Felix Sater Is the Third Potential Channel of Trump Collusion With Russia - By Jonathan Chait
There are three known channels for potential collaboration between the Trump campaign and the Russian influence operation on its behalf. The first, and best-known, is a meeting in Trump Tower between Russian agents and Donald Trump Jr., Paul Manafort, and Jared Kushner. A second channel was an attempt by Republican operative Peter W. Smith to obtain Hillary Clinton’s emails through Russian hackers. (Robert Mueller is investigating Michael Flynn’s connection to this operation, The Wall Street Journal reported a few days ago.)
Now the New York Times reveals a third potential channel: Trump associate Felix Sater, who described his ambitions in emails to his friend (and Trump’s lawyer) Michael Cohen, in emails: “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.”
We don’t yet know for certain what level of cooperation any of these three channels produced. Sater’s channel is particularly intriguing. Whatever Sater did began much earlier than any other known case of collaboration — he emailed Cohen about the scheme in November 2015, seven months before the Trump Tower meeting. Sater has deep financial connections to Trump and to Russia. Andrew Rice’s profile is a good place to start understanding Sater — a Russian-American gangster, a friend of Cohen since childhood, and an important Trump business partner who worked out of Trump Tower.
In an interview with Rice, Sater denied any collusion between Trump and Russia: “But was it really a conspiracy between Putin and Donald to get him elected? A little bit of a stretch.” He also refused to answer when asked the last time he had spoken with Trump.
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