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.
Sam Nunberg vows to refuse Mueller subpoena: What to know about the former Trump aide
“I’m not spending 80 hours going over my emails with Roger Stone and Stephen K. Bannon and producing them,” Nunberg told the newspaper. “Donald Trump won this election on his own. He campaigned his ass off. And there is nobody who hates him more than me.”
.. “Even if you have someone’s emails from other parties to them or from the service provider, you ask for them anyway,” Bharara tweeted Monday afternoon. “Among other things you learn a lot when people selectively disclose.”
.. Nunberg was fired in 2014 after an unflattering piece about Trump ran in BuzzFeed. Nunberg was blamed by Trump for the bad press.
Nunberg was rehired for the campaign, but was fired again by Trump in August 2015, after past racially-charged Facebook posts dating back to 2007 were discovered.
.. Unlike Trump, Nunberg did not deny quotes in Wolff’s book, though he did say at least one may have been taken out of context.
Rumored Issues
- Trump Tower Moscow
- Verify that he heard Russian Spoken at the Campaign
The Deal Trump wanted with Russia
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While he ran for president, Trump was simultaneously — and secretly — pursuing financial opportunities with a foreign adversary. Not just any adversary, but Russia, a country described by his party’s previous presidential nominee as the United States’ “No. 1 geopolitical foe.” And not just pursuing financial opportunities in Russia, but actively seeking the help of at least one senior Russian official to gain government approval for the project.
.. When you run for president, you cannot — you should not — put yourself in the position of using that candidacy as a door-opening business opportunity. You cannot — even if the prospect of winning seems remote — put yourself in a position of being financially beholden to a hostile foreign power.
.. Trump Tower Moscow was not another instance of Trump as unabashed cross-promoter-in-chief, like using the campaign press corps to help tout the reopening of his Scottish golf course. It represented something much more disturbing, even unpatriotic.It was possible, when The Post first broke the news of the failed deal, to discount the proposal as braggadocio from Felix Sater, the Russian-born real estate developer pushing the deal. “Our boy can become president of the USA and we can engineer it,” Sater emailed Trump Organization executive vice president Michael Cohen, detailed by the New York Times.
But as it turned out, this was more than Sater freelancing in Trump’s name. The Post next reported that Cohen emailed Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov in January 2016 in a bid to save the languishing deal; that Cohen discussed the project with Trump on three occasions; and that the effort was dropped when Russian government permission was unforthcoming.
.. Trump himself — actively misled the public. Imagine how much more sharply people would have responded to Trump’s already repulsive praise of Russian President Vladimir Putin during that time — “He’s running his country, and at least he’s a leader, you know, unlike what we have in this country” — if they knew that Trump had just signed a letter of intent with a Russian firm to develop a Trump-branded tower in Moscow.
Trump Attorney Says He Discussed Moscow Tower Deal With Trump During Campaign
In an interview, Michael Cohen says he talked with the then-candidate about the licensing deal on three occasions
.. Michael Cohen, an attorney for the Trump Organization, discussed a prospective real-estate deal in Moscow with Donald Trump on three occasions during the presidential campaign, Mr. Cohen said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal.In 2015, Mr. Cohen said, he informed the then-candidate that he was working on a licensing deal for a Trump Tower in Moscow. He subsequently asked for and received Mr. Trump’s signature on a nonbinding letter of intent for the project in October 2015. And in January 2016, he said
.. Mr. Cohen’s communication with the president about the Moscow project may come under scrutiny because of a January 2016 email Mr. Cohen sent to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s top press official to ask for “assistance” in arranging the deal.
.. In the email to Mr. Peskov, Mr. Cohen said communication between the Trump Organization and a Russia-based company that was the prospective developer of the tower had “stalled” and said, “As this project is too important, I am hereby requesting your assistance. I respectfully request someone, preferably you, contact me so that I might discuss the specifics as well as arranging meetings with the appropriate individuals.”.. Mr. Trump’s awareness of his company’s efforts to procure a business deal in Moscow, as described by Mr. Cohen, came during the campaign when he often praised Mr. Putin... Mr. Trump repeatedly denied any business ties to Russia, saying at a news conference in July 2016, “I have nothing to do with Russia.”.. Mr. Cohen in a statement issued earlier Monday said he rejected the proposal “because I lost confidence that the prospective licensee would be able to obtain the real estate, financing, and government approvals necessary to bring the proposal to fruition.”.. Felix Sater, whom Mr. Trump hired in 2010 as an unpaid consultant for the Trump Organization, wrote in a November 2015 email to Mr. Cohen that he planned to enlist the help of Mr. Putin.“Our boy can become President of the USA and we can engineer it,” he wrote. “I will get all of Putins team to buy in on this, I will manage this process.”
.. Mr. Cohen also said Mr. Sater “constantly asked me to travel to Moscow” to move the proposal forward, and also asked him to have Mr. Trump travel to Russia. Mr. Cohen said he told Mr. Sater Mr. Trump “would not travel to Russia unless there was a definitive agreement in place.”