Why Robert Mueller Has Trump SoHo in His Sights
Trump SoHo, the gleaming 46-story condominium and hotel that bears the president’s name in Lower Manhattan, was a troubled project even before it broke ground. It was initially marketed to wealthy foreigners enthralled by the Trump brand and the building’s opulent hotel-style amenities, but it never attracted nearly as many buyers as its developers had anticipated. Then, a few years before it was set to open, in 2010, an unusual complication came out of the blue. On December 17, 2007, veteran New York Times reporter Charles Bagli revealed that Felix Sater, managing director of the Bayrock Group, one of the building’s developers, had a hidden sordid past.
In 1991, Sater, then a stockbroker, got into a bloody bar fight with a commodities broker, stabbing him in the face with a broken margarita glass. The resultant wounds caused nerve damage and required 110 stitches. Then, in 1998, Sater pleaded guilty to participating in a “pump and dump” stock fraud. The maneuver, which was tied to the Mafia, involved laundering money, and eventually defrauded investors of $40 million. This checkered history appeared to catch his latest partner by surprise. “We never knew that,” Bagli quoted Donald Trump as saying about Sater’s criminal past. “We do as much of a background check as we can on the principals. I didn’t really know him very well.”
Since Sater’s run-ins with the law had not been previously disclosed to its investors, Bayrock was suddenly in crisis. Given that the company had raised money without revealing Sater’s convictions, could Bayrock be vulnerable to charges of bank fraud? Would its backers pull out? Were Bayrock’s principals and its partners—including Trump—in legal jeopardy? One problem, however, had to be dealt with immediately. Trump and his family had plenty to be unhappy about with Bayrock—budgetary overruns, the article in the Times, a construction disaster at the sales office, vicious internal politics, and more—and, as a result, they had requested a meeting with the firm’s principals. The gravity of the situation was underscored by the fact that all of the Trumps—Donald Sr., Ivanka, Eric, and Donald Jr.—were to attend.
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/08/why-robert-mueller-has-trump-soho-in-his-sights
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