The Magazine Interview: Rob Goldstone on setting up Trump Jr and Russia

“My email to Don Trump Jr took three minutes. I never thought it would be read by the world”. Interview by Philip Sherwell

The Sunday Times, November 19 2017, 12:01am

Rob Goldstone was one of the most distinctive faces of the summer, his ample features emblazoned across page and screen, staring out from a slew of selfies in silly hats, posing alongside celebrities or engaged in comedic solo video vignettes. The British music publicist emerged from nowhere as an implausible central figure in the torrent of allegations claiming that Donald Trump’s presidential campaign colluded with the Kremlin to win last year’s election against Hillary Clinton. And the images of Goldstone plucked from the rich trove of his social-media outpourings added an eccentric flavour to the saga swirling around the White House.

Then he disappeared — until now. As the great American political drama has plunged through its latest convolutions, and charges have been laid against former Trump campaign operatives, Goldstone agreed to sit down with me for his first interview — to discuss how he ended up at the heart of a controversy threatening the presidency. Keeping quiet and out of the spotlight has not come easily for the garrulous Goldstone, 56, a former journalist turned publicist. For an extrovert who has long pursued the headlines, first for his stories and then for his clients, the past four months have been both a challenge and a torment.

“The hardest part has been just dealing with people’s perception of who I am, people’s perception of what went on, and ultimately having to say nothing,” he says. “Clients have often asked me to do crazy stuff. Those things don’t freak me out. What freaks me out is silence. There is nothing harder than saying nothing.”

To recap, it was Goldstone who in early June 2016 fired off a hastily written and now forensically dissected email to his acquaintance Don Trump Jr, just days after his father had wrapped up the Republican presidential nomination. Goldstone outlined a striking proposal from a client of his, a Russian pop singer and oligarch’s son who had once discussed Moscow property deals with Trump Jr after his family staged the Miss Universe pageant there in 2013. On offer were said to be “official documents” from the “crown prosecutor of Russia” that would “incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father”.

Their email exchange — including the younger Trump’s now famous response, “If it’s what you say it is, I love it” — has been a key focus for the Department of Justice’s investigation into Russian interference in the election. So is the meeting that Goldstone attended a few days later in Trump Tower’s glass-walled boardroom, with its sweeping views across Central Park. There, Trump’s oldest son was joined by Jared Kushner, the candidate’s son-in-law and close adviser, and Paul Manafort, then campaign chairman and now indicted for allegedly laundering millions of dollars from unrelated lobbying work for Ukraine’s pro-Kremlin leader.

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https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-magazine-interview-rob-goldstone-on-setting-up-trump-jr-and-russia-hsl6jcn6g