Trump’s pageant contact questioned

GEORGIAN: DID HE SET UP MEETING WITH RUSSIANS?

Probes focus on Trump Towers meeting involving aides and Trump Jnr.

Washington

AGeorgian-American businessperson who met then-Miss Universe pageant owner Donald Trump in 2013, has been questioned by congressional investigators about whether he helped organise a meeting between Russians and Trump’s eldest son during the 2016 election campaign, four sources familiar with the matter said.

The meeting at Trump Tower in New York involving Donald Trump Jnr and other campaign advisors is a focus of probes by Congress and Special Counsel Robert Mueller on whether campaign officials colluded with Russia and whether they sought to interfere in the US election, the sources said. Russia denies allegations by US intelligence agencies that it meddled in the election and President Donald Trump denies any collusion.

The Senate and House of Representatives intelligence committees recently questioned behind closed doors Irakly Kaveladze, a US citizen born in the former Soviet republic of Georgia, the sources said. He is a US-based representative of Azerbaijani oligarch Aras Agalarov’s real estate firm, the Crocus Group.

The panels knew Kaveladze was at the June 9, 2016 meeting but became more interested in him after learning he also attended a private dinner in Las Vegas in 2013 with Trump and Agalarov as they celebrated an agreement to hold the Miss Universe pageant in Moscow, the sources said.

Committee members now want to know more about the extent of Kaveladze’s contacts with the Trump family and whether he had a bigger role than previously believed in setting up the Trump Tower meeting when Trump was a candidate for president.

The White House declined to comment. Mueller’s office also declined to comment.

Scott Balber, a New York lawyer who represents Kaveladze, confirmed that his client attended both the dinner in Las Vegas and the Trump Tower meeting but said he did not set up the second meeting. Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, other Trump campaign aides and Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya were also at that meeting. Lawyer Balber also said the committees were only seeking Kaveladze’s input as a witness and were not targeting him for investigation.

“No one has ever told me that they have any interest in him other than as a witness,” Balber said.

Lawyers for Trump Jnr and Kushner did not respond to requests for comment about their contacts with Kaveladze. A lawyer for President Trump declined to comment. – Reuters