I am revisiting a story I did nine months ago about Felix Sater and the Steele Dossier (you can read it here). Let me cut to the chase--Felix Sater was an FBI informant since 1998. He was originally signed on as a "cooperator" in December 1998 by Robert Mueller's number two guy, Andrew Weissman. Robert Mueller and his team used Felix Sater as a "lure" or "bait" to tempt Trump and his team, Michael Cohen in particular, to work with Russia. Trump did not bite.
Robert Mueller did not disclose that Sater was an FBI Informant. Mueller did not disclose that Sater was deliberately used starting in September 2015 to entrap Donald Trump. I am revisiting this issue because a Sater's work for the Feds was unsealed last Friday by Judge Glasser in New York. According to the Wall Street Journal:
Felix Sater, a former business associate of President Trump, began working with the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 1998, after he was caught in a stock-fraud scheme. As he pleaded guilty, Mr. Sater turned on his co-conspirators, federal prosecutors in Brooklyn wrote in an Aug. 27, 2009, letter, unsealed Friday, to U.S. District Judge I. Leo Glasser, who was overseeing the case. He had gone on to assist various agencies in different areas of law enforcement for years, they wrote.
“Sater went above and beyond what is expected of most cooperators and placed himself in great jeopardy in doing so,” the prosecutors wrote in pushing for him to get a lighter sentence. On the strength of his continuing cooperation, they had put off his sentencing for more than a decade, an unusually long period for such arrangements.
As I tried to unpeel the onion that is the layered life of Felix Sater, I came across an excellent article by Newsweek reporter Bill Powell, Donald Trump Associate Felix Sater Is Linked to the Mob and the CIA—What’s His Role in the Russia Investigation?. It is worth your time. One of the surprising revelations from Powell is that Felix Sater was a childhood friend of Michael Cohen, Trump's lawyer. Let that sink in for a moment. The FBI informant, Felix Sater, was a long time friend of Cohen. This now provides another explanation for how Michael Cohen became part of the Trump orbit. Did Felix Sater, while an active FBI informant, introduce Cohen to Trump? (Sater and his company, Bayrock, started working with Trump in 2003 while Cohen did not start working for Trump until 2006).
One of the very first reports provided by Christopher Steele insists that the Russians were working overtime to get Trump in bed with them on "lucrative real estate deals." The Steele report dated 20 June 2016 makes the following claims:
Speaking to a trusted compatriot in June 2016 sources A and B, a senior Russian Foreign Ministry figure and a former top level Russian intelligence officer still active inside the Kremlin respectively, the Russian authorities had been cultivating and supporting US Republican presidential candidate, Donald TRUMP for at least 5 years. . . .
In terms of specifics, Source A confided that the Kremlin had been feeding TRUMP and his team valuable intelligence on his opponents, including Democratic presidential candidate Hillary CLINTON, for several years (see more below). . . .
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. How ever, so far, for reasons unknown, TRUMP had not taken up any of these.
Bill Powell reported the following in Newsweek:
[Felix Sater] and his childhood friend, Michael Cohen—then a lawyer and dealmaker for the Trump Organization—had been working for more than a decade, on and off, to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. The New York real estate mogul had long wanted to see his name on a glitzy building in the Russian capital, but the project had never materialized.
Where are all of those "lucrative deals" the Kremlin was supposedly offering up? Nowhere. It was a lie.
Felix Sater was the ones telling Trump to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. Sater, according to Newsweek's Powell, was not a close confidant of Trump:
In [2003], Sater says he met Trump, thanks to his work for Bayrock, the real estate company. . . Sater raised money for Bayrock from, among others, a wealthy businessman from the former Soviet republic of Kazakhstan, and he persuaded people in Trump’s orbit—including Cohen, his old friend—to bring his deals before the boss. Two of the ideas worked out. Sater and the New York real estate mogul eventually worked on the Trump SoHo in Manhattan and a hotel and condo project in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, which failed after the 2008 economic crisis. He and Trump, Sater claims, were friendly but not particularly close.
