Donald Trump, Felix Sater and the Mob: Lawyers Push to Unseal Court Documents They Say Could Show

[MelissaB]

Source: Newsweek

Donald Trump, Felix Sater and the Mob: Lawyers Push to Unseal Court Documents They Say Could Show Fraud By President

Lawyers seeking to unseal documents related to the criminal past of a former business partner of President Donald Trump said in federal court on Monday that the documents may contain evidence that Trump committed fraud.

The sealed documents are from a federal case against Felix Sater, who Trump reportedly tapped as a senior advisor for his real-estate business in the 2000s even after Sater’s earlier role in a Mafia-linked stock scheme became public.

“A fellow named Donald Trump is now president and he had a business associate named [Sater.] The public needs to know the length of their relationship and the nature of the relationship and what kind of person [Sater] is,” attorney Richard Lerner said in Brooklyn federal court Monday afternoon. “By allowing this regime of secrecy to continue, it’s facilitating what may have been fraud by President Trump.”

It was unclear from the court proceeding what acts by Trump could possibly be construed as criminal. But after court ended, Lerner told Newsweek that if Trump knowingly did real estate with a convicted felon, that could constitute financial fraud.

Read more: http://www.newsweek.com/trump-sater-mafia-mob-bayrock-russia-court-brooklyn-fraud-behar-627408

[byronius]

1. Big guns coming out. Big.

[cstanleytech]

2. Keyword is "knowingly" and you can bet that Trumps lawyers will say he didnt know. nt

[Skittles]

3. HIS ENTIRE CAREER HAS BEEN BASED ON FRAUD

I BET THAT TREASONOUS BASTARD IS REGRETTING EVER BEING INSTALLED INTO THE WHITE HOUSE

[Leghorn21]

4. Oh my - Newsweek, no less! - So where the hell IS Felix these days? Ah, well, things are

happenin, and thanks for posting, MelB!!

[vkkv]

5. What is the "did" in "knowingly did real estate" ??

Did...


Not defending the Orange Sphincter in any way!

But..

[DeminPennswoods]

6. TPM has more info on Sater

Josh Marshall has written several edblog posts about Trump and Sater, esp that Sater was also an FBI informant for at least part of the time he worked with Trump.

Link: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/what-the-cia-and-fbi-knew-about-trump-before-2016

[Bernardo de La Paz]

7. Thx. But Josh Saul & his editors need to learn how to write higher quality English

"knowingly did real estate with" is an understood variation of popular vernacular, but the kind of higher quality English we expect from higher quality magazines like Newsweek would be "knowingly made real estate deals with".

[Bernardo de La Paz]

8. DU still hasn't fixed inline bracketing, so the excerpt just drops Saters name in a couple of places

"associate named [Sater.] The public" and "what kind of person [Sater] is"

becomes

"associate named The public" and "what kind of person is"

(Curiously the writer put the period inside the bracket, which is wrong in the digital age where bracketing has hierarchical meaning. I presume the writer was following traditional English that put periods inside quotation marks even at the end of sentences.)