The Mueller Report is damning of the FBI and reveals circumstantial evidence that the FBI was engaged actively as early as September 2015 in trying to entrap Donald Trump in a web of Russian conspiracy. Let's go to the report and you can read the evidence yourself.
In the late summer of 2015, the Trump Organization received a new inquiry about pursuing a Trump Tower project in Moscow. In approximately September 2015, Felix Sater, a New York based real estate advisor, contacted Michael Cohen, then-executive vice president of the Trump Organization and special counsel to Donald J. Trump. Sater had previously worked with the Trump Organization and advised it on a number of domestic and international projects. Sater had explored the possibility of a Trump Tower project in Moscow while working with the Trump Organization and therefore knew of the organization 's general interest in completing a deal there. Sater had also served as an informal agent of the Trump Organization in Moscow previously and had accompanied Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump Jr. to Moscow in the mid-2000s.
Sater contacted Cohen on behalf of I.C. Expert Investment Company (I.C. Expert), a Russian real-estate development corporation controlled by Andrei Vladimirovich Rozov. Sater had known Rozov since approximately 2007 and, in 2014, had served as an agent on behalf of Rozov during Rozov's purchase of a building in New York City. Sater later contacted Rozov and proposed that I.C. Expert pursue a Trump Tower Moscow project in which I.C. Expert would license the name and brand from the Trump Organization but construct the building on its own. Sater worked on the deal with Rozov and another employee of I.C. Expert.
Cohen was the only Trump Organization representative to negotiate directly with I.C. Expert or its agents.
Please pay attention. It was not Trump that directed Felix Sater to go get a deal in Russia. IT WAS SATER BRINGING THE DEAL (or trying to) to Donald Trump. A key fact not included in this paragraph was the fact--yes, established fact--that Sater was a fully signed up FBI informant. He helped the FBI make multiple cases against the Russian mob and Russian spies. Please go back and re-read the pieces I wrote on Sater:
Felix Sater--The Rosetta Stone for the FBI/CIA Conspiracy Against Trump?
Felix Sater and the Steele Dossier
My eyes bugged out with the next revelation from Mueller. Here is what Sater says to Michael Cohen, his old childhood buddy:
On November 3,2015, the day after the Trump Organization transmitted the LOI (i.e., Letter Of Intent), Sater emailed Cohen suggesting that the Trump Moscow project could be used to increase candidate Trump's chances at being elected, writing:
Buddy 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 .... Michael, Putin gets on stage with Donald for a ribbon cutting for Trump Moscow, and Donald owns the republican nomination. And possibly beats Hillary and our boy is in . ... We will manage this process better than anyone. You and I will get Donald and Vladimir on a stage together very shortly. That the game changer.
One of the many critical questions that need to be asked is who at the FBI directed Felix Sater to try to bait the Trump team with the Putin/Moscow opportunity. Felix Sater, given his long track record with the FBI, did not come up with this idea on his own. He was put into play as part of a fishing expedition to hook Trump into a Russian collusion narrative. Fortunately for Trump, he did not take the bait.
This certainly appears to be part of a broader, orchestrated effort to ensnare Trump. As I noted with respect to the Steele Dossier, the theme of Russian Real Estate deals appeared early on:
The Kremlin's cultivation operation on TRUMP also had comprised offering him various lucrative real estate development business deals in Russia, especially in relation to the ongoing 2018 World Cup soccer tournament. However, so far, for reasons unknown, TRUMP had not taken up any of these.
Thanks to Mueller, we now know that the cultivation operation did not originate in Moscow nor the Kremlin. It came via Felix Sater who was working for the FBI. Do you think that is a mere coincidence?
Since I don't plan to read the Mueller report, I would like to ask a question of those SST correspondents who have read the report? What evidence was provided that the Russians hacked the DNC servers and provided the contents to Wikileaks?
If the Russian interference in the election was of the magnitude asserted to change the election, then the failure to prevent this interference belongs to the Obama administration under whose watch it took place. That would imply that Clapper, Brennan, Comey, Lynch and Rogers failed in their jobs. Why are there no calls to investigate this failure?
Posted by: Jack | 18 April 2019 at 05:47 PM
Wow, what an absolutely smarmy, laughable proposal made to Cohen by Felix Sater. If Cohen didn't stand to personally profit from services rendered to facilitate such a deal, I'd consider it very suspicious that he promoted it to Trump for as long as he did. As it is, knowing how much money lawyers can make in matters like this, the potential for profit can't be discounted enough as motivation.