Powell does not report the Russians offering up any "lucrative" real estate deal.
Powell's account is consistentwith the information present by Robert Mueller in the Charging Indictment of Michael Cohen. While the Steele Dossier makes the claim that the Russian Government was offering up "lucrative projects" to the Trump organization, Michael Cohen never made such a claim. The details in the charging document show otherwise; i.e., that Felix Sater was pushing the projects:
The Moscow Project was discussed multiple times within the Company and did not end in January 2016. Instead, as late as approximately June 2016, COHEN and Individual 2 discussed efforts to obtain Russian governmental approval for the Moscow Project.
Why does the Trump organization need to "obtain Russian governmental approval" if, per the Steele Dossier, the Russians are offering up a slew of "lucrative" deals?
The charging document provides further detail on Cohen and Sater's interaction with Russian officials. In early January 2016, Michael Cohen sent an email to Vladimir Putin's Press Secretary. The Secretary responded:
On or about January 14, 2016, COHEN emailed Russian Official 1’s office asking for assistance in connection with the Moscow Project.
On or about January 20, 2016, COHEN received an email from the personal assistant to Russian Official 1 (“Assistant 1”), stating that she had been trying to reach COHEN and requesting that he call her using a Moscow-based phone number she provided.
Shortly after receiving the email, COHEN called Assistant 1 and spoke to her for approximately 20 minutes. On that call, COHEN described his position at the Company and outlined the proposed Moscow Project, including the Russian development company with which the Company had partnered. COHEN requested assistance in moving the project forward, both in securing land to build the proposed tower and financing the construction. Assistant 1 asked detailed questions and took notes, stating that she would follow up with others in Russia.
Notwithstanding these communications, the Moscow project was terminated in June 2016. And it was Felix Sater aka "Individual 2", not the Russians, pushing for going to Russia and making a deal. No evidence of Russians offering up "lucrative deals."
From on or about June 9 to June 14, 2016, Individual 2 sent numerous messages to COHEN about the travel, including forms for COHEN to complete. However, on or about June 14, 2016, COHEN met Individual 2 in the lobby of the Company’s headquarters to inform Individual 2 he would not be traveling at that time.
If the Steele Dossier was true, Trump should have had multiple project going on in Russia, especially Moscow. Steele paints a picture of Putin's people feeding Trump information and opportunity. So where is the evidence of such activity? There is none.
The Mueller report reinforces the fact that Felix Sater was the one proposing doing the deal in Moscow and talking to the Russians. THE PROPOSED TRUMP TOWER PROJECT IN MOSCOW, according to Mueller's report, originated with an FBI Informant--Felix Sater. Here's what the Mueller Report states:
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 . . . contacted Cohen (i.e., Michael 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. (see page 69 of the Mueller Report).
Mueller, as I have noted previously, is downright dishonest in failing to identify Sater as an FBI informant. Sater was not just a private entrepreneur looking to make some coin. We now know without a doubt that Sater was a fully signed up FBI informant. Sater's status as an FBI snitch was first exposed in 2012 (you can read the letter confirming Sater's status as an FBI snitch here). Another inconvenient fact excluded from the Mueller report is that one of Mueller's Chief Prosecutors, Andrew Weissman, signed the deal with Felix Sater in December 1998 that put Sater into the FBI Informant business.
All suggestions for meeting with the Russian Government, including Putin, originated with Felix Sater. The use of Sater on this particular project started in September 2015.
All of this raises very troubling issues about FBI misconduct. Under what authority did The FBI initiate the "Moscow Tower" play in September 2015. We are supposed to believe that the FBI counter intelligence investigation, aka Crossfire Hurricane, only began the end of July 2016 because of an alarming report from an Australian diplomat. We now know that is a lie.
The revelations about Sater add to the urgency to expose the FBI's criminality and malevolence.
