Another day, another bombshell Trump-Russia story.
Another day, another bombshell Trump-Russia story.
The New York Times reported Monday that businessman Felix Sater told then-candidate Donald Trump's lawyer in 2015 that he was working on a real estate deal that could help "get Donald elected." Sater was emailing Michael Cohen about building a Trump Tower in Moscow, as was reported Sunday night by The Washington Post .
http://www.newsweek.com/felix-sater-russia-trump-putin-656059
The project never came to fruition, but Sater's messages about it could raise further questions about whether the Trump team collaborated with the Kremlin during his presidential campaign.
In an email sent in November 2015, a few months after Trump had announced he was running, Sater told Cohen he could get President Vladimir Putin's team "to buy in" on the Trump Tower Moscow idea. He then boasted, "Buddy, your boy can become president of the USA and we can engineer it."
Cohen told the Times that nothing came of the emails, dismissing Sater—a Trump Organization broker and a Russian immigrant—as someone susceptible to "salesmanship." Trump has previously denied any close relationship with Sater, though the Post pointed out he once had a business card that said he was "senior adviser to Donald Trump."
Monday wasn't the first time Sater had been in the news. In July, Sater made headlines when he agreed to cooperate in a money-laundering investigation involving Viktor Khrapunov, a former Kazakh lawmaker who bought three apartments in Trump SoHo in New York City, among other properties. In 2015, the Associated Press reported that Trump was trying to distance himself from Sater, who had worked with the tycoon's company when he was an executive with development company Bayrock.
Sater has ties to the mob and served time in prison after police said he assaulted a man with a margarita glass. Separately, he later pleaded guilty to racketeering and became a government informant, a deal that Andrew Weissmann was involved in, according to Mother Jones .
Weissmann, now with the Justice Department, is helping special counsel Robert Mueller investigate Trump's ties to Russia.
Tags
Who is online
74 visitors
also
"I arranged for Ivanka to sit in Putins private chair at his desk and office in the Kremlin," Sater wrote to President Trump's lawyer, Michael Cohen, in November 2015.
The boast was followed by an assurance that Sater could get Putin to "buy in" to the real-estate deal and that it would help Trump's candidacy.
Ivanka Trump said she had no involvement in discussions about the deal, according to the Times. She also did not confirm or deny whether she sat in Putin's chair, only saying that she has "never met President Vladimir Putin."
She said that during the 2006 trip, she took "a brief tour of Red Square and the Kremlin," the Times reported.
But the possibility of a trip to Putin's office would suggest a much closer relationship to Moscow than the Trumps have previously suggested. And it would provide a new lead for Robert Mueller, the special counsel heading the investigation into the Trump campaign's possible collusion with Russia in the US presidential election.
"Sitting at Putin’s desk is certainly not on the regular Kremlin tours," Daniel Treisman, a UCLA political science professor and expert on Russian politics, told Business Insider in an email. "If true, this would show that Ivanka’s guide inside the Kremlin had the highest security clearances and was personally trusted by Putin."
"It would be bizarre for him to take her into the president’s personal office — presumably while the president was absent — unless Putin and his security service advisors knew about it and viewed the relationship with the Trumps as worth developing."
President Trump said later in 2015 that he was "not that familiar" with Sater.
According to the Times, the Trump Organization turned over the email, along with other correspondences between Sater and Cohen, to the House Intelligence Committee, which is also investigating the Trump campaign's relationship with Russia.
It's sad that there is a disaster happening in Texas and THIS is what some choose to focus on. Some peoples priorities are really screwed.
And, that's a fact.
@Jeremy-In-Nc :
Most people can focus on more than one thing at a time. If we couldn't we wouldn't survive.
@Pat-Wilson :
Not this group of people. The ONLY thing they have the ability to focus on is this "Russian connection". I'm surprised they can blink and breath simultaneously without help.