New Evidence of the Trump-Putin-Mob Connections

The New York Times reports that Trump aides had a scheme to secure peace in Ukraine that would have allowed Putin to keep Crimea. Even better,

… the proposal, a peace plan for Ukraine and Russia, remains, along with those pushing it: Michael D. Cohen, the president’s personal lawyer, who delivered the document; Felix H. Sater, a business associate who helped Mr. Trump scout deals in Russia; and a Ukrainian lawmaker trying to rise in a political opposition movement shaped in part by Mr. Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort.

In case you haven’t heard of Felix Sater

The Russian-born Sater served a year in prison for stabbing a man in the face with a margarita glass during a bar fight, pleaded guilty to racketeering as part of a mafia-driven “pump-and-dump” stock fraud and then escaped jail time by becoming a highly valued government informant.

He was also an important figure at Bayrock, a development company and key Trump real estate partner during the 2000s, notably with the Trump SoHo hotel-condominium in New York City, and has said under oath that he represented Trump in Russia and subsequently billed himself as a senior Trump advisor, with an office in Trump Tower.

Sater is a mob-connected hustler, this article from Forbes says. On several occasions Trump has either denied knowing Sater or says he barely knows him, but in fact they’ve done a lot of business together, much of it concerning Russia.

Josh Marshall explains,

First, let’s review a bit about Felix Sater. Sater was born in the Soviet Union in 1966 and emigrated to the US with his parents at the age of 8. He is an American citizen. He dropped out of college and began working as a stock broker. But in his late 20s he got into bar fight where he stabbed a fellow broker in the face with a shattered glass. He did time in prison for this attack. After he got out he got involved in a major securities fraud scheme (basically a ‘pump and dump’ operation) tied to the Genovese and Colombo crime families. He got caught. And that’s where things get interesting.

After Sater got busted, somehow he managed to offer his services to the FBI and supposedly the CIA to work on their behalf purchasing stinger missiles and other weapons on the then wild and free-wheeling Russian black market. Whatever Sater was doing for the CIA in the black market arms smuggling world seems to have become much more important after 9/11 – thus Sater’s high value to the US government.

I know that sounds all but incredible. The details of Sater’s alleged work for the CIA are contained in this September 2012 article in The Miami Herald. A good bit of the story emerges from an account by Sater’s accomplice, Salvatore Lauria. Lauria was Sater’s accomplice in the pump and dump scheme and was also there the night he stabbed the guy in the face at the bar. And yes, we’ll hear more from him in a moment. Because Lauria was also involved with Sater and Trump in the Trump SoHo building project.

The Miami Heraldarticle I’m referring to is no longer online. I’ve linked to a copy of it on a Yahoo groups page. But I’ve read it in the Nexis news database; it’s legit. There’s more and overlapping detail on both the securities fraud case and the alleged work for the CIA in Central Asia in this December 2007 piece in The New York Times.

Back to the New York Times

A week before Michael T. Flynn resigned as national security adviser, a sealed proposal was hand-delivered to his office, outlining a way for President Trump to lift sanctions against Russia. …

…The amateur diplomats say their goal is simply to help settle a grueling, three-year conflict that has cost 10,000 lives. “Who doesn’t want to help bring about peace?” Mr. Cohen asked.

But the proposal contains more than just a peace plan. Andrii V. Artemenko, the Ukrainian lawmaker, who sees himself as a Trump-style leader of a future Ukraine, claims to have evidence — “names of companies, wire transfers” — showing corruption by the Ukrainian president, Petro O. Poroshenko, that could help oust him. And Mr. Artemenko said he had received encouragement for his plans from top aides to Mr. Putin.

The devil would be in the details … Oh, and did I mention that Cohen is under FBI investigation for his ties to Russia? Read the rest of the NY Times article for details.

Oh, and Ukraine is kind of pissed off about all this.

Back to Josh Marshall.

Having spent some time studying the matter, the biggest red flags about Donald Trump’s ties to Russia and businessmen around Vladimir Putin have always been tied to the Trump SoHo building project in Lower Manhattan, from the first decade of this century. I base my knowledge of this on this rather cursory but still quite good April 2016 article from the Times and my own limited snooping around the Outer Boroughs Russian and Ukrainian emigre press. (I summarized the most salient details of the earlier Times article in Item #3 of this post.) This was a key project, perhaps the key project in the post-bankruptcy era in which Trump appeared heavily reliant on Russian funds to finance his projects. Sater was at the center of that project. The details only came to light after the project got bogged down in a complicated series of lawsuits.

