Trump associate boasted of Moscow tower deal

‘Our boy can become president,’ with Putin aid, Russian claims

WASHINGTON — A business associate of President Donald Trump promised in 2015 to engineer a real estate deal with the aid of the president of Russia, Vladimir Putin, that he said would help Trump win the presidency.

The business associate, Felix Sater, wrote a series of emails to Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, in which he boasted about his ties to Putin and predicted that building a Trump Tower in Moscow would be a political boon to Trump’s candidacy.

“Our boy can become president of the USA and we can engineer it,” Sater wrote in an email. “I will get all of Putins team to buy in on this, I will manage this process.”

The emails show that, from the earliest months of Trump’s campaign, some of his associates viewed close ties with Moscow as a political advantage. Those ties are now under investigation by the Justice Department and multiple congressional committees.

There is no evidence in the emails that Sater delivered on his promises. Sater, a Russian immigrant, was a broker for the Trump Organization at the time, which means he was paid to deliver real estate deals. In another email, Sater envisioned a ribboncutting in Moscow.

“I will get Putin on this program and we will get Donald elected,” Sater wrote.

Cohen suggested that Sater’s comments were puffery.

“He has sometimes used colorful language and has been prone to ‘salesmanship,’” Cohen said in a statement. “I ultimately determined that the proposal was not feasible and never agreed to make a trip to Russia.”

Sater presented himself as so influential in Russia that he helped arrange a 2006 trip that Trump’s daughter Ivanka took to Moscow.

“I arranged for Ivanka to sit in Putin’s private chair at his desk and office in the Kremlin,” he said.

Ivanka Trump said she had no involvement in the discussions about the Moscow deal. She said she that during the 2006 trip, she took “a brief tour of Red Square and the Kremlin but I have never met President Vladimir Putin.” She did not say whether she sat in his chair.

The Trump Organization on Monday turned over emails to the House Intelligence Committee, which is investigating Russian meddling in the presidential election. It issued a statement Monday saying the Trump Organization has never had any real estate holdings or interests in Russia.”