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Rob Goldstone, Trump Intermediary, Likes Silly Hats and Facebook
A new peripheral character in the Trump universe stepped into the spotlight this week: the entertainment publicist and former tabloid reporter Rob Goldstone.
This is the man who facilitated a meeting last year between Donald Trump Jr. and Natalia Veselnitskaya, a Russian lawyer and Moscow insider, with the promise of information that “would incriminate Hillary [Clinton] and her dealings with Russia.”
Mr. Goldstone, who runs the public relations company Oui 2 Entertainment, contacted Donald Trump Jr. by email on behalf of his client, Emin Agalarov, a Russian pop star whose father, Aras, is a real estate tycoon. Aras Agalarov worked with President Trump and Mr. Goldstone to take the Miss Universe contest to Moscow in 2013.
On Tuesday, Donald Trump Jr. posted images of his email exchanges with Mr. Goldstone on his Twitter account after learning that The New York Times planned to publish them. The meeting, details of which were first reported by The Times, took place on June 9, 2016, on the 25th floor of Trump Tower and was attended by Donald Trump Jr.; his brother-in-law, Jared Kushner; Paul Manafort, President Trump’s campaign manager at the time; and Mr. Goldstone.
When asked for comment this week by The Times, Mr. Goldstone said he thought Ms. Veselnitskaya was a “private citizen.” In an email to Donald Trump Jr. last summer, however, he called her a “Russian government attorney.” He also said he did not know that Aras Agalarov, who has ties to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, had any involvement in setting up the meeting. His emails showed a different story.
Mr. Goldstone is not exactly a savvy political operative. He was born in Manchester, England, and lives in New York. He is currently on what he has termed a “gap year,” during which he is traveling around the world.
So far, according to his Facebook page, Mr. Goldstone has made stops in Venice; Dubrovnik, Croatia; and Montenegro, among other places, and posted images of himself with young men — “muppets,” as he calls them — in each one. The last item he posted on Facebook was a photo of a sign for the Bathhouse of the Winds in Athens on Sunday.
Earlier Facebook check-ins and posts have helped form a timeline of Mr. Goldstone’s relationship with the Trumps. In June 2013, he mentioned a “fun meeting” with Donald J. Trump. A photograph posted days later shows Mr. Goldstone and the man who would be president having dinner together in Las Vegas, along with Emin Agalarov, who goes by the name Emin.
That encounter was followed by an event at the Moscow branch of Nobu in November of that year to welcome the future president to that city for the Miss Universe contest. (Mr. Goldstone’s company was involved in the event.) In February 2014, Mr. Goldstone posted a photo of Ivanka Trump with Emin in Moscow. About a month later, another photograph on Mr. Goldstone’s Facebook page shows Ms. Trump, her father and Emin in warm-weather clothes.
Beyond these experiences with members of the Trump family, the Facebook feed reveals Mr. Goldstone’s affinity for eccentric headwear, including an elaborate crown, a pirate hat, a headpiece loaded with fruit worthy of Carmen Miranda and a cap with the words “Out Off Office” printed above the bill.
On the day of his meeting at Trump Tower in June 2016, he let the world know he was there by checking in on Facebook.
Social media also paints a picture of Mr. Goldstone as something of a Russophile. Russian friends regularly show up in his Facebook feed, and according to The Guardian, Mr. Goldstone traveled to Moscow so frequently that he referred to it as his “second home” on Instagram.
After President Trump won the election, Mr. Goldstone posted a photograph of himself wearing a shirt with the word Russia printed across the front. The caption: “Hedging bets.” (Mr. Goldstone’s Instagram account is now locked, and The Guardian reported that he took down the photo after a reporter tweeted about it.)
Twitter users have been gleefully posting other details and comments. One dug up a shot of Mr. Goldstone this year in Manila, where he was a guest judge for Miss Universe and wore a shirt with “Sexy” scrawled across it.
Another highlighted a video in which Mr. Goldstone entered a clear chamber where money circled around him and tried to catch some of the paper bills.
How good a publicist is Mr. Goldstone? His company website takes credit for several impressive events, including a Sting performance in Central Park, a Friars Club roast of Quentin Tarantino that was hosted by Samuel L. Jackson, and a birthday gala for Tony Bennett. And if the adage that any publicity is good publicity has any truth to it, he did a fine job on behalf of Emin this week.
At Oui 2 Entertainment, according to the About section on its website, Mr. Goldstone’s “clients have included Michael Jackson, B. B. King, Richard Branson, EMI Music Publishing, TLC, The Hard Rock Cafe, Steinway & Sons and Best Buy.” Before founding the firm, according to the site, Mr. Goldstone was the head of the international marketing division at HMV Group, and represented artists on tour in Australia like Mr. King, Cyndi Lauper, Julio Iglesias and U2.
In an interview with The Jewish Telegraph, a British newspaper, Mr. Goldstone spoke of his earlier career in journalism, saying he wrote for The Birmingham Post and Mail, The Sun and The Sunday Mirror, among others. Mr. Goldstone took his byline out for another spin in 2010, when he wrote an essay headlined “The Tricks and Trials of Traveling While Fat” for The Times.
“At 285 pounds and 5 feet 7 inches, I may not be the tallest, but I am almost always one of the biggest passengers on a plane,” he wrote. “That’s ‘one of’: As anyone with even the most tangential relationship with news headlines over the last several years knows, Americans are getting fatter and fatter. And as the well-proportioned gird themselves for the hassles of holiday travel, plus-size travelers like me prepare for a plus-sized ordeal.”
Seven years later, it appears that Mr. Goldstone has a fresh “plus-sized ordeal” to contend with.
Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article misstated the text that appeared on one of Rob Goldstone’s hats. It said “Out Off Office,” not “Out of the Office.”
An earlier version of a capsule summary for this article misstated the given name of Mr. Goldstone. As the article correctly notes, he is Rob, not Paul.
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