Ties to Russia? What ties to Russia? That’s basically been the Trump campaign’s response to a lot of evidence of Trump’s ties to Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Trump has gotten less recent attention for, but been about as interested in discussing, his ties to organized crime. So it’s a little inconvenient that here it all is in one little package. A man named Felix Sater recently visited Trump Tower for undisclosed reasons, in addition to making the maximum contribution to Trump’s campaign.
Sater, whose firm co-developed a major Trump project in New York and who was later hired by Trump to drum up business in the former USSR, has said that he closely associated with Trump and his family, while Trump has suggested he wouldn’t even recognize Sater. [...]
Sater’s business relationship with Trump has been the subject of sworn testimony by both men and has come under scrutiny because of Sater’s past associations and the Trump campaign’s unusual stances on Russia. Sater was convicted for stabbing a man in a bar fight in the early '90s, and pleaded guilty to racketeering in 1998 for his role in a mob-orchestrated stock fraud, according to The Washington Post. His racketeering sentence was reduced for cooperating with American intelligence officials on undisclosed matters related to national security.
Around 1999, Sater joined Bayrock, a real estate firm that had offices in Trump Tower and pursued business ventures with Trump. Bayrock is now being rocked by allegations made in a lawsuit brought by a former executive of unexplained cash infusions from Russia and Kazakhstan and receiving financing from a firm used by Russians “in favor with” Putin. Around 2010, Sater went to work for Trump directly, carrying a Trump Organization business card that described him as a “senior advisor to Donald Trump.”
Sater says he spent a lot of time meeting with Trump over a period of years, traveled with him, and served as a Moscow tour guide for Donald Jr. and Ivanka. Trump says he wouldn’t know the guy if he was sitting in a room with him. Hmm … who to believe—the guy with specifics, or the known liar with a convenient denial?
We don’t know why Sater was at Trump Tower. We just know he’s the sort of person Trump has had a business relationship with in the past, and we know there’s a lot about Trump’s finances we don’t know, since he won’t release his taxes.
Can you give Hillary Clinton $5 so we don't have to worry about the next president's ties to Vladimir Putin?