it goes after wealthy friends and freezes their bank accounts and makes it hard for them to travel and do business in dollar denominations. to retaliate, the russian government stopped americans from adopting russian children. at trump tower, natalia was there with three associates. the other people on the russian side, one was a russian-american lobbyist, he is a former soviet military officer, who has been in the united states for many years. and he had been working with natalia to lobby against the act. also there, a translator and a business representative for the agalarov family. at about 4:00 p.m., goldstone and his companions boarded the trump tower elevator to the 25th floor conference room. in the meeting, where donald trump jr., his brother-in-law jared kushner, and trump campaign chair paul manafort. don came out and saw these people, they went in, and i said thank you very much, i m leaving, and he said where are
liberals, and the venom that would come from them on my social media amused me. i loved it. i thought it was funny. i suppose in your defense, if you had thought you were up to no good, at the trump tower meeting, in june of 2016, you wouldn t have put it on social media. right. i think i have enough intelligence to have known that. accompanying goldstone was a woman he said could provide the incriminating information. russian attorney natalia very, very close to the state prosecutor in russia who himself is very lose to putin. she had mounted a very aggressive campaign against a law that had been capped by congress and signed by obama and absolutely hated by putin. it was called the magiski action. it allow the u.s. government to sanction russian officials to believed to be offenders.
you come to the olympics? the miss universe pageant, which was co-owned by nbc back then, did go on. congratulations to you! good night, everybody, from moscow! then it ends with he and the agalarovs announcing that they re going to join together to try to build a trump tower in moscow. despite his delighted tweet about the project, trump tower moscow never happened. but goldstone says the friendships from moscow continued. he got to know don junior and three times visited the elder trump at trump tower. on one visit not long before donald trump declared his candidacy, goldstone says trump was there listening to a rap song. he said, look, 90 million views, a rapper called mac miller, who recently passed away, has recorded the song. it s had 90 million youtube views and it s about me. and i said to him, do you think you should maybe listen to the words and what they re saying
there. goldstone worked in trump s hometown, but their first connection ran through moscow. with a family that s been described as the trumps of russia. aras agalarov and his son, emen. explain who emen is. emen agalarov, his father one of the most he s a billionaire pop singer, who also happens to be a hugely successful businessman in his own right. music has no language. i will do a song in russian, and the audience that doesn t speak russian still responds. he runs and operates shopping malls and fashion brands and restaurants, including co-owning nobu with robert de niro and with chef nobu. so he s a pretty interesting character to begin with. and how emen led to trump takes a detour through the world of beauty pageants. miss universe. emen and i went to meet with the miss universe organization
his presence at the meeting looms large. paul manafort is a man with a lot of russian connections. he knew exactly how the russians operated. he should have known what was happening there and why that meeting was perilous. the question of knowingly cooperating with a foreign power to influence the election, to assist and support the campaign. that s the big question that mueller is going to try to answer through manafort. whatever happened before, during, and after the meeting, robert mueller now has multiple witnesses spilling secrets. rob goldstone insists he never meant to be part of a russian plot. but what he offered may provide evidence of whether any trump campaign officials wanted to join one. whatever came of the meeting, goldstone says he s living with the consequences of one very bad idea. are you guilty of anything? i m guilty really of not standing my ground and knowing that this was a bad idea.