed up” some details when he promised Trump Jr. incriminating information about Hillary Clinton as part of a Russian government effort to help the Trump campaign.

The hastily composed e-mail dealt Goldstone into the center of a federal investigation..

With his testimony over, Goldstone is now talking about of the events that are now dogging the President.  Goldstone now details it all in his book called “Pop Stars, Pageants and Presidents: How an Email Trumped My Life” which is being released this week.

“The press seemingly couldn’t decide if I was ridiculous, bonkers and so naive as to be irrelevant.  Or if I was some kind of brilliant operative,” said the 57 year old Goldstone in an extensive interview. “The reality is, I’m not either of those things. . . . I’m a publicist that wrote an email.”

He said he has no doubt that Russia interfered in the 2016 campaign and he believes the Trump team was very open to such assistance. He praised the special counsel, Robert Mueller, whom Trump continues to accuse of running a “witch hunt” for investigating his campaign.

After more than nine hours with Mueller’s team, Goldstone has also drawn some conclusions about what the special counsel is pursuing. Goldstone says that the investigators were focused less on the details of the Trump Tower meeting.  They were instead, highly interested in his observations about the Trumps’ relationship with Aras and Emin Agalarov.  

Emin Agalarov is an Azerbaijani singer who moved to Moscow and is at the center of the latest controversy to hit the Trump administration.  The Russian father-and-son Agalarov billionaires are the ones who financed Trump’s Miss Universe Pageant in Moscow in 2013 and they were the ones that through Goldstone, requested the 2016 sit-down at Trump Tower.  The Mueller team also wanted to understand the Agalarovs’ relationship with the Russian Kremlin.

Goldstone said it was obvious that for the investigators, “It was a big-picture thing.”

Born in Manchester, England, Goldstone grew up as an outsider.  He was picked on as being gay, Jewish and an overweight youth.  Early on, at 16, he worked his way onto the staff of a local newspaper. Later, he became a radio reporter with a focus on entertainment, crossing paths with Princess Diana, Muhammed Ali and Michael Jackson.

After discovering he was good at promotion, Goldstone left journalism to become a publicist. Over the years, his clients included Venezuelan actress Patricia Velasquez, who had appeared on Trump’s “The Celebrity Apprentice” and in New York’s famed Russian Tea Room.

During his testimony before the House Intelligence Committee last December, Goldstone said one congressman asked him if the committee should be worried about that New York engagement. “It’s a restaurant! It’s been there 90 years! Leave me alone!’ ” he said.

In 2012, a friend suggested he meet Emin Agalarov, a Moscow-based singer who had achieved success in Russia and was looking to break out in America.  Goldstone was intrigued. Agalarov was a billionaire playboy whose father, Aras, was a top Moscow real estate developer and whose father-in-law was president of Azerbaijan. “My ex-journalist side kicked in,” he said. “There was a story here.” He took Agalarov on as a client.

In the spring of 2013, Goldstone said he and Emin Agalarov visited Paula Shugart, the president of the Miss Universe Organization, in New York.  They were in hopes of booking a pageant contestant to appear in one of Emin’s music videos.

Shugart mentioned that she had been thinking about bringing the Miss Universe pageant to Baku, where Agalarov was born. Agalarov countered by suggesting Moscow and Crocus City Hall, a new concert venue owned by the Agalarovs.  That was an idea Emin came up with on the spot.

The Agalarovs would ultimately pay $15 million to host the Miss Universe pageant.

Months later, Goldstone accompanied the Agalarov’s to meet Trump in Las Vegas, where the Miss USA pageant was being held.

At dinner, Goldstone was seated between Emin Agalarov and Michael Cohen, Trump’s then personal attorney, whom he had met for the first time.

Goldstone said that Trump appeared to hit it off with Emin Agalarov.

Goldstone said he was with Trump’s company from the time the celebrity landed in Moscow on his private plane at about 3PM on a Friday until the time he departed at 3AM early Sunday morning, except for the five-hour window that Trump was afforded to sleep early Saturday morning.

In his testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee in December 2017, Goldstone said he had no knowledge of Trump engaging with prostitutes on the trip, as has been alleged in an unverified opposition research dossier.