[For more on Sater please see my previous posts, Felix Sater--The Rosetta Stone for the FBI/CIA Conspiracy Against Trump?, Felix Sater and the Steele Dossier.]
Mr.Johnson has done good work on these issues throughout the whole time this initiative has gone on. It reveals the level of rot in the structure of the secret police operation carried on by the US government and shows that it probably cannot be reformed from within but that the only solution which might work is the dissolution of the existing institutions and some form of starting over, something which is, of course, highly unlikely to be achieved.
Posted by: exiled off mainstreet | 25 August 2019 at 06:46 PM
Thank you for tying so many of these loose ends together, these past few years. It is quacking like a duck to me.
Posted by: Factotum | 25 August 2019 at 06:50 PM
How many other people were successfully railroaded by the FBI and was Barack the only president they were doing this under?
Posted by: Fred | 25 August 2019 at 07:51 PM
Something just doesn't add up for me when Trump who was the target of these spying and information operations doesn't use the power and authority of POTUS to expose all the communications and actions of these people. Why? What is he hiding or what is he afraid of?
Posted by: blue peacock | 25 August 2019 at 08:46 PM
Trump announced his candidacy June 16, 2015. SO, by September the FBI had begun its operation against him. It seems like a fairly quick mobilization.
Were Obama and Clinton so insecure that they felt they needed to resort to this, or are they both so corrupt that this was business as usual?
Christopher Steele, Felix Sater, Josef Mifsud, Stephan Halper, Alexander Downer -- so far there are at least 5 known to have connections to the IC who tried to entrap Trump. We need a summary with an index since there's so much corruption to keep straight -- Hillary's Vast Left-wing Conspiracy.
Posted by: akaPatience | 25 August 2019 at 09:48 PM
It is very simple. Trump is relying on the judicial process out of fear that if he did unilaterally release this info he could be accused of "obstructing justice."
Posted by: Larry Johnson | 25 August 2019 at 09:54 PM
it also reveals the incredible lack of interest on the part of mainstream media in pursuing any of this obviously available information...
this's the same mainstream media, of course, that has expressed no curiosity whatsoever regarding the fate of sergei skripal & his daughter, yulia (a russian citizen), both of whom were officially 'disappeared' well over a year ago...
thanks for your continuing efforts, mr. johnson...
Posted by: semiconscious | 26 August 2019 at 10:48 AM
Some interesting points here:
"Carter Page Discusses His CIA and FBI Role With Maria Bartiromo", by sundance, 2019-08-25
A sample:
Also, a useful checklist of ten documents awaiting release is at
"10 declassified Russia collusion revelations that could rock Washington this fall", by John Solomon, 2019-08-20
Solomon write, in part,
Posted by: Keith Harbaugh | 26 August 2019 at 02:11 PM
Given that it appears this sh&%tshow was initiated at a time when the Trump candidacy was not taken seriously in "serious" circles, it seems to me that they could very plausibly have had operations like this ready to go, or maybe even underway, against other (R) candidates for President. Hedging makes perfect sense in that scenario at that stage in the game. Why devote that scheme and those resources to Trump alone, when he still had so much hay to make before becoming the actual nominee or even being considered seriously for it? In other words, the timing suggests it was SOP for the Obama administration. It can't be understated how much these people were truly all in on their desire for an HRC coronation event, so it's certainly plausible that they'd resort to this skullduggery across the board. Constitutional republic be damned...
Posted by: AK | 26 August 2019 at 05:22 PM
When The Smoke Clouds of War,,are still there..covering The Fields..You Can hear the Crys..Smell The Blood...When The...Clouds Drift Away...You SEE The Carnage of Human Conflict..The Truth is Revealed..Its Always Ugly.and Always Results..In …"The Butchers Cleaver.."
Posted by: Jim Ticehurst | 26 August 2019 at 06:29 PM
SEIU spent nearly a billion dollars in campaign cash to get Obama elected. Why wouldn't the big government unions make an equal play at every level to ensure Clinton followed Obama?
