The Trump Tower meeting in which Donald Trump’s top campaign staff conspired with a group of Russian operatives to exchange information helpful to Trump in the 2016 election was followed by a series of mysterious financial transactions that may be connected to actions at that meeting. BuzzFeed reports that these financial transactions surfaced when financial institutions were instructed to search for “suspicious behavior by people connected to the broader Trump-Russia investigation.” The result was a series of “suspicious activity reports,” several of them timed within the days after the Trump Tower meeting, and connected with those involved.
These transactions are centered around billionaire Aras Agalarov, Trump’s partner in both the 2013 Miss Universe pageant and in various schemes to bring a Trump Tower to Moscow. It was Rob Goldstone, a publicist for Agalarov’s son, who first contacted Donald Trump Jr. to arrange the Trump Tower meeting. And it was also Agalarov and his son who squired Trump around Moscow on the infamous post-pageant weekend when he may, or may not, have taken some actions that were later reported to Christopher Steele.
The movement of funds from Agalarov’s account is confusing both in terms of purpose and recipients. However, it appears that in the days that followed the meeting, and on the very same day that Trump replaced Corey Lewandowski with Paul Manafort as the head of his campaign, Agalarov moved $19.5 million from a Swiss bank, using a shell company in the British Virgin Islands, to a U.S. account. Where the money went from there is not clear. In the days immediately following Trump’s election, Agalarov sent another $1 million to a previously dormant account in New Jersey. Examiners also found money moving back and forth between accounts belonging to publicist Goldstone and Irakly “Ike” Kaveladze, a representative of the Agalarovs who was at the Trump Tower meeting.
Though these transactions were flagged as suspicious, it’s not clear that any of them have been tied directly to illegal activity, or that any of the money passed through into Trump’s campaign (or pocket). All that can be said at the moment is that many of the same characters who arranged for and took part in the Trump Tower meeting were also conducting multiple high-dollar transactions, some of which clearly involved bringing money into the U.S. through shell companies, in the time just after the meeting.
Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed that he did not know of the meeting until just before the point where it was revealed to the public. Donald Trump Jr. responded to breaking news about the meeting by issuing a memo claiming that the meeting has been a "short introductory meeting" primarily concerned with a program for the adoption of Russian children. Donald Trump denied having anything to do with that memo, despite reports that he had dictated the memo from Air Force One. Trump Jr. testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee that Trump did not draft the memo. However, in a January exchange with the special counsel’s office, Trump’s legal team admitted that he did write the “short but accurate” response. After months of claiming otherwise, Trump also admitted that the purpose of the meeting was to “get dirt” on Hillary Clinton. So Trump lied about knowing, lied about the purpose of the meeting, and lied about writing the excuse note for the meeting.
But in every instance, Trump has continued to insist that “nothing came of” the meeting. That’s been the ultimate fall-back in insisting that the meeting was not a clear instance of conspiracy … even though the test of conspiracy is not whether or not it was successful. And the meeting in which Russian operatives discussed using stolen information against Hillary Clinton was followed by both the Russians and the Trump campaign using stolen information against Hillary Clinton. So it’s difficult to see what action might have resulted from the meeting that didn’t actually take place.
In any case, both Trump and attorney Rudy Giuliani have maintained that the meeting didn’t generate further action. The transactions listed in the BuzzFeed article may show people involved in the meeting being paid for successfully arranging a get-together with Trump’s campaign. They may be unrelated. They may show money that ultimately passed over to Manafort, Trump, or others connected to his campaign. None of that is clear at the moment.
But “follow the money” remains good advice more than 45 years after Watergate, and it is clear that investigators are trying to do just that.