Trump’s first stop was dinner in Russia at Nobu, a high-end Japanese restaurant, where he fielded questions from top Russian business leaders and financiers. Goldstone recalled that one Russian mogul asked Trump for his thoughts on the European debt crisis and the recent bailout of the Greek economy.

Instead, as usual, Trump ignored the question and went to another topic.  (He probably had no clue about the Greek economy.)

Trump conveyed a sentiment that the Russian tycoons appreciated: President Barack Obama, Trump declared, was a weak president while Putin was strong.

Trump was determined to meet the Russian president, Goldstone said.  So, at Emin Agalarov’s suggestion, Goldstone said he had urged Trump before arriving in Moscow to write a letter inviting the Russian president to the pageant

But a few hours before the pageant began, Putin’s personal spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, called Aras Agalarov to deliver the bad news, Goldstone said: The King of Holland was stuck in traffic, delaying a planned meeting that day with Putin. As a result, the Russian president would have no time for Trump. Peskov said that Putin promised to meet Trump the next time he was in Russia.

As to Rob Goldstone, he is a dual citizen of the United States and Britain.  He currently lives in New Jersey and he said he thought Trump would win the presidency, but he added that he was never a political fan of Trump.  Independent Bernie Sanders was more his speed, he said, however, Goldstone has never voted.

Now, getting back to the Trump Tower meeting, in the now infamous e-mail, Gold stone had written that Aras Agalarov had met with “the Crown Prosecutor of Russia,” a phrase he remembered from his former time in England. He said that the prosecutor had provided information that “would incriminate Hillary” and was “very high level and sensitive,” all of which he said struck him as reasonable assumptions, based on what Agalarov had told him.

The most provocative detail was that Goldstone wrote that the information was “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.”

The line, he said, was a bit of flattery intended to reflect the attitudes he had seen toward Trump in Russia.

“It wasn’t made up, but it was puffed up,” he said of his email. “There’s a huge difference in that.”

To Goldstone, the most important line came toward the end: “Would you be able to speak to Emin about it directly?” he wrote. His goal was to separate himself from this request and get Agalarov and Trump Jr. talking directly.

“If it’s what you say, I love it,” Trump Jr. responded.

The next day, Trump Jr. emailed Goldstone to say that he had invited Jared Kushner, his brother-in-law, and senior campaign official, Paul Manafort to attend a meeting with the Russian lawyer set for June 9.

Trump Jr. testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee he did not know what to think of Goldstone’s email, but saw no problem with exploring whether he had important information. “I didn’t think that listening to someone with information relevant to the fitness and character of a presidential candidate would be an issue,” he said.

This is today called a “conspiracy” in US law when dealing with a foreign power in a national political campaign, especially an adversary such as Russia.

At the time, Goldstone said it never occurred to him that the offer might be unethical or even illegal.

Goldstone had not planned on attending the meeting itself, but he was waved into the room by Trump Jr..  Once the discussion began, he said Natalia Veselnitskaya, the Russian lawyer, she began talking about donors who had contributed to Democrats who she said had failed to pay Russian taxes. The bizarre presentation, he said, was totally incomprehensible.

Goldstone believes this information was dangled by Veselnitskaya, just so she could lobby on her real issue: the Magnitsky Act.  These are the sanctions imposed by the United States on Russia in 2012 for human rights abuses. Putin considered the law a personal affront and had blocked adoption of Russian children by American families in retaliation for its passage.

As the meeting broke up, Goldstone said he quietly apologized to Trump’s son for wasting everyone’s time.  Leaving Trump Tower, he said he called Emin Agalarov and told him:    “Well, of all the things you’ve ever asked me to do, this indeed was the most embarrassing,’ ” he said he told the pop star. “ ‘We just sat in on a meeting about adoption.’ ”

Goldstone then put the Trump Tower meeting out of his mind.  That is, until more than a year later, when the New York Times broke the news of the Trump Tower meeting between the Trump campaign and the Russian lawyer.

Goldstone now knows that if this meeting is found to be an attempt to conspire against the United States, this meeting could send the President’s son, his former campaign manager and his son-in-law to jail, or to at least stand trial.

Copyright G.Ater  2018