Trump Organization Pursued Moscow Trump Tower Development During Election: Report

President Trump's company, the Trump Organization, sought to build "a massive Trump Tower in Moscow" during last year's presidential election, according to people familiar with the plan and new records reviewed by the company's lawyers, The Washington Post reported exclusively Sunday night.

Felix Sater, a Russian-born real estate developer living in the United States, tried to convince then-candidate Trump to visit Moscow "and suggested that he could get President Vladimir Putin to say 'great things' about Trump," according to The Post.

Trump never went to Russia, and the Moscow Trump Tower plan was nixed in January of 2016, the newspaper reported. (For more national political news, sign up for the free White House Patch email newsletter.)

The Post continued:

Nevertheless, the details of the deal, which have not previously been disclosed, provide evidence that Trump’s business was actively pursuing significant commercial interests in Russia at the same time he was campaigning to be president — and in a position to determine U.S.-Russia relations. The new details from the emails, which are scheduled to be turned over to congressional investigators soon, also point to the likelihood of additional contacts between Russia-connected individuals and Trump associates during his presidential bid.

White House officials, Michael Cohen — who is mentioned in the report and is Trump's personal lawyer — and Cohen's lawyer all refused comment to The Post. Sater and his lawyer did not respond to The Post's request for comment.

While Trump decries any coverage of the mounting connections between his campaign and Russia as "fake news," there are currently several government investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 election, including one being led by Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

Additionally, Michael Flynn was forced to resign from his national security adviser post in February after it was revealed that he misled Vice President Mike Pence about meetings with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak; Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from any investigations into the campaign after it was revealed that he too met twice with Kislyak but did not disclose it; and last month is was revealed that Trump's son Donald Trump Jr. met with a Russian operative promising damaging information about Trump's election opponent, Hillary Clinton.

Tied to both the Russian government and the Mafia in the United States, Sater was a key witness for the government in breaking a multi-million dollar Mafia stock fraud scheme.

He was so valuable that when Loretta Lynch was going through confirmation hearings to be elevated to attorney general from the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, she said that Sater provided "information crucial to national security and the conviction of over 20 individuals, including those responsible for committing massive financial fraud and members of La Cosa Nostra."

The assistant U.S. attorney who negotiated Sater's cooperation was Andrew Weissmann, who was hired earlier this summer by Mueller to assist in the latter's investigation into Russia-Trump connections.

Earlier this summer, as first reported by the Financial Times, sources tell Patch that Sater agreed to cooperate in an international money laundering probe focused on the New York real estate holdings of a prominent family in Kazakhstan.

One of those is investments is the Trump SoHo in Manhattan, the sources say.

>> Read the full report by The Washington Post's Carol D. Leonnig, Tom Hamburger and Rosalind S. Helderman.

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With reporting by Colin Miner

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