There was an eighth person present at the eyebrow-raising June 2016 meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and a Russian lawyer who claimed to have dirt on Hillary Clinton.
Ike Kaveladze is an American employee at a Russian real estate company, according to a report by The Washington Post. His presence there was confirmed by the attorney representing Aras Agalarov and his son Emin, Russian elites whose ties to Trump have been drawing scrutiny. Aras Agalarov, a Russian-born billionaire, hosted the Miss Universe pageant (which was then owned by Trump) in Moscow in 2013.
The Agalarovs' attorney, Scott Balber, also told the Post that a representative of Special Counsel Robert Mueller contacted him over the weekend to determine the identity of the eighth person who attended that meeting.
This confirms, if nothing else, that Mueller is investigating the matter.
The Trump Tower meeting in question came about when Donald Trump Jr. received an email from music promoter Rob Goldstone claiming that a Russian lawyer with connections to the Vladimir Putin regime had compromising information about Clinton. Trump Jr. was joined by the president's son-in-law Jared Kushner and his then-campaign manager Paul Manafort. Present on the Russian side was the aforementioned lawyer and a former Soviet counterintelligence officer.
Kaveladze has a shady past, and has also been accused of money laundering, according to a report by Slate. A New York Times article from 2000 observed that Kaveladze held $1.4 billion in Citibank of New York and Commercial Bank of San Francisco accounts. The accounts "had been opened by Irakly Kaveladze, who immigrated to the United States from Russia in 1991," as the Times reported.
Trump Jr. has repeatedly described the meeting as innocuous and claimed his critics are making too much out of it.
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