If not for heavy traffic, President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin could have met long before Trump had even begun his bid for the White House, according to the British publicist who helped set up the infamous 2016 Trump Tower meeting.
Rob Goldstone, who initially reached out to Donald Trump Jr. about a Russian lawyer claiming to have damning information on Hillary Clinton that could help his father's campaign, said in an interview released Monday that Putin's spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, had said Putin would have liked to meet Trump when he was in Moscow in 2013, but that the king of Holland had trouble with traffic, and the meeting could not occur.
Goldstone said Aras Agalarov, a Russian developer, and his son Emin were speaking with Peskov and relayed the information in regard to canceling a potential meeting. Trump was in Moscow at the time, for the Miss Universe pageant.
"I was in the room for that call with Mr. Trump and with Emin and Aras. And it was President Putin's spokesman, a man by the name of Dmitry Peskov. And he spoke with Aras. And Emin translated and said, 'Unfortunately, although Mr. Putin would love to meet with Donald Trump today, the meeting can no longer go ahead because the king of Holland has been delayed in traffic,'" Goldstone told NBC's Today.
Instead, according to Goldstone, Putin invited Trump to attend the Sochi Olympics, the winter games that took place in 2014.
"And he said something else that was interesting. He did say that President Putin was very keen to meet Mr. Trump and would make himself available at any other opportunity where their paths coincided, and invited him to the Sochi Olympics," Goldstone said.
Trump and Putin would not meet face-to-face until after Trump claimed the presidency. The duo met in July 2017 at the G20 summit in Germany.
Goldstone also said during the interview that the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting could have been a ruse by Russian intelligence, and he regretted helping broker the meeting. Goldstone questioned why Trump Jr., former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and current White House senior adviser Jared Kushner, who were all in the meeting, did not know better than to attend the meeting or set it up.
"I'm willing to believe that I don't know who wanted this meeting," Goldstone said. "It was pointed out many times, what I had written in my email wasn't what was being investigated or questioned, it was the willingness to receive that information that was important…and possibly a crime…There was a campaign chairman in that meeting; Jared Kushner was in that meeting. People have said to me, shouldn't I have known. Shouldn't they have known?"
Other than the email exchange he had with Trump Jr., Goldstone said the president's eldest son had also spoken to his client Emin Agalarov over the phone, and that he found it hard to believe Trump Jr. and Agalarov did not discuss opposition research or Russian involvement.
"I don't know what was discussed," Goldstone said. "What I do believe is that it is almost [incredible] to think that this conversation or these conversations could have taken place without discussion of funding, Russian funding, illegal funding, Democrats, Hillary, and it being of use to the campaign. I—I just can't understand how—how it wouldn't have been touched upon."
Trump Jr. indeed had three calls with Agalarov but told the Senate Intelligence Committee he could not remember them.
Trump Jr. and his father deny that any collusion took place between the Trump campaign and Russia.
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