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A $50 Million Penthouse -- for Putin, for Free. A Trump Gift to Vladimir, for greasing the Development wheels for Trump, in Moscow.
This is BIG.
During the presidential campaign, Michael Cohen discussed the matter with a representative of Putin’s press secretary, according to two US sources.
President Donald Trump’s company planned to give a $50 million penthouse at Trump Tower Moscow to Russian President Vladimir Putin as the company negotiated the luxury real estate development during the 2016 campaign, according to four people, one of them the originator of the plan.
Two US law enforcement officials told BuzzFeed News that Michael Cohen, Trump’s personal lawyer at the time, discussed the idea with a representative of Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s press secretary.
The Trump Tower Moscow plan is at the heart of a new plea agreement by Cohen, who led the negotiations to bring a gleaming, 100-story building to the Russian capital. Cohen acknowledged in court that he had lied to Congress about the plan in order to protect Trump and his presidential campaign.
[...] The plan never went anywhere because the tower deal ultimately fizzled
[...]
BuzzFeed News first reported in May on the secret dealings of Cohen and his business associate Felix Sater with political and business figures in Moscow.
The two men worked furiously behind the scenes into the summer of 2016 to get the Moscow deal finished — despite public claims that the development was canned in January, before Trump won the Republican nomination. [...]
No wonder Felix Sater was saying last year, that he had info that would put all of them in Jail.
And according to Wood’s sources, [Felix] 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.
www.rawstory.com — Aug 17, 2017
Here’s some more facts about that Moscow Tower Deal timeline.
Timeline of Russia Investigation
Key moments in the FBI probe of Russia's efforts to influence the 2016 presidential election
by Eugene Kiely , FactCheck.org -- June 7, 2017; Updated on October 31, 2017
2015
Oct. 13 – Felix Sater, a Trump business associate, sends an email to Michael Cohen, executive vice president of the Trump Organization, about a proposal to build a Trump-branded residential and commercial building in Moscow. Sater’s email includes a letter of intent signed by Andrey Rozov, owner of I.C. Expert Investment Co., of Moscow, to build “Trump World Tower Moscow.” Sater, an American citizen who was born in Russia, tells Cohen to have Trump sign the agreement and send it back. The agreement would have given the Trump Organization “a $4 million upfront fee, no upfront costs, a percentage of the sales, and control over marketing and design.” Sater writes, “Lets make this happen and build a Trump Moscow. And possibly fix relations between the countries by showing everyone that commerce & business are much better and more practical than politics. That should be Putins message as well, and we will help him agree on that message.” (CNN would later obtain a copy of the email and the agreement.)
Oct. 28 – Trump signs a letter of intent with a Moscow-based developer, I.C. Expert Investment Co., to pursue “Trump Tower Moscow” – a licensing project in which Trump would be paid for the use of his name on a building in Moscow. (Cohen would later disclose the project in a statement provided to congressional investigators on Aug. 28, 2017, according to the Washington Post. “The decision to pursue the proposal initially, and later to abandon it were unrelated to the Donald J. Trump for President Campaign,” Cohen told Congress.)
[...]
2016
Mid-January — Cohen, chief counsel for the Trump Organization, writes an email to Dmitry Peskov, the press secretary to Russian President Vladimir Putin, seeking the Russian government’s help “regarding the development of a Trump Tower-Moscow project in Moscow City.” (Cohen would later disclose his email to Peskov in a statement to congressional investigators on Aug. 28, 2017, as reported by the Washington Post.)
There’s a bit more about the Trump-Putin deal here:
and here:
How will Trump make this Elephant in the Room ...”disappear”?
A $50 Million Real Estate Gift for Vlad ???
Really?
How stupid is he? Rhetorically asked. We need to keep asking this.
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