reporter. he got his first job for his local newspaper at the age of 16. he then became a radio reporter, focusing on the entertainment industry. but some point he realized that he kind of had a knack for promotion. rob goldstone grew up in manchester england in public housing. but he wound up rubbing elbows with the stars including one the world s most famous recording artists, michael jackson and when he moved to new york in the 1990s, goldstone s larger than life personality didn t go unnoticed. he s a whacky guy. he was really fond of social media. and would post all kinds of funny things. taking selfies, wearing funny hats. he invited me to the club and it turns out they don t want press here and you will have to leave and i was very hurt and let me make it up to you, i handle the russian tea room, which i now find amusing, and
the meeting is set. done jr. has replied to you, if it is what you say it is, i love it. and i would like to say, i have a different interpretation to what the media said over the last year, i was like thank god, he knows that i don t really know all of what i m saying here, and i obviously don t have all the facts, so if it is what i m saying, he loves it. but it is like you ve turned off your thinking brain, rob. if it is what you say it is, if the russian government is going to turn over information, dirt against hillary clinton he loves it. yeah. i was focused on me. i was focused on saving face. not embarrassing myself. not embarrassing my client. and not whether this was an unpatriotic or maybe even treasonist offer. correct. goldstone arrived at trump tower on june 9, 2016. when he got there, he checked in on facebook.
a plea deal. paul manafort is now cooperating with robert mueller s investigation. 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
an attorney for the agalarovs tells nbc news that no one in the russian government asked them to arrange the meeting. jared kushner s attorney says his client went into the meeting not knowing what it was about, didn t participate, and left before it was over. jared was told about a meeting with his brother-in-law. no topic was mentioned. when jared got into the room, the conversation was about russian adoption, he was probably in the room for ten or 12 minutes. what happened before he came in and what happened afterward, he wasn t there to see. when the meeting ended, goldstone says he was worried he had annoyed don jr. i said it was the most embarrassing thing. and he said to me, i do lots of meetings, that s fine, it was kind of like there, there, it s okay, but then he said to me, i just have no idea what that was about. coming up, the story breaks. come on. you didn t remember you had offered dirt on hillary clinton from the russian government? fer from the russian gov
work, she provides it. what some of my sources have said, they wouldn t send the a-team if they were testing, because they don t know whether the trump team will call the fbi and everyone is going to be arrested. it is possible the russian lawyer may not have known the real reason she was in the meeting. if this worked, an intelligence operation, you might pick someone just like this russian attorney. her inability to make people happy at the meeting might actually be consistent with her being kind of an unwitting dupe. the untrained eye could see the trump tower meeting and see a bunch of amateurs trying to get their own business done, but the counter-intelligence lens tells us this is exactly how putin would do it today. what s more, the goldstone says the trump tower meeting wasn t the end of it and asked to arrange meetings again after the election and around the inauguration. so after this, as you painted, really kind of a disastrous meeting, you get two more calls?