June 23, 2017

Felix Sater and Donald Trump

Salon - According to a new bombshell article for Bloomberg by Trump biographer Timothy L. O’Brien, the Russian-born [Felix] Sater — who came to the United States as a child in the 1970s — is a “career criminal” with ties to organized crime in both countries. O’Brien’s article hints that Sater could become a central figure in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into what the Washington Post has described as “suspicious financial activities” involving “Russian operatives” and Trump’s inner circle.

Sater, we learn, was involved in what’s called a “pump and dump” Wall Street scam, in which Russian and American mobsters artificially boosted the value of junk stocks and then sold the commodities at ridiculously inflated prices. In the end, it was a $40 million swindle, with unsuspecting investors being screwed out of piles of cash.

Sater served prison time, O’Brien reports, for stabbing another stockbroker in the face with a broken margarita glass during a 1993 bar fight. His victim apparently required more than 100 stitches to repair his Tyrion Lannister-style lacerations. Sater also pleaded guilty on charges of stock manipulation for the pump-and-dump plot, and ended up becoming an informant for the FBI and the CIA in the late ’90s, helping the intelligence community track down loose U.S.-made Stinger missiles. (In a bizarre plot twist, Sater’s Justice Department supervisor was future Attorney General Loretta Lynch, then the U.S. attorney in Brooklyn.) All this went down after Sater had gone into hiding in Moscow, turned himself in to American authorities and bragged openly about his supposed ties to the KGB.

Around the same time, Donald Trump “was enduring a long stretch in the financial wilderness,” as O’Brien puts it. Trump’s infamous Atlantic City casino investments had crashed and burned in spectacular fashion. He barely avoided personal bankruptcy, although several of his business ventures went bust. In the early 2000s, Trump linked up with Sater and a real estate investment group called Bayrock, which made a variety of deals with various members of the Trump family, including Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump as well as their dad, between 2002 and 2011. Bayrock was founded, O’Brien reports, with a considerable infusion of Russian cash. This background lends additional context to Eric Trump’s famous remark about the family business: “We don’t rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia.”

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

This documentary lays it out nicely; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ylAX1IF-y0

Anonymous said...

this 12 minute video takes it apart nicely https://youtu.be/8_X2bdm5EtQ