Russiagate's Second Smoking Gun
Ever since he glided down the escalator at Trump Tower two years ago to announce his presidential campaign, Donald Trump has said it again and again. "I have nothing to do with Russia, folks," he proclaimed at a campaign rally last fall. A few months ago, in an interview with NBC's Lester Holt, he said, "I have nothing to do with Russia. I have no investments in Russia, none whatsoever. I don't have property in Russia." And, just in case anyone missed the point, last January he tweeted in all caps, "NOTHING TO DO WITH RUSSIA - NO DEALS, NO LOANS, NO NOTHING!"
Well, not exactly. For three decades, Trump, key members of his family and several first-rank aides to the Trump Organization sought repeatedly to strike deals with top Russian banks and billionaires to build Trump-branded properties in Russia, and Trump's real estate properties have engaged nonstop with Russian oligarchs who've bought lavish houses and apartments in New York, Florida and elsewhere. And now we know, thanks to bombshell revelations by The New York Times and The Washington Post this week, that the most recent effort by Trump & Co. came last year, at the height of his campaign for president. In late 2015 and early 2016, just as the Republican primary was gearing up, two key aides – his top lawyer, Michael Cohen, and a shady business partner, Felix H. Sater – were deep in talks with Russian investors about building what The Post called a "massive Trump Tower in Moscow."
Sater, a career criminal who'd been convicted of slashing someone's face in a bar with the broken stem of a margarita glass and who'd also been found guilty in a $40 million stock fraud case, emailed Cohen positively giddy about his real estate negotiations in Russia – and in terms that, were you Robert Mueller, the dogged special counsel investigating Russiagate, you might consider a smoking gun. "Our boy can become president of the USA and we can engineer it," emailed Sater. "I will get all of Putin's team to buy in on this, I will manage this process."
If we're counting smoking guns, this one should be Number Two. Number One, of course, was the revelation last month that in June 2016 three Trump intimates – Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and then campaign manager Paul Manafort – had met in Trump Tower with a Russian delegation promising to deliver dirt on Hillary Clinton that came straight from Russian intelligence and the Russian state prosecutor. ("I love it!" responded Trump Jr.) Both are being folded into Mueller's high-powered inquiry, along with parallel investigations by Senate and House intelligence committees, which are looking to determine not whether Russian spies meddled in the 2016 election – that's taken for granted now, and was conclusively verified by the U.S intelligence community in a January report – but whether Trump and his allies cooperated or colluded with Russian efforts to throw the election to him.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/russiagates-second-smoking-gun-w500294?utm_source=rsnewsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=daily&utm_campaign=083017_12
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