The Kremlin has denied reaching out to a Moscow-based property developer and his son who arranged a meeting between a Russian lawyer and Donald Trump Jr. to discuss allegedly compromising information about Hillary Clinton.
The emails published by Trump Jr. show publicist Rob Goldstone telling Trump that singer Emin Agalarov and his father, developer Aras Agalarov, had ‘helped along’ the Russian government’s support for Trump.
In his email, Goldstone said that the ‘Crown prosecutor of Russia’ offered to provide the information on Clinton to the Trump campaign in a meeting with Aras Agalarov.
Speaking to reporters Wednesday in Moscow, President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov, insisted that the Kremlin has not spoken to Agalarov and has no ties to the Russian lawyer who was at the meeting.
Aras Agalarov also appeared on Russian radio on Wednesday morning to deny his involvement.
He said the letter Donald Trump Jr. posted is ‘all made up’. He also insisted he ‘didn’t know these people’.
‘I think this is some sort of fiction. I don’t know who is making it up,’ Agalarov told Russia’s Business FM radio station, according to a transcript posted online.
‘What has Hillary Clinton got to do with anything? I don’t know. I really don’t know Rob Goldstone well.’
In the email exchange which was released by Trump Jr on Tuesday, the president’s oldest son suggested he would ‘love’ to get any dirt on Clinton.
US intelligence agencies have accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of approving a hacking and influence campaign to sway the vote, claims fiercely denied in Moscow.
Trump Jr and two other top campaign officials eventually met with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya but both sides insist she provided no information on Clinton.
A publicist for Emin Agalarov directed all questions on the issue to his lawyer.
Donald Trump Jr defended his controversial meeting with a lawyer linked to the Russian government on Tuesday night when he appeared on Fox News, and was interviewed by Sean Hannity.
In what was his first appearance since the scandal broke in the New York Times over the weekend, Don Jr attempted to explain away his meeting with Natalia Veselnitskaya on June 9 last year.
‘In retrospect I probably would have done things a little differently. Again this is before the Russia mania, this is before they were building this up in the press,’ Trump Jr told Hannity in the Fox News sit-down.
‘For me this was opposition research, they had something you know maybe concrete evidence to all the stories I’d been hearing about, probably under reported for years not just during the campaign so I think I wanted to hear it out.
His father, President Donald Trump doubled down on his support for his son Donald Trump Jr on Wednesday, saying that attacks against him and the administration were the ‘greatest Witch Hunt in political history’.
Trump said that his son did a ‘good job’ on Fox News, where Trump Jr admitted he ‘would have done things differently’ after it was revealed he met with aRussian-linked lawyer with the hopes of getting ‘dirt’ on Hillary Clinton.
He then slammed ‘Fake News’, saying that anonymous sources were ‘made up and do not exist’.
‘My son Donald did a good job last night. He was open, transparent and innocent. This is the greatest Witch Hunt in political history. Sad!’ he said in a tweet on Wednesday morning.
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