President Trump’s former business associate Felix Sater sought the help of a former Russian spy to finance a Trump Tower in Moscow during the 2016 campaign. The man who served to broker the deal, without the involvement of President Trump, was Michael Cohen, his personal attorney.
It is important to note that none of the investigations into Michael Cohen are Russia related. The FBI is looking at bank fraud and campaign finance violations tied to payments to Stormy Daniel. If the FBI finds anything else during the investigations, it can be used.
The Moscow Deal
The associate, Felix Sater actually contacted a Russian spy to help with the financing in 2015. To be fair, Buzzfeed noted it’s common for businessmen to work with spies to get things accomplished in Russia.
This comes from a BuzzFeed article. They said the spy mentioned two Russia state banks he could hit up for loans. How far the negotiations went is unclear.
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Sater has been interviewed extensively by the Mueller team and appears to be very cooperative.
The former agent [Dmitry Peskov] also reportedly helped secure invitations for Sater and Trump’s personal attorney Michael Cohen to attend the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum in June 2016. The purpose of going to the conference was to move the project forward.
The two men exchanged a series of emails in November 2015 in which they geared up to celebrate the Moscow deal, as well as Trump’s election victory, which would come a year later. In the emails, which were obtained by The New York Times, Sater bragged about his relationship with Putin and told Cohen that he would “get all of Putins team to buy in” on the Trump Tower Moscow deal.
“Our boy can become president of the USA and we can engineer it,” Sater wrote, according to The Times. “I will get Putin on this program and we will get Donald elected.”
Cohen said it was “just another business deal…another licensing deal”.
“Once the campaign was really going-going, it was obvious there were going to be no deals internationally,” Sater said. “We were still working on it, doing something with it, November-December.”
Sater said it didn’t go through because Trump could obviously become president. Sater only worked with Michael Cohen on this, not Trump.
Ukraine
Another area that Mueller’s team has explored is a Russia-friendly peace proposal for Ukraine that was delivered to Cohen by a Ukrainian lawmaker one week after Trump took office, the people said.
It was a back-channel to Russia as the media has reported for months.
Sater has worked with the FBI for years, providing intelligence from this agent.
Through Sater, the agent passed along information to the U.S. government, including details about Russian military technology, Osama bin Laden’s satellite phone numbers, the locations of al Qaeda training camps and photos of a North Korean official buying nuclear materials, according to BuzzFeed.
Shady Friends
Felix Sater and Michael Cohen have been friends since childhood and they both seem a bit shady.
Michael Cohen also paid off Stormy Daniels and possibly the Playboy Playmate. He’s one shady guy.
There are some very big international implications in this case. Russia and Ukraine keep coming up.
Doing business in Communist countries or oligarchies tends to corrupt Americans more than the other way around.
