Andrei Rozov .. He and Trump associate Felix Sater both worked for a Russian property tycoon named Sergei Polonsky.
.. In 2015, Mr. Sater brought to the president’s company a proposal to license the Trump brand for a residential project in the Russian capital
.. Mr. Rozov signed a nonbinding letter of intent with the Trump Organization in October 2015 on behalf of his firm to explore the possibility of a Trump-branded tower in Moscow.
.. Mr. Sater, in a statement, confirmed proposing construction of “the tallest building in Moscow” to the Trump Organization.
.. Mr. Cohen, in a statement provided to congressional investigators, said he “primarily communicated” with the Moscow-based development firm on the idea through Mr. Sater.
.. The Moscow proposal came at the end of a period during which Mr. Trump, his children and other Trump Organization executives initiated numerous deals with foreign developers, two of them in the former Soviet republics of Georgia and Azerbaijan.
.. As Mr. Trump prepared to take over as president, his company ended several of its most controversial foreign deals, including the Azerbaijan and Georgia projects, but it kept others in the pipeline.
Mr. Trump said his company, which would be run by his sons and another executive, wouldn’t forge new deals outside the U.S. He didn’t relinquish ownership.
.. The Moscow project ultimately faltered for what the Trump Organization described as business reasons, but only after the company lawyer, Mr. Cohen, discussed the matter multiple times with Mr. Trump and sent an email directly to the Kremlin public-relations department in early 2016 asking for help on the deal.
Mr. Cohen’s outreach to the Kremlin spotlighted the kinds of politically-tinged real-estate deals the Trump Organization continued to pursue and consider in far-flung locales, even as Mr. Trump campaigned for the presidency.
.. Mr. Sater also made inroads in Russia with the property tycoon Mr. Polonsky.
3 Trump properties posted 144 openings for seasonal jobs. Only one went to a US worker.
“America First” doesn’t seem to apply to the president’s own businesses.
.. The H-2B visa program allows seasonal, non-agricultural employers — like hotels and ski resorts — to hire foreign workers when they can’t find American ones. The Trump administration temporarily expanded this guest-worker program in 2017 while restricting other avenues of legal immigration, including the H-1B program for high-skilled workers.
.. The Trump Organization is exactly the kind of company that relies on the H-2B visa program for low-skilled workers.
.. two Trump properties in Florida (including Mar-a-Lago) and one in New York from the start of 2016 through the end of 2017. In that period, hiring managers said they were able to find and hire only one qualified American worker — a cook — for 144 open positions for
- servers,
- cooks,
- housekeepers, and
- bartenders.
.. He said Mar-a-Lago is just using the program how other employers use it: as a way to avoid paying higher wages or offering more benefits to attract American workers.
.. several labor economists in the state who were nonetheless puzzled that hotels or clubs would have such a hard time finding any service workers to hire.
.. “It doesn’t make sense,” said Tobias Pfutze, an economics professor at Florida International University in Miami. “I haven’t heard anything about there being a labor shortage. The service labor market here is very flexible.”
.. with a well defined peak season between the months of October and May of every year. The period during which the foreign national’s services are needed is not unpredictable, subject to change or considered to be a vacation period for our employees who are hired on a permanent basis.
.. Employers are required to pay the average local wage for the advertised position. Mar-a-Lago offered
- $10.33 per hour for housekeepers,
- $13.43 for cooks, and
- $11.88 for servers (no tips).