The alleged source of Donald Trump Jr.'s supposed Russian dirt on Hillary Clinton says the emails are ‘fabricated’
Aras Agalarov, the president and owner of the Crocus Group, says the emails published on Twitter yesterday by Donald Trump Jr. is a “fabrication.” In the correspondence tweeted on July 11, publicist Rob Goldstone promised the Trump campaign damaging information about Hillary Clinton, allegedly learned by Aras Agalarov from Russia’s “crown prosecutor.” Based on the emails, Goldstone reached out to Trump Jr. at the request of his client, Agalarov’s son, and organized a meeting between top figures in the Trump campaign and the Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya.
In an interview with the radio station BFM, Agalarov claimed that he isn’t acquainted with Donald Trump Jr. or Rob Goldstone. Agalarov explained that his son met Trump Jr. during the 2013 Miss Universe pageant, which was held in Russia, and Goldstone, Agalarov said, spent some time working as his son’s publicity manager.
Natalia Veselnitskaya, in turn, has categorically denied that she discussed compromising information about Hillary Clinton when she met with Donald Trump’s son, son-in-law, and then campaign manager. In an interview with NBC, she said the meeting with the Trump campaign concerned the Magnitsky Act, a bill enacted in late 2012 designed to punish Russian state officials suspected of involvement in the death of a Russian lawyer working for the billionaire investment fund manager Bill Browder. Veselnitskaya has been heavily involved in the campaign to repeal this law, working particularly hard to screen a film in the European Parliament and U.S. Congress that unflatteringly portrays Magnitsky.
“There’s no compromising information [about Hillary Clinton] that I could possibly have,” Veselnitskaya said, suggesting that Goldstone may have invented “materials from the Kremlin” to embellish his value in the eyes of Donald Trump Jr. and his family.
Veselnitskaya also stressed that she is just an “ordinary person,” and said she hasn’t received any “instructions from the Kremlin” or “orders from the government.”
“Have you see the email itself? The correspondence that Trump Jr. shared?” “I think it’s some kind of fabrication. I don’t know who’s making this stuff up. What does this have to do with Hillary Clinton? I don’t know. I don’t really know Rob Goldstone.”
Since the beginning of the month, The New York Times has published several articles about Donald Trump Jr.’s meeting with Natalia Veselnitskaya, reporting that Rob Goldstone told the Trump campaign about certain compromising information regarding Hillary Clinton, apparently collected by the Russian government. In the emails published on Twitter by Donald Trump Jr., Goldstone described the information as part of the Russian government’s efforts to help Trump win the presidential election.
Moscow has categorically denied any interference in last year’s U.S. presidential elections, and says there are no potentially compromising connections between the Russian government and the Trump White House.