WHY ROBERT MUELLER HAS TRUMP SOHO IN HIS SIGHTS

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The Russian money trail leads right through the president’s troubled project in downtown Manhattan. A series of e-mails reveals new details.

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/08/why-robert-mueller-has-trump-soho-in-his-sights

 

 

BY 

• CRAIG UNGER

AUGUST 13, 2017 4:00 PM

 

 

Trump SoHo, the gleaming 46-story condominium and hotel that bears the president’s name in Lower Manhattan, was a troubled project even before it broke ground. It was initially marketed to wealthy foreigners enthralled by the Trump brand and the building’s opulent hotel-style amenities, but it never attracted nearly as many buyers as its developers had anticipated. Then, a few years before it was set to open, in 2010, an unusual complication came out of the blue. On December 17, 2007, veteran New York Times reporter Charles Bagli revealed that Felix Sater, managing director of the Bayrock Group, one of the building’s developers, had a hidden sordid past.

In 1991, Sater, then a stockbroker, got into a bloody bar fight with a commodities broker, stabbing him in the face with a broken margarita glass. The resultant wounds caused nerve damage and required 110 stitches. Then, in 1998, Sater pleaded guilty to participating in a “pump and dump” stock fraud. The maneuver, which was tied to the Mafia, involved laundering money, and eventually defrauded investors of $40 million. This checkered history appeared to catch his latest partner by surprise. “We never knew that,” Bagli quoted Donald Trump as saying about Sater’s criminal past. “We do as much of a background check as we can on the principals. I didn’t really know him very well.”

Since Sater’s run-ins with the law had not been previously disclosed to its investors, Bayrock was suddenly in crisis. Given that the company had raised money without revealing Sater’s convictions, could Bayrock be vulnerable to charges of bank fraud? Would its backers pull out? Were Bayrock’s principals and its partners—including Trump—in legal jeopardy? One problem, however, had to be dealt with immediately. Trump and his family had plenty to be unhappy about with Bayrock—budgetary overruns, the article in the Times, a construction disaster at the sales office, vicious internal politics, and more—and, as a result, they had requested a meeting with the firm’s principals. The gravity of the situation was underscored by the fact that all of the Trumps—Donald Sr., Ivanka, Eric, and Donald Jr.—were to attend.

As the meeting approached, Bayrock counsel, Julius Schwarz, was so apprehensive that he sent a cautionary e-mail to Sater and other Bayrock employees on January 21, 2008. “I think it is a trap,” he wrote, adding that the meeting with the Trumps was likely to become “a royal ### ######.” But half an hour later, Sater, who appears to have talked with Trump about the crisis, sent a reply that was intended to calm things down. “I agree with all,” he e-mailed, “but we can’t cancel the meeting. They will still show up and tear is [sic] apart. . . . Go to the meeting but stand our ground and be prepared.” Sater’s criminal record, it seemed, did not appear to be a deal breaker for Trump. “Donald is happy with me,” Sater said in one of a series of e-mails obtained by Vanity Fair from a lawsuit against Bayrock. “I will explain when I see you.” (Some of the Bayrock e-mails are exclusive to Vanity Fair, but others were first published last October by Richard Behar in Forbes.)

A decade later, of course, much has changed. Bayrock, which was once located in Trump Tower, is now defunct. Trump SoHo has been involved in ongoing litigation, including a lawsuit claiming that it was partly financed from “questionable sources,” as the Times would put it, from Russia and Kazakhstan. More recently, it has again found itself at the center of a new scandal. As Bloomberg News reported on July 20, Trump SoHo is among the targets special counsel Robert Mueller is scrutinizing in his probe into ties between the president and Russia. Mueller’s mandate, of course, is investigating possible collusion relating to the 2016 presidential election. The fact that Bayrock, which began working with Trump nearly 15 years ago, is now in his sights suggests that he understands that Russian-intelligence tradecraft is often indistinguishable from business, with its operatives navigating international flows of capital. In Vladimir Putin’s regime, business and organized crime and intelligence are often intertwined, and can all be used as weapons of the state. Mueller’s investigators are looking to unravel this web by following the money. And one company that potentially questionable Russian money flowed through was Bayrock.

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FELIX Saaaaaaaaaaaterrr!

 

Mueller Time!