8th Attendee of Trump Jr. Meeting Has Been ID'd

Lawyer appears to confirm special investigation is looking into meeting
By Michael Harthorne,  Newser Staff
Posted Jul 18, 2017 1:02 PM CDT
8th Attendee of Trump Jr. Meeting Is VP of Russian Real Estate Co.
The eighth person who attended a meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and a Russian lawyer promising information harmful to Hillary Clinton has been identified.   (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

The eighth—and potentially final—attendee of a June 2016 meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and a Russian lawyer promising information harmful to Hillary Clinton has been identified as Ike Kaveladze, the Los Angeles Times reports. The 52-year-old was born in the republic of Georgia under the Soviet Union and currently works in real estate in California. According to CNN, Kaveladze is a senior VP at Crocus Group, the Russian real estate company that partnered with the Trump Organization to put on the 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow and that was founded by the Russian oligarch who made the Trump Jr. meeting happen. Kaveladze's presence at the meeting was confirmed by his lawyer, Scott Balber.

Balber tells the Times Kaveladze "was asked to attend the meeting purely to ... make sure it happened" but "literally had no idea what the meeting was about." He says Kaveladze remembers Russian sanctions being discussed and is "absolutely baffled" the meeting has since become controversial. Balber tells the Washington Post a representative of Special Counsel Robert Mueller called over the weekend to request an interview with Kaveladze. It's the first public acknowledgment that Mueller is investigating the 2016 meeting. The other people confirmed to have attended the meeting are Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, Paul Manafort, Russian-American lobbyist Rinat Akhmetshin, Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, former State Department translator Anatoli Samochornov, and music promoter Rob Goldstone. (More Donald Trump Jr. stories.)

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