After the lawyers got involved, Trump said he barely knew who Sater was. But there is voluminous evidence that Sater, a Russian emigrant, was key to channeling Russian capital to Trump for years. Sater is also a multiple felon and at least a one-time FBI informant. Bayrock Capital, where he worked was located in Trump Tower and he himself worked as a special advisor to Trump. Again, read the Times article to get a flavor of his ties to Trump, the Trump SoHo project and Russia. For my money there’s no better place to start to understand the Trump/Russia issue.

On its own, Trump’s relationship with Sater might be written off (albeit not terribly plausibly) as simply a sleazy relationship Trump entered into to get access to capital he needed to finance his projects. Whatever shadowy ties Sater might have and whatever his criminal background, Trump has long since washed his hands of him. (Again, we’re talking about most generous reads here.)

But now we learn that Sater is still very much in the Trump orbit and acting as a go-between linking Trump and a pro-Putin Ukrainian parliamentarian pitching ‘peace plans’ for settling the dispute between Russia and Ukraine. (Artemenko is part of the political faction which Manafort helped build up in the aftermath of the ouster of his Ukrainian benefactor, deposed President Viktor Yanukovych.) Indeed, far, far more important, Cohen – who is very close to Trump and known for dealing with delicate matters – is in contact with Sater and hand delivering political and policy plans from him to the President.

Were Cohen not involved, one might speculate that Sater is just up to yet another hustle, looking to parlay his one-time association with Trump into influence with the new President. Cohen hand delivering his messages to the President changes the picture considerably. How or why Cohen would do this, if for no other reason than the current massive scrutiny of Trump’s ties to Russia and Sater’s scandals, almost defies belief. But here we are.

The Times reported that the plans actually were hand delivered to Michael Flynn, and it’s not clear if he passed them on. But it’s interesting that Michael Flynn’s depature signalled a change in policy in Russia. Russian media have cooled on Trump, on orders from Putin himself, this report says. Russia may have been trying to use Flynn do an end-run around the State Department and build backchannels to President Trump.

But Trump keeps the State Department out of his loop anyway, so I don’t know why they bothered. Putin could probably just call Trump on his private cell phone and dictate what he wants.

11 thoughts on “New Evidence of the Trump-Putin-Mob Connections

  1. It looks like Trump screwed the pooch when he told Flynn to contact the Russian ambassador. Even if Trump was too stupid to realize the conversation would be monitored by US services, Flynn knew. But Trump said “Intel works for me – I can cover for you.” He did for 18 days after he was told that Flynn’s call was illegal and the US Intel services leaked the details and Trump threw Flynn under the bus. But that creates an environment where Trump can’t make a deal now. Probably the Russian spy ship off the East coast was a ‘provocation’ which Trump was to heroically respond to, which would lead to the ‘discovery’ that we can’t support Ukraine and a deal with Putin where they give up nothing but we remove sanctions. The inside details will never be known but Trump is such an idiot that Putin can’t pull off the swindle that was set up – not for months probably. I think I know the Russian curse words being shouted in the Kremlin – and they are attached to Trump’s name.

  2. Russia’s problem now is Putin can’t simply call Trump since all such calls are transcribed and monitored.

    That’s why he has to get Trump to Iceland. They will have a closed door meeting, talking about the weather, and Putin will pass a note to Trump that will be immediately burned after being read.

    The biggest risk though is that Trump is so stupid and so incompetent he’ll spoil the game before it hatches. That’s why Flynn was necessary, to whisper in the President’s ear and coach him carefully everyday with monitored rehearsals.

  3. As a first-generation Russian/Ukrainian American – one who despises Putin – I can’t tell you how much all of the revelations about t-RUMP’s ties to Russia and Putin, disgust me.

    If t-RUMP is THAT naive, then he has no business staying POTUS.
    He needs to have the opportunity to accept retirement – and if not, then he should be impeached.
    And if he’s somehow actually involved, then he has no business NOT being impeached, and then charged with being a traitor who committed treason!