Lots of money at stake and lots of money to throw around. Using government means by those associated with the government unions seems like a natural extension of the government employee union game plan. Corrupt, bloody corrupt, but who was watching? Operation seems to have gotten a wink and nod from "potus"who wanted to know everything" on down.
I think the deepest state operates right under our nose. from our local school boards on up the unionized government employee food chain.
Posted by: Factotum | 27 August 2019 at 12:27 AM
akaPatience said "Were Obama and Clinton so insecure that they felt they needed to resort to this, or are they both so corrupt that this was business as usual?"
Great question. It goes to the heart of this sordid caper.
Just a hunch, but my stab at answering this question looks something like this - really, really big things happened in the United States 50 years ago. Fast forward to the 2016 election and one can easily see a kind of bookend to a 50 year march, with many of the same key players including entire families who remain influential today, to shred our founding documents so as to replace them with their own globalist whatever.
Think of it as a slow rolling coup. In order to realize their 50 year long wet dream to achieve their very own globalist fiefdom the U.S., at least its people, needed to be neutralized. To successfully neutralize the vast majority of the people they needed to keep us busy, distract us with reality tv crap, addict us to their technology and to dumb us down. They succeeded.
You may recall while on the campaign trail Trump relentlessly pounded a key message - I will drain the swamp.
Well, again, just a hunch, this swamp he kept referring to are the very political individuals and families involved in this 50-year slow rolling coup. These political lifers were to realize their 50 year wet dream via the coronation of Hillary in 2016. She was their chosen one.
But that dream died a thousand deaths on election day when Trump and his Deplorables masterfully pulled out the win. The swamp was flummoxed. Blind sided. Aghast. Thus, they took everything they had in their box of dirty tricks and threw them at a wall hoping something, anything stuck. They failed. Miserably I might add.
Other than dumbing down the U.S. population they also succeeded at, mightily, is outing themselves for what they have always been - anti-American everything. Infiltrators. Slitherers. Usurpers. People who enjoy the shadows.
All of the strategies the swamp was prepared to employ to corral the public following Hillary's crowning is all of the crazy chit the so-called resistance has deployed via their corporate media partners, their corporate social media partners, their corporate Wall Street partners and so on since Trump's election. I use the word 'corporate' b/c it's these corporations who stood to benefit as the new chieftains of the New World Order. These entities are losing trillions of dollars today due to the stark shift Trump has employed with his 'free and fair' trade policies. The screeching we are all hearing from the deeply corrupted Left side of the aisle has everything to do with the economic power shift from corporate aka Wall Street back to the people aka Main Street.
President Trump's election, along with his policy plans to return this country to its founding roots, has brought the globalists/leftists NWO plan to a screeching halt. This is why we are witnessing incessant tantrums daily from the Left's mouthpieces yet little from true Dems. True Dems, IMHO, are as clueless as anybody as to the deeply corrupt machinations of the swamp who masterfully infiltrated their Party.
What we're all witnessing in real time has zip to do with Obama's or Hillary's insecurity, but everything to do with their deeply corrupt, dark, slithering infiltration into America's entire political system. And they are by no means done. Trump's win gave us a pause but that's it for now. That is unless Barr chooses Main Street over Wall Street and throws the book at all of those involved in the treasonous acts to usurp the Presidency. ALL.OF.THEM. We'll soon learn which side of the Street he's on.
Excellent article Larry. And thank you for the links.
Posted by: h | 27 August 2019 at 01:04 PM
One thing that needs repeating is that this supposed Trump “real estate deal” was really just a proposed licensing agreement where the building developer would license the Trump name to slap on his building. Trump wasn’t going to be a developer or a builder. He was just selling the right to slap the name “Trump” on the building to give Russian renters and condo buyers the idea it was a prestigious property. Trump makes these licensing deals all the time where he has no ownership interest in the building or it’s construction. Trump hasn’t been much of a property developer for years. Trump had zero interest in this development, except for the proposal he license his name to it. The claim it was Trump real estate deal is completely false.
