The music publicist who pitched the Trump Tower meeting between Trump campaign officials and a Kremlin-connected lawyer promising “dirt” on Hillary Clinton said information detrimental to the Democratic presidential candidate never came up.
Rob Goldstone confirmed in an interview with NBC News that aired Monday that he had conveyed a “dirty offer” to Donald Trump Jr. but that the information “didn’t materialize.”
But he said the willingness of the campaign officials to hear about the dirt at the June 2016 meeting is what caught the attention of special counsel Robert Mueller and congressional investigators.
The British-born Goldstone said he told a grand jury in March about the meeting, describing how Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya brought up US sanctions against Russians but didn’t follow through on her offer about dirt on Clinton.
He said he saw Veselnitskaya’s presentation as “complete and utter nonsense.”
Still, he said Trump Jr. came into the meeting expecting and happy to accept “opposition research” on his father’s opponent from the Russian government.
Then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, also attended the meeting.
In an email to Trump Jr., Goldstone said the information “would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father,” and that it was “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.”
The email, Goldstone said, “was written in about three minutes on my cellphone with scant information, with my own, I suppose, way of interpreting what I believe my client was trying to get across, and puffing it. That’s what I do. I’m a publicist.”
He said he was asked to set up the meeting by Emin Agalarov on behalf of his father, Aras Agalarov, a wealthy Russian real estate developer with ties to President Vladimir Putin.
At the time, Goldstone was working as a publicist for the younger Agalarov, a Russian pop star.
Goldstone, who now says he regrets sending the email, said then-candidate Trump must have been aware the sitdown was happening.
“It was taking place in his conference room and it was taking place with his campaign chair sitting and attending the meeting, as well as his son and his son-in-law,” he told NBC. “So, you know, the publicist in me would say, ‘It’s a bit of a stretch if he’s a floor or two above to believe that he doesn’t know it’s going on.'”
Goldstone’s book, “Pop Stars, Pageants and Presidents: How an Email Trumped My Life,” will be published Tuesday.
A spokesman for Trump Jr. declined to comment to NBC.