House Democrats have lined up three hearings in the coming week with the Russian-born U.S. businessman who served as the point person on the Trump Tower Moscow project.
Felix Sater, who worked directly with Trump lawyer Michael Cohen on the real estate deal, is due to answer questions behind closed doors from the House Judiciary Committee both Thursday and next week, according to the Washington Post. Sater will also testify publicly next Wednesday before the House Intelligence Committee, which has been homing in on Trump's financial entanglements and whether foreign entities have leverage over him.
The House Judiciary panel, on the other hand, is focused on investigating Trump's obstruction, corruption, and abuse of power. The panel has sought all of Sater's correspondence related to financial transactions between the Trump Organization and Russian entities after Jan. 2015. Sater was instrumental in formalizing the letter of intent that Trump signed in October of 2015 regarding the Moscow tower. He's also credited with the idea of gifting a penthouse suite in the tower to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Since Cohen admitted to lying about how long negotiations continued on the Moscow deal, Democrats may be interested in asking whether Sater got a similar message from Trump.
Sater also partnered with Trump on several other real estate projects, including Trump SoHo in Manhattan. Although Trump claimed in a 2013 deposition that he couldn't identify Sater if they were in the same room together, Sater’s name surfaced regularly during Cohen’s congressional hearing last month. Cohen testified that Sater actually had an office in Trump Tower on "Mr. Trump's floor."
Sater has a history of running afoul of the law. In 1991, he was convicted of slashing a man's face with a broken glass in a bar fight. In 1998, he was charged in a $40 million Russian mafia stock fraud scheme, but didn't serve any jail time after pleading guilty and agreeing to cooperate with investigators.