In February 2017, The New York Times — within a story about Donald Trump’s staff pitching a plan for Ukrainian-Russian “peace” and the lifting of sanctions on Moscow — referred to one of the actors, “Felix H. Sater, a business associate who helped Mr. Trump scout deals in Russia”.
During his campaign, Trump denied knowing Sater, even though he had appointed the Russian-born businessman — who served prison time for assault and later was convicted of stock fraud — as an advisor. When an Associated Press reporter asked about the appointment in December 2015, Trump said, “Felix Sater, boy, I have to even think about it. I’m not that familiar with him.”
It was the latest in a series of denials by Trump, who allowed Sater in 2010 to briefly work out of Trump Organization office space and use a business card that identified him as a “senior advisor to Donald Trump”. Asked about Sater in a 2013 court deposition, Trump said: “If he were sitting in the room right now, I really wouldn’t know what he looked like,” asserting that he had spoken with Sater “not many” times.
But Sater tells a far different story. This summer he confirmed to Sam Thielman of Talking Points Memo that, while Donald Trump was launching his run for President, his Trump Organization was working with Sater on a deal for a Trump Tower in Moscow.
My last Moscow deal [for the Trump Organization] was in October of 2015. It didn’t go through because obviously he became President.
Once the campaign was really going-going, it was obvious there were going to be no deals internationally. We were still working on it, doing something with it, November-December.
Years earlier, Trump himself tried to establish a Trump Tower deal through Aras Agalarov, an Azerbaijani-Russian billionaire developer who helped Trump bring Miss Universe 2013 to Moscow — and who was behind the June 2016 meeting in Trump Tower between Kremlin-linked envoys and Donald Trump Jr.; Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner; and Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort.
Sater said he never worked with the Agalarovs but would not reveal his Russian associates: “A couple of people I’d like to continue working with, and that’s why I don’t want their names in the newspaper.”
A Link to Later Trump-Russia Contacts?
As part of the 2015 effort, Sater urged Trump to come to Moscow to push the proposal and suggested that he could get Vladimir Putin to say “great things” about Trump.
Michael Cohen, the Trump Organization Executive Vice President and Trump’s personal lawyer, worked with Sater on the deal. He and Sater, an emigrant to New York City when he was 6, knew each other from childhood in the Russia/Ukrainian emigre world of Brighton Beach and surrounding areas.
Sater wrote Cohen, “something to the effect of ‘Can you believe two guys from Brooklyn are going to elect a President?’”, said one person briefed on the e-mail exchange.
Trump never went to Moscow. Investors and the Trump Organization signed a letter of intent, they lacked the land and permits to proceed and the project was abandoned at the end of January 2016.
But Sater and Cohen remained in contact. Both would be involved in the Russia-Ukraine. “peace plan” of February 2017, presented by a Ukrainian MP who handed over documents then given by Cohen to then-National Security Advisor Michael Flynn.
Now those contacts are coming to light not only because Sater is willing to reveal them, but through Trump Organization documents subpoenaed by Special Counsel Robert Mueller for the Trump-Russia investigation.
