Trump Business Associate Suggested Striking Deal With Putin Would Get Trump Elected

President Donald Trump shakes hands with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the G20 Summit, Friday, July 7, 2017, in Hamburg. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

I brought you the WaPo story earlier today, in regards to Trump’s company attempting to strike a deal with Moscow for building a new Trump Tower, at the same time Trump was a candidate for the presidency.

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More details from that particular story have been reported by the New York Times.

Felix Sater, the former business associate of Donald Trump’s, emailed Trump’s attorney, Michael Cohen, to discuss how partnering with Russian President Vladimir Putin would help Trump’s candidacy.

“I will get Putin on this program and we will get Donald elected,” Sater wrote on Nov. 3, 2015, almost exactly a year before Election Day. “Our boy can become president of the USA and we can engineer it. I will get all of Putins team to buy in on this, I will manage this process.”

There is no evidence in the emails that Sater, a Russian immigrant who was then acting as a broker for the Trump Organization, delivered on his promises, according to the Times. The plan for the Trump Tower in Moscow never materialized, and negotiations ended before Trump’s business ties to Russia had become a major campaign issue.

Cohen wrote off Sater’s talk as just that – talk, meant to sway him in the direction of the original plans. He (Cohen) ultimately decided not to follow up or go to Moscow.

Sater also claimed to have helped organize a 2006 trip to Moscow for Trump’s daughter, Ivanka Trump, and her husband, Jared Kushner.

“I arranged for Ivanka to sit in Putin’s private chair at his desk and office in the Kremlin,” Sater wrote.

Ivanka Trump told the Times in a statement that she took “a brief tour of Red Square and the Kremlin but I have never met President Vladimir Putin.” Alan Garten, the general counsel of the Trump Organization, said that Sater only happened to be in Moscow at the same time as Trump and Kushner.

“There was no accompanying them to Moscow,” Garten said.

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Unless he’s stalking them, that seems kind of unlikely.

Trump has repeatedly denied knowing Sater, even though Sater was allowed to carry around business cards that had him listed as a “senior advisor” to Trump.

After Sater made an August 2016 visit to Trump Tower, Garten told Politico that Sater was not advising the Trump Organization and that the Trump Organization was not seeking business in Russia.

Of course they weren’t. Not by August 2016, at least.

 

 

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