The arranged meeting took place at
Trump Tower in the afternoon of June 9, 2016. At least eight people attended.
[16] 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
Irakly "Ike" Kaveladze,
Rob Goldstone, and Anatoli Samachornov attended the meeting.
[17]
ParticipantsEdit
Trump campaign officialsEdit
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Russian lobbyistsEdit
- Natalia Veselnitskaya, a Russian lawyer best known in the United States for lobbying against the Magnitsky Act. 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.[22][23]
- Rinat Akhmetshin, a Russian-American lobbyist and former Soviet counterintelligence officer suspected of "having ongoing ties to Russian Intelligence",[24][25] although he denies it.[24] After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, he immigrated to the United States in 1993 and became a U.S. citizen in 2009.[26][27] According to the New York Times, Akhmetshin has āa history of working for close allies of President Vladimir V. Putin.ā[28][29]
Other participantsEdit
- Rob Goldstone, 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 Goldstoneās emails accurately outlined the origins of the meeting.[30]
- 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 not an employee of the State Department.[31]
- 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 ājust to make sure it happened and to serve as an interpreter if necessary.ā[32][33]
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PurposeEdit
Trump Jr. initially told reporters that the meeting had been "primarily about adoptions".[2][34] He then released a statement saying it had been a "short introductory meeting" concerning "a program about the adoption of Russian children".[35] 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,
....
Wonder who is lying...you or Trump jr an the rest of the TCS