The most glaring omission concerns Felix Sater. [2][9][29] In 1998, Sater was convicted of fraud in connection to a $40 million penny stock pump and dump scheme conducted by the Russian Mafia[9][10] involving his company White Rock Partners. magazine_button_url_258356 = 'https://subscriptions.thenation.com/Nation_index?pk=G2A1CLT'; Saters links to Trump in recent years are obscure. Felix Sater: Lawsuit Reveals Trump's Ties to Him | DCReport.org According to a recent Guardian profile, Saters relationship with Cohenand to organized crimegoes way back: Saters links to Trumps circle can be traced back to not long after he came to the US as a child. He attended Pace University and later dropped out to work on Wall Street. } Portions of the information related to Italian and Russian mob operations and placed the safety of Mr. Ray and his family at risk.. He is perhaps most infamous for a 1991 bar fight gone . I walked in his door and told him, Im gonna be the biggest developer in New York, and you want to be my partner., How did I get to Donald? var inline_cta_2_url_258356 = ''; inline_cta_font_color_258356 = '#000000'; The building is a $450 million, 46-story, 391-unit hotel condominium located at 246 Spring Street in SoHo, New York City. . take a short look. I will get Putin on this program and we will get Donald elected . (Saters first office suite, with his criminal enterprise called State Street Capital, had its offices in a Trump-owned building, 40 Wall Street, in the mid-1990s. var inline_cta_bg_color_258356 = ''; To submit a correction for our consideration, click here. } Overseeing the Sater case back then was none other than Loretta Lynch, then US Attorney for the Eastern District of New York (Brooklyn). Bob DreyfussBobDreyfuss, a Nation contributing editor, is an independent investigative journalist who specializes in politics and national security. Also, FBI reported his conviction of extorting money from local restaurants, grocery stores, and medical clinic. After being videotaped attacking Ray in a hotel in on Sept. 17, 2015, DiTommaso was charged with assault but pleaded down to disorderly conduct. According to the reports from CNN, Sater was also asked to visit his kids to Russia by the current president Trump. Sater said he most clearly remembers the beginning of his relationship with Cohen from the time the former Trump Organization attorney began dating his now-wife, whom Sater describes as a girl . So Larry and Poppy would both tell stories about how they would go out together, go grab a drink, and then somebody would start a fight, and they would both end up fighting in a bar brawl on way more than one occasion, Rosario told a jury, explaining why she was scared to leave their orbit. } Sater, who served a year in jail in the 1990s for stabbing a man in the face, later served as an FBI informant after pleading guilty to being involved in a $40-million stock-fraud scheme orchestrated by the Russian Mafia; this conviction was sealed. In July, Mueller ordered a pre-dawn raid at Manaforts Virginia home seeking evidence in the case, amid speculation that Manafort might flip and turn against Trump.). Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Laura Drager made the interim award to his ex Viktoria Sater who filed for divorce in March after reviewing his 2018 tax returns. Inside controversial ex-Trump associate Felix Sater's life in espionage What the Mueller Report Didn't Say on Trump Tower in Moscow An unindicted co-conspirator in that indictment was Felix Sater, a former business associate of Donald Trump, who helped broker the never-realized plan to build a Trump Tower Moscow. Currently, he is free of rumors and controversies. In language that Cohen himself described to the Times as colorful, Sater seemed nearly beside himself as he reported on his work in Moscow on behalf of Trump: Unfortunately for Bayrock, during a 2008 investigation into Sater, a worrying and chequered past emerged that led to his suspension and dismissal. [11], During Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, Sater worked with Michael Cohen, former attorney for The Trump Organization, to broker a deal to build a Trump Tower Moscow, asserting to Cohen that he could boost Trump's election prospects through his Russian contacts. Drager acknowledged the 53-year-old may have some financial troubles due to the fact that he was involved in an investigation. Cohen and Felix Sater have known each other for nearly 30 years. [52] In 2010, Sater was provided business cards describing himself as "Senior Advisor to Donald Trump" with an email address at TrumpOrg.com. In it, Sater and Cohen worked with Andrii Artemenko, a Ukrainian opposition politician who himself had a questionable past, having spent time in prison in Ukraine for an embezzlement scheme, according to the New York Times story last February that first broke the news of his collaboration with Sater and Cohen (the charges against Artemenko were eventually dropped). Give the cow a break, and let's ask Coke about their plans with their virtue signaling. if( inline_cta_font_color_258356 !