Konstantin Sidorkov, who works at Russia’s Vkontakte (VK) social network, reached out to Donald Trump Jr. and another official in President Donald Trump’s campaign during the campaign, a new report shows.
Sidorkov sent emails to Trump Jr. and to Trump social media director Dan Scavino in January and November last year, telling them that Trump should create a profile on the website to appeal to Russian Americans and Russians, Washington Post reports.
Vkontakte is a Russian equivalent to Facebook and Sidorkov, who is VK’s director of partnership marketing, offered to help promote Trump’s campaign to its almost 100 million users, people familiar with the messages say.
“It will be the top news in Russia,” Sidorkov wrote on November 5, 2016.
According to The Hill, the original outreach from Vkontakte was allegedly set up by British music publicist Rob Goldstone, who reached out to Trump Jr. about Trump creating a profile on the social media. Alan S. Futerfas, an attorney for Trump Jr., confirmed that his client received the email from Goldstone.
“Goldstone wrote to Donald Trump Jr. early in the year, and he forwarded the information to Dan Scavino. He did nothing more with the information and had no recollection of or involvement in any further discussion about the matter,” he said.
Scavino replied to Goldstone and told him to send him whatever he had.
“Thank you so much for looking out for Mr. Trump and his presidential campaign,” he wrote.
Afterwards, Sidorkov emailed Scavino, Trump Jr. and Donald Trump’s longtime assistant Rhona Graff saying he was glad to meet her and her team and sending information about the Russian social media. The new emails indicate that Goldstone was in contact with Trump campaign about two weeks after visiting Trump Tower, where he attended a meeting between Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya and Trump Jr. Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort were also present at the meeting. Ike Kaveladze, a U.S. representative for Agalarov said the page did not come up at the June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower. He also attended the meeting.
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