    Unfortunately, the Republicans have long held loyalty to their party more than to their country, so, they won’t impeach until one of two things happen:
    1. Things get so absurdly bad, that they have no choice.
    2. Their preferred choice:
    AFTER they pass tax-cuts for the richest of the rich, and destroy our countries already badly damaged safety-net programs, t-RUMPLE-Thin-Skin no longer serves a useful purpose, and they can impeach him AND get the guy they all really want more – Mike “The Dense” Pence!

    As POTUS, t-RUMPLE-Thin-Skin poses a danger that no POTUS ever has before. And not just because of his obvious incompetence in his new position, but as a potentially active conspirator in Putin’s attempt to subvert America, and representative democratic governments all around the wold.

    t-RUMP not only needs to go NOW!!! – but he needs to become openly reviled in public, and have his name put up there with Benedict Arnold and Aaron Burr.

    He and his name already richly deserve becoming national pariah’s.
    And the longer he stays, the more damage he can accomplish.

    “LOCK HIM UP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

  4. OT, Brilliant essay: 4chan: The Skeleton Key to the Rise of Trump. Trump’s base is far more than middle aged factory workers down on their luck in the midwest. As part of this: Donald Trump, Pepe the Frog, and white supremacists: an explainer. I’ve been seeing this frog in Trump imagery, and my eyes have been passing over it, like noise in the picture, because I had nothing to explain it.

    The first essay is a long read, and an enormous education into the millennial world that may as well be galaxies away from anybody older than 45.

  5. Slightly OT but I just thought of it and wanted to share:

    The Word of the Week is:

    Lügenführer

    = “Lying Leader”

    It takes the feminine article: “Die” Lügenführer. This is for the Spicer Effect.

  6. Ach, du leiber Gott! I am informed, alas, that by German grammar, it should be “der” Lügenführer; and I respect German grammar more than der Lügenführer himself. It’s still a good word; have fun using it.

  7. Speaking of Trump in German, how about using the word scheisskopf for a fitting descriptor? It’s not exactly as complete a descriptor as him being called the “big bloated bag of shit” that he is in English, but it’s close enough to get the point across.

  8. Is Sater still working for FBI? Setting up Cohen( I never went to Prague), setting up Flynn to be fired( not what was public but what would be public)?
    Firtash is being taken to Spain. Will he ever have to testify about Manafort?
    And precisely who and why was the RNC platform rewritten for last summer if there were ‘no contacts’?

  9. If nothing else Der Lügenführer  has given us an interest in cultural anthropology of the United States.  Credit Moonbat for the 4Chan link, a window to a marginalized multitude who otherwise would remain even more anonymous.  West Virginia black lung victims and aspiring young unemployed coal miners get camera time and a national stage.  The constant parade of trust fund recipients of dubious taste and talent with political aspirations has become daily fare.  The drip torture of evidence of the hate culture’s work e.g. overturned headstones in Jewish cemeteries, is ongoing and saps at creative energies.  Oh yes, do not omit the epidemic of prescription opioid and the resulting illegal opioid culture and mounting it’s ramifications. 

    All will be needed in the writing of the Rise and Fall of the American Empire.  Spice that up with a little political intrigue and generations to come can wallow in a grand discussion of what went wrong.  Was it the lack of an exportable and enviable culture?  Was it simply a case of the fish rotting from the head first?  Is Der Lügenführer just the tip of a odiferous iceberg of a culture that really needs to get a life?  A real life?  Freedom is a good thing, but perhaps a bit of guidance as to it’s proper application might be all that is required.  Oh the curse of living in interesting times.  It is worse than the  curses of the Bambino and the Billy goat combined. 

  10. Whoever writes The Rise and Fall of the American Empire should make sure that the chapter that includes Trump’s rise to power is titled: The Abandonment of Hope — Final Solution.

  11. OT, but…I just ran across this article and was so happy to see that someone else gets what I’ve been trying to convey..and to top it all off, The guy turns out to be a professor of journalism…It’s like vindication and validation all rolled into one. It seems strange to be able to reduce a complex entity like a human being down to such a simple yet profound statement that fulfils all the criteria that describes exactly what Donald trump is. But I did it!…. A blivot

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-is-300-pounds-of-manure-in-a-260-pound_us_58aaf140e4b026a89a7a2dfa

Comments are closed.