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Ex-Trump bodyguard says he rejected 2013 Russian offer of women for Trump
Ex-Trump security chief testifies he rejected 2013 Russian offer of women for Trump in Moscow
Ex-Trump security chief says he rejected 2013 Russian offer of women for Trump in Moscow 03:29
Washington (CNN)President
Donald Trump's long-time confidant Keith Schiller privately testified
that he rejected a Russian offer to send five women to then
private-citizen Trump's hotel room during their 2013 trip to Moscow for
the Miss Universe pageant, according to multiple sources from both
political parties with direct knowledge of the testimony.
Schiller,
Trump's former bodyguard and personal aide, testified that he took the
offer as a joke, two of the sources said. On their way up to Trump's
hotel room that night, Schiller told the billionaire businessman about
the offer and Trump laughed it off, Schiller told the House intelligence
committee earlier this week.
After several minutes outside of Trump's door, which was Schiller's practice as Trump's security chief, he said he left.
Members
of the committee raised the matter because of salacious allegations
laid out in a dossier compiled by former British agent Christopher
Steele, an opposition research document funded by Democrats detailing
alleged ties between Trump and his associates with Russians.
During
this week's closed-door hearing, House lawmakers walked through a Daily
Caller article, which raised some of the allegations about Trump's
Moscow trip from the dossier and discussed an alternative story
involving Schiller's role in rejecting the Russian offer of sending
prostitutes to Trump's room.
The
dossier's claims about Trump's activities in Moscow are some of the
most incendiary claims in the memos compiled by Steele, which claimed
that Russia obtained "kompromat," or dirt, on Trump to use as blackmail.
Trump has long denounced the dossier and flatly denied its assertions.
Stuart
Sears, an attorney for Schiller, said the chairman and ranking member
of the committee should investigate individuals leaking "misleading
versions" of Schiller's testimony, calling the conduct "indefensible"
and questioning the credibility of the House inquiry.
"We
are appalled by the leaks that are coming from partisan insiders from
the House Intelligence Committee," Sears said in a statement. "It is
outrageous that the very Committee that is conducting an investigation
into leaks - purportedly in the public interest - is itself leaking
information and defaming cooperative witnesses like Mr. Schiller."
During
the testimony with the House investigators, Schiller denied knowing
about the salacious allegations contained in the dossier. He was also
asked about a wide-range of issues, including meetings between Trump
associates and Russians, and he denied having knowledge of many of those
interactions, sources said.
Moreover,
he denied knowing about the deliberations around the firing of FBI
Director James Comey, saying he was only called into deliver a letter
with the news to the FBI.
White House officials declined to comment.
While
Trump and the White House have long rejected the dossier as an attempt
to discredit the presidency, the FBI has corroborated some information
in the dossier and used it as justification to obtain a surveillance
warrant on Trump campaign foreign policy adviser Carter Page, CNN has
reported.
But federal
investigators have not verified the most salacious allegations regarding
Trump's activities on his 2013 trip for the Miss Universe Pageant in
Moscow.
Schiller was asked about
the Daily Caller article, and he confirmed a Russian made the offer to
send the women to Trump's room which was raised around lunch-time,
sources said. He was asked who made the offer, but he could not recall
the identity of the individual, sources said.
Multiple
sources said the offer to send women to Trump's room came from a
Russian who was accompanying Emin Agalarov, a pop star whose father is a
billionaire oligarch close to Russian President Vladimir Putin and who
worked with Trump to bring the pageant to Moscow. But Schiller said the
offer did not come from Agalarov himself, the sources said, disputing
the Daily Caller report on that matter.
"Emin has no knowledge of that ever happening," said Scott Balber, an attorney for Agalarov.
Dossier subject of controversy
Trump
has vehemently denied the allegations in the dossier since it was made
public in January. At a press conference weeks before taking office,
Trump said that he tells his staff before overseas trips, including to
Russia, to "be very careful" in their hotel rooms because "you're gonna
probably have cameras," and that they could end up on the news if they
weren't cautious.
Trump has also
ramped up his attacks after it became public that the Hillary Clinton
campaign and Democratic National Committee, through the law firm Perkins
Coie, paid opposition research firm Fusion GPS to compile the material
that led to the dossier.
"Clinton
campaign & DNC paid for research that led to the anti-Trump Fake
News Dossier. The victim here is the President," Trump tweeted last
month.
Yet before Trump was inaugurated, Comey briefed Trump and outgoing President Barack Obama about the existence of the dossier.
Additionally,
Comey testified that Trump personally denied to him, on two occasions,
that he participated in the salacious activities alleged in the dossier.
This all came before Trump fired Comey in May.
"The
President returned to the salacious material I had briefed him about on
January 6, and, as he had done previously, expressed his disgust for
the allegations and strongly denied them," Comey said about a dinner
with Trump in late January. "He said he was considering ordering me to
investigate the alleged incident to prove it didn't happen."
Comey
said Trump gave a more explicit denial in a March phone call. "He said
he had nothing to do with Russia, had not been involved with hookers in
Russia, and had always assumed he was being recorded when in Russia,"
Comey testified.
A fateful Moscow trip
Investigators
probing potential Russia collusion asked Schiller to detail what
happened during the 2013 Moscow trip when Trump was in charge of the
Miss Universe pageant there.
Trump
brought the pageant to Moscow with the help of Aras and Emin Agalarov,
the Azerbaijani-Russian billionaire oligarch and his pop-star son. The
November 2013 event was held at one of their properties in Moscow.
Video
obtained by CNN in July shows Trump, Schiller, the Agalarovs and music
publicist Rob Goldstone attending a July 2013 dinner in Las Vegas. The
day after that gathering, the Trump Organization announced it would
bring Miss Universe to Moscow. In June 2016, Goldstone connected with
the President's eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., at the request of Aras
Agalarov to set up the meeting at Trump Tower with Russian lawyer
Natalia Veselnitskaya.
Close confidant to Trump
Schiller,
who is one of Trump's closest confidants, left the White House in
September after serving as director of Oval Office operations.
As
a longtime adviser to Trump, Schiller has been present for some of the
most controversial moments of Trump's political career.
Trump
dispatched Schiller in May to hand-deliver a letter to the FBI
headquarters informing Comey of his termination, although Comey was in
Los Angeles at the time.
UPDATE: This story has been updated with comment from Emin Agalarov's attorney.
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