='' ){ Felix Henry Sater (born Felix Mikhailovich Sheferovsky; 1 2 ru: ; id: "beb5f82f-dce3-49e6-a836-cf24eb78a6f6", var inline_cta_url_258356 = ''; if( inline_cta_2_button_text_258356 !='' ){ He boasted to Cohen about his connections to Vladimir Putin, saying in an email to Cohen on November 13, 2015, "Buddy our boy can become president of the USA and we can engineer it. He has a sister, Regina. cta_2_check_258356 = true; Prosecutors say that Ray subjected Drury to a long night of torture, allegedly stripping her naked, handcuffing her to a chair, suffocating her with a plastic bag, and choking her with a leash. Update: Sater told Talking Points Memo he knew Cohen through Cohen's wife, Laura . Indeed, Sater and the Trump clan grew so close that in February 2006, at the personal request of Donald Trump, the mobster joined his children Ivanka, Donald Jr., and his son's wife Vanessa in . Its no wonder that Trump, especially now that hes under investigation over his ties to Russia and its meddling in the 2016 election, would respond to questions about Sater by saying: Whos he? But on August 28, Sater made the front pages of the Times and The Washington Post, thanks to leaked copies of e-mails that he sent in late 2015 and early 2016 to Cohen, concerning Saters efforts to work with a group of Russian investors to set up a flagship Trump property in the Russian capital. Well, Felix also finished a project for The Trump Organization of a building construction with a full cost of around $450 Million in a 46-story and 391-unit hotel condominium located at the Spring Street in SoHo. freestar.config.enabled_slots.push({ An FBI forensic accountant tracked the byzantine ways money trickled in from her clients to Ray, largely through GoDaddy, the witness said. var inline_cta_2_button_text_258356 = ''; However, he has not yet disclosed his actual salary to the media. He famously plotted with Michael Cohen to broker a deal to build Trump Tower Moscow during the 2016 presidential campaign. } Former Mafia-linked figure describes association with Trump BLOG. Who Is Felix Sater? | Judicial Watch Trump associate Felix Sater proved invaluable FBI source, records show Trump signed a nonbinding "letter of intent" dated October 13, 2015, to proceed with the project. Well, Sater was involved in the Russian Mafia at the starting of his career. slotId: "thenation_right_rail_258356", Home. He has been an advisor to corporations such as The Trump Organization,[8] and the Mirax Group. pic.twitter.com/rzpbjY7LVx. jQuery("#inline_cta_btn_258356").html(inline_cta_button_text_258356); [15][16], Judge I. Leo Glasser confirmed that Sater helped the U.S. government track down Osama bin Laden as he provided the telephone number of Osama bin Laden. And The New York Times reported him as saying, If he were sitting in the room right now, I really wouldnt know what he looked like. As late as 2015, when asked about Sater, Trump hemmed and hawed. 2023 NYP Holdings, Inc. All Rights Reserved, Dear Abby: My boyfriend's father is making me miserable, Ex-New York Observer editor Ken Kursonadmits to harassing ex-wife, Billionaire bilked ex-wife out of billions in divorce: suit, Wall Streeter claims dentist ex humiliated him with emailed lies. Felixs April credit card statement showed that hed made a $50,000 payment for the prior month and had spent $25,000 in the current statement, including at restaurants and a lot of money on Uber rides, Drager said. Trump/Russia: Follow the Money - ABC News [30], In 2008, Sater joined the board of the Russian real estate company Mirax Group, owned by Sergei Polonsky. The top charge of Rays 17-count indictment itself evokes images of organized crime: racketeering, a statute enacted by Congress in an effort to clamp down on the mafia. Decades-old court records obtained by Law&Crime lay bare some of these connections. Ray was once the best man at Keriks wedding, but that relationship crumbled after Ray became his informant in a federal case that landed Kerik eight felony convictions. Felix Sater. } var magazine_button_url_258356 = ''; Multiple witnesses have testified that Ray and his daughter Talia compulsively talked about how they believed Kerik trying to exact elaborate payback for his cooperation. In his interview with New York magazine, he hinted ominously about the near future. But in an interview with HuffPost, Cohen said he never delivered the envelope. + qs; Name already in use - github.com Felix Sater: the enigmatic businessman at the heart of the Trump-Russia inquiry The Moscow-born former Trump associate's name emerged in leaked emails - and he tells the Guardian to expect. jQuery("#inline_cta_btn_258356 a").attr("href",inline_cta_url_258356); According to the Times, the Artemenko plandelivered to Sater and Cohen, and then to Michael Flynn, the short-lived White House national security adviser who was forced to resign in Februaryinvolved using unflattering or compromising information (kompromat) to help oust Poroshenko and then winning the support of a new Ukrainian government for a 50- to 100-year lease of Crimea to Russiawhich in 2014 occupied and annexed Crimea, which for many decades had been part of Ukraine. 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