New York Daily News

Trump bldg. in Moscow a ’16 project

- BY REUVEN BLAU

DONALD TRUMP was running two campaigns at the end of 2015 — one for President and the other to get a Trump Tower built in Moscow, according to a new report.

The President’s personal attorney, Michael Cohen, and Felix Sater, a Russian-born real estate developer, spearheade­d the ambitious developmen­t plan, The Washington Post reported Sunday night.

In an email, Sater, who moved to Brooklyn when he was 6, bragged to Cohen that he was helping to get Trump elected President, according to two people familiar with the exchange.

“Something to the effect of, ‘Can you believe two guys from Brooklyn are going to elect a President?’ ” Sater wrote to Cohen, a source briefed on the exchange told The Post.

The grandiose tower (inset, the version on Fifth Ave.) never came to be, despite the signing of a letter of intent, but the tower talks started in September 2015, the report said.

Trump, who declared his presidenti­al candidacy in June 2015, failed to land the proper permits and dropped the idea for the residentia­l tower “at the end of January 2016,” according to The Post.

Trump never publicly talked about the behind-the-scenes move to construct the Trump Tower in Russia. He had long sought to bring his business into Moscow.

In a 2007 court deposition, Trump pointed out that “Russia is one of the hottest places in the world” for developmen­t.

“We will be in Moscow at some point,” he vowed at the time. Cohen, who has long been one of Trump’s staunchest advocates, confirmed in May that he has been asked to turn over documents to House and Senate probers.

They demanded he “provide informatio­n and testimony” about any contacts he had with people connected to the Kremlin.

He rejected the request because it was “poorly phrased, overly broad and not capable of being answered.”

White House officials and Cohen did not respond to requests seeking comment.

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