By Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com
Rob Goldstone, a music publicist with ties to Russia, has been thrust into the spotlight over the recent discovery that he arranged a previously undisclosed meeting between Donald Trump’s campaign and a lawyer with Kremlin ties.
The June 2016 meeting, first publicized several days ago, is considered a potential smoking gun that may threaten Trump’s presidency.
So who is Goldstone?
It appears Donald Trump first met Goldstone, a British-born former tabloid reporter and president of Oui 2 Entertainment, during the 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow, an event that had been co-owned by the now-president. At the time, Goldstone was representing one of the pageant’s performers, Emin Agalarov.
Following the pageant, Agalarov and her family began negotiating a deal with Trump to build a Trump Tower in Moscow, a project that never happened because Trump was launching his 2016 presidential election.
Goldstone acknowledged on Monday that he had helped facilitate the now-notorious June meeting between Trump’s inner circle and his “client in Moscow,” Agalarov, one of Russia’s most popular stars and a real estate tycoon who has been compared to Trump. The elder Goldstone has close personal ties to Putin, who awarded the real estate tycoon numerous lucrative state building contracts.
For its part, the Trump campaign denied colluding with Russia, but email records and interviews indicate Trump Jr. believed the meeting was about obtaining compromising information on Hillary Clinton.