Also, shouldn’t the fact this development fell through mean something? If this was a Russian government plot to pay off Trump for helping the Russian government as many claim, wouldn’t the deal have to have gone through? I love complete nonsense as much as the next person, but I just don’t see someone risking their neck for a foreign government in exchange for a failed deal, instead of one that went through.
All Trump got from this deal was to be jerked around and having his time wasted on a licensing deal. A minor time suck like that isn’t going to motivate anyone to betray their country. It was a lose-lose deal for Trump. Since the Russian government did nothing to help Trump, why do people point out this failed licensing deal as a payoff to Trump? That makes zero sense.
Posted by: LA Sox Fan | 27 August 2019 at 02:21 PM
Faketotum,
That's almost twice the total spent and about 1,000 times more money than SEIU spends a campaign cycle.
https://www.opensecrets.org/outsidespending/detail.php?cmte=C70004973&cycle=2008
Posted by: Fred | 27 August 2019 at 02:44 PM
I hear you Larry.
But....isn't this "judicial process" that Trump is relying on effectively a "political process" that you have spent much effort writing about. When you add the Epstein "process" and the Hillary classified information "process" how can anyone let alone Trump trust this "process"? Barr after all is a card carrying member of the Swamp.
Now we see that US Attorney Jesse Liu has shunted back the McCabe grand jury and IG referral and potential indictment "process" back to Barr. She doesn't want to make a "political" decision on this "hot potato".
Considering how the media has quietly buried Russia Collusion and now latched on to racism and chaos as the current bludgeon why would Trump care about accusations of "obstruction of justice"? The TDS afflicted media are not going to change their tune in any case and the American people deserve to know the extent of corruption and politicization in our "premier" law enforcement and intelligence agencies, not have it buried. Isn't that what "Drain the Swamp" means? To ordinary Americans that follow this story it shows Trump's extraordinary weakness or complicity.
Posted by: blue peacock | 27 August 2019 at 03:44 PM
2008 Michelle Malkin tracks SEIU direct cash payments before adding in 2 million members additional efforts:
MM: "We spent a fortune to elect Barack Obama -- $60.7 million to be exact -- and we're proud of it," boasted Andy Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union, to the Las Vegas Sun this week. The behemoth labor organization's leadership is getting its money's worth. Whether rank-and-file workers and ordinary taxpayers are profiting from this ultimate campaign pay-for-play scheme is another matter entirely.
The two-million-member union, which represents both government and private service employees, proudly claimed that its workers "knocked on 1.87 million doors, made 4.4 million phone calls and sent more than 2.5 million pieces of mail in support of Obama." It dispatched SEIU leaders to seven states in the final weekend before the election to get out the vote for Obama and other Democrats.
Through a series of local chapter takeovers and bully campaigns to destroy the reputation of executives who refuse to submit to their will, Stern and his scandal-plagued lieutenants have consolidated low-skill service workers to create a 21st century labor empire. The ubiquitous Stern now enjoys a prominent seat at the table of every major policy discussion at the White House, including economic recovery and health care radicalization........."
NB: There is direct identified organization cash, rank and file member cash, subsidary cash and in Obama's case, there were pre-paid credit card donations too - who paid for those untraceable sources of cash. If any correction is necessary, lets just say all public sector unions helped raise the nearly one billion in Obama's 2008 cash - odd since he was such an unproven cipher at the time.
Posted by: Factotum | 27 August 2019 at 07:05 PM
Start with your local schools boards and dump the teacher union-backed candidates, if we are to change America. The irtake-over started at the bottom of the now highly politicized food chain - our public K-12 schools. AFT and NEA come in many local diguises - get to know them all. Then do not support any of their backed candidates.
Posted by: Factotum | 27 August 2019 at 07:09 PM