WASHINGTON — Special Counsel investigators are seeking information from the still-publicly unidentified eighth person who attended the June 2016 meeting with Donald Trump Jr. at Trump Tower, this person’s attorney Scott Balber said 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,” Balber told CNN.
Balber said his client hasn’t been interviewed yet and that Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigators have not reached out about Emin and Aras Agalarov, whom he also represents.
Emin Agalarov is a Russian-Azerbaijani pop star who has previously done business with the Trumps alongside his father, Aras Agalarov, a Russian real estate billionaire with ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Balber’s comments offer a rare glimpse inside Mueller’s investigation into allegations that Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia.
The eighth person has been described by sources familiar with the circumstances as an employee and US representative of the Agalarovs.
Balber said the individual is a long-time US citizen who speaks fluent Russian and has “never had any engagement with the Russian government in any capacity.”
According to his client, the individual was asked to go to the meeting at Trump Tower last June with the understanding he would be Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya’s translator because she didn’t speak English, Balber said.
He then realized at the meeting that she already had a translator that she had brought with her.
Balber said his client remembers discussions surrounding the Magnitsky Act — a 2012 US law that imposed sanctions on Russian individuals — and the retaliatory Kremlin-imposed ban on adoption of Russian children by American citizens.
The special counsel’s office declined to comment.