I recall a strategy of the Clinton campaign called "Pied Piper", revealed in Wikileaks' Podesta dump, in which an email dated April 7, 2015 discussed the goal of "elevating" Trump's candidacy (along with Ted Cruz and Ben Carson), thinking they would be easiest for Hillary to beat. I wonder if we'll ever learn of a connection with efforts to entrap Trump like this Sater offer, the Trump Tower meeting, etc?
Posted by: akaPatience | 18 April 2019 at 05:47 PM
Given the absence of evidence of the Kremlin trying to cultivate Trump or offer lucrative real estate development deals - I recall hearing that one of the Cohen trial documents had him emailing the Kremlin with regard to the Trump Tower idea at an email address taken from its public website, and the Kremlin replying with a pro forma "thank you for your interest in doing business in Russia" and an offer of two free tickets to Valdai - and given the abundance of evidence for a wide-ranging FBI entrapment operation in coordination with foreign intelligence operatives, the association between the latter and the specific form the disinformation took is practically obvious.
I haven't read the Papadopoulos book yet (though I have it on hand), but in lieu of that I would recommend the long interview Michael Tracey did with him the other day for an overview of another large chunk of these entrapment operations.
Posted by: Steven Athearn | 18 April 2019 at 06:02 PM
Read the VIPS memo I posted yesterday. It will answer your question.
Posted by: Larry Johnson | 18 April 2019 at 06:25 PM
And the characters in this hall of mirrors; Steele, Mifsud and Sater. What of them?
The entire report is a chronicle of the grubby dealings of the courtiers surrounding any great man, nothing more. My opinion is that President Trump and his organisation successfully navigated through the Russian collusion mine field with only minimal casualties. A minefield laid by Hilary Clinton and her acolytes.
It almost succeeded - Trump, the Republican Presidential nominee, appearing on stage with his good friend Putin? Imagine what Clinton would have done with that.....
Posted by: walrus | 18 April 2019 at 07:57 PM
What were they so concerned about Trump that they'd go to such an extent to entrap him and smear him as Putin's bitch?
He's turned out to be a ziocon and Bibi's bitch instead. He's surrounded himself with neocons. And he's also Wall St's bitch as his primary concern is stock prices. He wants the Fed to lower already low rates and grow its multi-trillion dollar "emergency" balance sheet even more. The federal government will add a trillion dollars to the national debt each year of his term. Isn't this exactly what the establishment of both parties want?
In any case, the hammer needs to come down hard on the putschists, so that law enforcement & the intelligence agencies don't become an extra-constitutional 4th branch of government accountable only to themselves. We'll see how far the Trump administration will go in holding these seditionists to account?
Posted by: blue peacock | 18 April 2019 at 08:45 PM
Sirs;
In mentioning the inclusion of Cruz and Carson in the 'Pied Piper' scheme, akaPatience rightly brings up the question as to whether those persons experienced anything similar to Trump regarding 'entrapment.' Are there 'compromising' files in the FBI archives relating to those other politicians? If so, a broad strategy to 'foam the runway' for the presumed Democrat Party candidate in 2016 could be surmised and the "case" for Trump Russian "collusion" as a specific and sinister plot will be demolished. (At least as far as persons with some shreds of attachment to rationality are concerned.)
Posted by: ambrit (ex Britam) | 18 April 2019 at 09:09 PM
I think you are on to something important. I suspect the Brits collected on them as well, just in case. When it became clear that Trump was on the road to the nomination, the effort focused on him.
LJ
Posted by: Larry Johnson | 18 April 2019 at 11:13 PM
Sadly I think that was more of a rhetorical question
Posted by: Doggrotter | 19 April 2019 at 05:57 AM
Walrus,
Obama was president not Hilary.
Posted by: Fred | 19 April 2019 at 07:30 AM
Larry,
I've read the VIPS memo which disputes the conclusions of Mueller regarding Russia hacking the DNC servers. My question is if Mueller provided any evidence and analysis in his report to support his conclusion that Russia hacked DNC and gave it to Wikileaks. Barr has also noted in his memo this conclusion by Mueller, implying he buys it.
Posted by: Jack | 19 April 2019 at 11:39 AM
I don't know about others on SST but while he may not have been a good DIA man or the best NSA, Gen. Flynn was thrown under the bus by Trump and Pence and railroaded by Mueller. Shameful!
https://twitter.com/JosephJFlynn1/status/1119199323823198208
Posted by: Jack | 19 April 2019 at 01:57 PM