According to the NYTimes former Russian mobster, violent convict, stock fraudster and FBI informant Felix Sater who apparently still continues to work for the Trump organization and had attempted to secretly broker a peace deal that would have ended Russian sanctions, tried to get Trump Tower Moscow built during the middle of the election and recently said that both he and “Trump are going to prison” wrote the following to Michael Cohen in an email early in the campaign during November of 2015.
“Michael I arranged for Ivanka to sit in Putin’s private chair at his desk and office in the Kremlin. I will get Putin on this program and we will get Donald elected. We both know no one else knows how to pull this off without greed or stupidity getting in the way. I know how to play it and how to get this done. Buddy, our boy can become president of the USA and we can engineer it,” Sater wrote in one email, according to the Times. “I will get all of Putin’s team to buy in on this, I will manage this process.”
Now logically speaking since foreign nationals and governments are not legally allowed to be involved in U.S. elections exactly what, pray tell, was Sater promising that he, and only he, could get Putin to do? And how exactly could it possibly be legal?
More from the Times.
Trump Lawyer Michael Cohen
The emails show that, from the earliest months of Mr. Trump’s campaign, some of his associates viewed close ties with Moscow as a political advantage. Those ties are now under investigation by the Justice Department and multiple congressional committees.
There is no evidence in the emails that Mr. Sater delivered on his promises. Mr. Sater, a Russian immigrant, was a broker for the Trump Organization at the time, which means he was paid to deliver real estate deals.
Well, considering the fact that having Russians involved in determining our Presidential race is totally, completely, absolutely illegal I would be shocked — shocked! — if there were obvious fingerprints leading directly back to Sater’s office in Trump Tower.
But it is interesting.
As I posted just 11 days ago, Sater has a rather “colorful” history.
Felix Sater
Felix Sater has led an interesting life. He is a Russian immigrant who was convicted in 1998 of a violent attack which was allegedly linked to the Russian Mob. He was later caught up in a $40 Million Stock Fraud case which led to his becoming an informant for the FBI against the mob. During the early 2000s he became a managing director for Bayrock Group LLC, a real estate firm founded by Turkish immigrant Tefvik Arif who was arrested, tried and eventually acquitted of being involved in an underage prostitution ring in Turkey.
Bayrock worked with Donald Trump on many projects including Trump Tower in Pheonix and Trump Soho a project that was sued for fraudulent claims, as well as various other projects many of which involved condo sales to Russian nationals who in fact spent $98 Million with Trump between 2001-2007. Bayrock eventually went out of business and was later involved in a racketeering case in 2010. Following which Sater went to work for Trump. More recently he tried help broker a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia with Trump Lawyer Michael Cohen that would have lifted Russian sanctions.
Part of Sater’s hope in getting Putin’s help was potentially connected to his efforts to get Trump Tower Moscow built right during the middle of the election cycle. Because that wouldn’t have been suspicious at all.
Throughout his campaign for president, Donald Trump repeatedly denied having anything to do with Russia. “I have nothing to do with Russia, nothing to do, I never met Putin, I have nothing to do with Russia whatsoever,” he said during an interview in July 2016. He was even more emphatic on Twitter: “For the record, I have ZERO investments in Russia.” It was obvious, relatively early on, that this wasn’t, strictly speaking, true. The president’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., bragged in 2008 that “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets. We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.” And if the Trump Organization didn’t have actual investments inside Russia, it’s not because they didn’t try.
As The Washington Post reported on Sunday, the Trump Organization was actively pursuing real-estate opportunities in Russia in late 2015 and early 2016 to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. The project was spearheaded by Russian-born developer and longtime Trump associate Felix Sater (who helped buildTrump SoHo) and Michael Cohen, an executive vice president at the Trump Organization and the president’s longtime personal attorney. The deal never came to fruition. But, as the Post reports, citing newly surfaced records reviewed by Trump Organization lawyers and several people familiar with the proposal, negotiations were ongoing throughout much of Trump’s presidential campaign:
Trump had previously been trying to get Trump Tower Moscow built in 2013 with his Miss Universe Moscow partners Emin and Arass Agalarov which was shutdown in 2014 when Putin invaded Crimea forcing Obama to go the UN and implement sanctions. The only way to restart that deal would be to lift those sanctions, and that’s something that would take — a new Russia friendly President.
So yeah, this letter by Sater is not the slightest bit shady considering the fact that it was in late 2015 that various international intel agencies including GCHQ started to see odd communications going on between “Trump associates” and Russians suspected of being spies.
GCHQ
A source close to the investigation into President Donald Trump’s campaign and its ties to Russia says that there is now “specific concrete and corroborative evidence” that individuals within Trump’s immediate orbit coordinated with Russian intelligence operatives during the election.
The Guardian said on Thursday that the U.K.’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) has been watching the Trump camp since late 2015, having noticed suspicious “interactions” between Trump associates and well-known Russian agents.
Ah, hmm….
Maybe all of the is why Sater was recently reported as saying this:
And according to Wood’s sources, Sater may have already flipped and given prosecutors the evidence they need to make a case against Trump.
For several weeks there have been rumours that Sater is ready to rat again, agreeing to help Mueller. ‘He has told family and friends he knows he and POTUS are going to prison,’ someone talking to Mueller’s investigators informed me.
Sater hinted in an interview earlier this month that he may be cooperating with both Mueller’s investigation and congressional probes of Trump.
“In about the next 30 to 35 days, I will be the most colourful character you have ever talked about,” Sater told New York Magazine. “Unfortunately, I can’t talk about it now, before it happens. And believe me, it ain’t anything as small as whether or not they’re gonna call me to the Senate committee.”
Oh, boy!
