If there is an Exhibit A in the case that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to fix the presidential election, it is the June 9, 2016, meeting in Trump Tower between three top campaign officials — Donald Trump Jr., Paul Manafort, and Jared Kushner — and a group of Russians who promised dirt on Hillary Clinton.
And if there is a key document about the meeting — an Exhibit A of Exhibit A — it is the email from British music promoter Rob Goldstone to Trump Jr. proposing the get-together. Read in light of the accusations leveled against President Trump and his campaign after the election, the email almost screams: WE WANT TO COLLUDE WITH YOU.
But did it really? Newly-released testimony by several participants in the Trump Tower meeting suggests the answer could well be no.
In the email, Goldstone told Trump Jr. that a powerful Russian had “offered to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father.”
“This is obviously very high level and sensitive information,” Goldstone continued, “but is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump — helped along by Aras and Emin.” (“Aras” was the Russian billionaire Aras Agalarov, who was Trump’s partner in the 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow, and “Emin” was Aras Agalarov’s son, a Russian singing star who employed Goldstone as a publicist.)
Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump — to some analysts, those were the key words of collusion, along with Trump Jr.’s response: “Seems we have some time and if it’s what you say I love it.”
But what, precisely, did the Goldstone email mean? What were the intentions behind it? Did it reveal a Russian campaign to assist Trump? Was it a key part of a collusion scheme to fix the 2016 election?
The just-released testimony, which includes transcripts of two interviews with Goldstone, is from the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Trump-Russia investigation. It suggests that the language of the email — the words that electrified the political world when Trump Jr., pushed by press reports, released them in July 2017 — were less an invitation to collusion than what Goldstone called “publicist puff,” that is, inflated phrases used to entice the candidate’s top aides to accept a meeting.
[Also read: Donald Trump Jr. told senators he did not recall if he told his father about Trump Tower meeting]
And then, when Trump Jr. agreed to the meeting, the Russians, far from offering the promised dirt on Clinton, made a conventional, lobby-like pitch — not a surprise, given that the American law/lobbying firm BakerHostetler was behind much of it — to win Trump support for getting rid of the Magnitsky Act’s sanctions against Russia. There’s no evidence that anyone proposed a deal: Russian help in the election in exchange for Trump help in killing Magnitsky. Instead, the Russians got in the door, made their pitch, and left when the Trump team wasn’t interested. By all accounts, the meeting came to nothing; Trump Jr., Manafort, and Kushner rolled their collective eyes, and everyone left.
But Goldstone’s email pitch made the meeting sound like something much bigger. As part of their investigation, both Republican and Democratic investigators from the Judiciary Committee questioned Goldstone about the email. Why did he write what he wrote? What did he know about the supposed “official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary”? What did he know about the anti-Magnitsky campaign?
Goldstone told the committee that on the morning of the day he sent the email, he received a call from Emin Agalarov, who “said that a well-connected Russian attorney had met with his father that morning in his father’s office and had told him that they had some interesting information that could potentially be damaging regarding funding by Russians to the Democrats and to its candidate, Hillary Clinton.”
Goldstone said he asked Agalarov for more information, but Agalarov said that all he knew was “there was some potentially damaging information re: Hillary, which could be of interest to the Trumps.”
Investigators asked Goldstone why he told Trump Jr. that the Russian government supported Trump. What was the basis for that? Goldstone explained that he had been to Russia several times, including during the 2013 pageant, and “I had seen and heard firsthand people of all levels, whether it was business people, whether it was friends of Emin, friends of his father, talk in very glowing terms about Mr. Trump. I had also seen on television in Russia many, many reports in which government officials, including the president, Mr. Putin, had praised Mr. Trump, who, in turn, I had seen on CNN had praised Mr. Putin.” So he threw in the stuff about Russia’s support of Trump.
Goldstone was asked whether at the time he was aware of any Russian efforts to interfere in the U.S. presidential election. He said he was not. He was asked if he knew anything about the supposed documents that were being offered to Trump Jr. He said he did not.
So why did Goldstone choose the words he chose in the email? An answer came in a 2017 email provided to the committee. Shortly after the Trump Tower meeting was first reported in the media, Goldstone and Emin Agalarov exchanged emails on how best to address the story. Goldstone sent Agalarov a draft statement saying that in the email he used “the strongest hyperbolic language” to convince Trump Jr. to take the meeting. Asked by the Senate what he meant by “strongest hyperbolic language,” Goldstone said, “That I had puffed it and used some keywords that I thought would attract Don Jr.’s attention.”
“I mean, publicist puff is how they get meetings,” Goldstone added.
When the meeting finally happened, Goldstone testified that he took a seat at the table but didn’t take part. “I didn’t pay a lot of attention, because I was merely acting as an escort at this point,” Goldstone testified. “I had brought them in, and I was to take them out. I was checking emails. I was half-listening.”
One person who was listening closely in the meeting and is thought to have an unbiased view of events was a man named Anatoli Samochornov, who was there as a translator for Veselnitskaya, who knew very little English.
Samochornov was in the room for the entire meeting and did not remember anyone bringing up Goldstone’s original email promising dirt on Clinton. He did not remember Trump Jr., Manafort, or Kushner asking any of the Russians any questions. He did not remember anyone mentioning that any sort of information might be provided in the future. He did not remember anyone mentioning Hillary Clinton, or negative information on Hillary Clinton. He did not remember anyone discussing a future meeting. (Samochornov also testified about a lunch the Russian participants had before the Trump Tower meeting. He did not remember anyone mentioning providing negative information about Clinton, or anyone mentioning Clinton at all.)
Samochornov did remember one thing that Donald Trump Jr. said during the meeting. At the end, he testified, Trump Jr. said that “if or when my father becomes president, we will revisit this issue.”
Investigators asked what Samochornov thought Trump Jr. meant by that. “Frankly, if you are asking for my reaction, it was a very polite way of saying, ‘Thank you very much. It’s time for you to go. The meeting’s over.'”
And it was. Veselnitskaya left the meeting disappointed, while the three Trump officials were apparently unhappy that 20 minutes of their time had been wasted. A year later, when news of the meeting broke, it became the most important 20 minutes of the Trump-Russia investigation.
So far, special counsel Robert Mueller has not charged anyone with anything involving the June 9 meeting. One participant, Manafort, has been charged, but not with any alleged crimes involving collusion or relating to the meeting. Perhaps Mueller has some charges related to the meeting up his sleeve, but for the moment, after the release of the Senate Judiciary Committee transcripts, the meeting seems more like a clumsy attempt at lobbying than a conspiracy to interfere with a presidential election.
