The Russian pop star who helped broker Donald Trump Jr.’s 2016 meeting with a Kremlin-linked lawyer is set to tour the US for the first time since canceling shows rather than get caught up in the Mueller probe.
“We reached out to the Mueller team through my lawyer and said I was completely prepared to testify,” singing sensation Emin Agalarov told Page Six, referring to Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who spent years probing ties between the Trump campaign and Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.
“But they wanted it to be mandatory, not voluntary, which meant if I entered the States, I could have been forced to stay here for two years,” the Azerbaijani-Russian performer, 39, said.
“People got hurt, there was financial loss and we had to postpone the tour. Obviously, it was nothing pleasant.”
But with the investigation wrapped, Agalarov is now set to hit cities in 2020, including Los Angeles, Chicago and New York’s Town Hall on Feb. 20.
Agalarov was due to perform in New York earlier this year, but scrapped the tour rather than risk being trapped in the US while testifying about the 2016 Trump Tower sitdown.
Agalarov — who along with his real-estate billionaire dad, Aras Agalarov, worked with the future president to bring the Miss Universe pageant to Russia in 2013 — had his publicist set up the fateful meeting.
“It took Mueller almost two years to come up with the same answer: That my involvement is completely irrelevant,” said Agalarov. “It was fake news, fake everything, this fake investigation that turned out to be nothing.”
The frenzy sent Agalarov into a self-imposed exile from the States.
“It was an unfortunate experience,” said Agalarov, who spent six years in the US and attended high school in New Jersey. “I spent the best years of my life in America. I’ve really missed it.”
But he didn’t exactly keep quiet in the interim.
In 2018, Agalarov released a music video for his single, “Got Me Good,” poking fun at the controversy, with stand-ins for everyone from Trump to Clinton to adult-film star Stormy Daniels, who was paid hush money to keep quiet about a pre-White House sexual relationship with Trump.
“My lawyer asked me not to say anything. I was being bombarded by journalists over these ridiculous accusations and I couldn’t comment,” said Agalarov. “All the accusations were so hilarious — what possible involvement could I have in the American election?”
That video wasn’t the first Trump tie-in in Agalarov’s career.
Approached during the 2013 Miss Universe, the Donald himself agreed to make a cameo in the “In Another Life” video — hitting Agalarov with his “The Apprentice” catch-phrase, “You’re fired!”
But don’t expect to see the president or any other Trumps catching any shows on Agalarov’s US tour.
“This Russian fever brings such negativity that I don’t think I should invite them to my tour,” said Agalarov. “The press might turn it into another story, say that I’m passing secret information from Russia, that I’m a spy.