Report: Feds Want Info From Mysterious Eighth Attendee At Don Jr. Meeting

Outside Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue
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Federal investigators want information from an as-yet unidentified individual who attended a Trump Tower meeting last year that was billed as part of the Russian government’s efforts to help Donald Trump’s campaign, CNN reported Tuesday.

“The eighth person has been identified by prosecutors and we are cooperating fully with prosecutors as a result of the investigation. To preserve the integrity of the investigation we are declining to identify him at this time,” the unidentified attendee’s attorney, Scott Balber, told CNN.

Balber told the news outlet that his client has not yet been interviewed by special counsel Robert Mueller.

The mysterious identity of this eighth attendee adds yet another layer of intrigue to the June 2016 meeting, which offered the clearest indication yet that senior members of the Trump campaign were open to accepting help from the Russian government.

In an email chain arranging the meeting that Donald Trump, Jr. published on Twitter, Trump’s eldest son said he’d “love” to get “ultra sensitive” information that would “incriminate” Hillary Clinton from a Russian government lawyer. The meeting was arranged by Rob Goldstone, a music publicist and acquaintance of the Trump family.

The known participants in the Trump Tower meeting include Trump Jr.; his brother-in-law and White House senior adviers Jared Kushner; then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort; Goldstone; Natalia Veselnitskaya, the Russian lawyer said to possess the dirt on Clinton; and Rinat Akhmetsin, a former Soviet counterintelligence officer-turned-lobbyist.

Also reportedly present was Anatoli Samochornov, a U.S. based translator and U.S. citizen. Sources familiar with the meeting told CNN that the as-yet unidentified eighth person in the room was a representative of Emin Agalarov and his father, Aras, previous business partners of the Trump family who Goldstone said in the email chain had asked him to set up the fateful meeting.

Balber, the unidentified individual’s attorney, told CNN that the person is a U.S. citizen who speaks fluent Russian and was asked to serve as Veselnitskaya’s translator and realized she had already brought a translator with her when he arrived. The individual has “never had any engagement with the Russian government in any capacity,” Balber told CNN.

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