The Spy Games 2024

The Moscow Tower had everything to do with Donald Trump’s presidential run and was negotiated with Vladimir Putin’s closest advisors. Why did Robert Mueller find no evidence of a conspiracy?

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON APRIL 18 2019

Fred C. Trump, the real estate developer and father to a future president, presided over the demolition with food, drink, and “no less than six – count ’em – six bikinied beauties,” the New York Times reported. It was a September morning in 1966. Trump came to Coney Island to cheer on the wrecking crew as they demolished the last vestiges of the iconic Steeplechase Park before city officials could declare it a historic landmark.

Trump partied as they tore down the ‘Pavilion of Fun’ and promised to build yet another bleak, brown, stark apartment building in a neighborhood already reeling from population growth, increased crime, and poverty from the blight Trump and other developers had brought to the area.

By the time nine-year-old Felix Sater arrived in America with his parents as part of a wave of immigrants from the Soviet Union in 1974, only the Cyclone stood as a reminder of Coney Island’s happier days, and even that was slated for demolition.



The Soviet immigrants who came to Coney Island in the 1970s brought with them much more than recipes for pirozhki and borscht. They had a very different way of doing business. Felix’s father, Mikhail Sheferovsky, set up shop as a crime boss, earning a living by extorting grocery stores, restaurants, and medical clinics, according to the FBI.

The easy flow of dirty Russian mob money that flowed in with the immigrants was music to Fred Trump’s ears. He sucked up the dirty cash and washed it through his apartment projects – many with names like Trump Village – giving life to a Russian underworld in Brooklyn which has since swamped the world.

Felix was not all that unique. His friends’ parents were also involved in activities of varying shades of legality. His friend Laura Shusterman’s father owned a taxi company that allegedly helped Russian immigrants launder their money through taxi medallions and also through Trump properties.

Laura introduced Felix to her boyfriend Michael, the son of a wealthy doctor from a far more affluent neighborhood up Long Island. Michael would also visit his Uncle Morty, who owned the “El Caribe Country Club,” a dining hall popular among Brooklyn’s Russian mob.

In those days, the term “mafia” was used almost exclusively to describe Italian crime families, but that changed when the Russians arrived. What began with laundering money through taxi medallions expanded into racketeering and protection rackets. Eventually, the Russians “rolled up” the Italians, first in New York and then down the Eastern seaboard to Florida.

A yearbook photo of Michael Cohen
A yearbook photo of Michael Cohen (right).

Two boys from Brooklyn

On Felix and Michael’s home turf, the screech from nearby amusement rides had long been replaced by the shrill of well-fed and inebriated Russians. The boardwalk was now lined with eateries like Tatiana’s, whose tables overflow today with impossible amounts of seafood and vodka 365 days a year while buskers and barely clothed dancers work the crowd for tips.

At Tatiana’s, one of Putin’s henchmen was spotted during an American visit to tour the new Russian mob outpost. Viktor Zolotov commands Putin’s 20,000-strong elite guard and once contemplated mass murdering all of Putin’s enemies. Still, when he saw the list, even he was forced to concede, “There are too many, it’s too many to kill – even for us,” according to an account in a book by author Boris Volodarsky. Zolotov is a billionaire – not evil for a bodyguard.

It’s against this background of criminality that Felix became a stock trader, although that was short-lived when he lost his license after a bar brawl. Michael became a lawyer and eventually became Trump’s fixer. Sater was indicted for a $40 million stock trading scheme “involving 19 stockbrokers and organized crime figures from four Mafia families,” according to the New York Times. Cohen got into business with Tatiana, running casino cruises in Florida that cops ultimately shut down.

Neither Cohen nor Sater could have imagined how their paths would intersect with Fred Trump’s son decades later. Sater said, “Two boys from Brooklyn getting the U.S.A. president elected.”

Felix Sater
Felix Sater, Trump’s business associate was indicted for a $40m stock scheme and didn’t serve time because he cooperated with the FBI.

Double crossed

Sater never served time for that $40 million tax scheme. That’s because for over two decades, Sater has been a valuable asset to the FBI and American intelligence, including helping convict twenty members of La Cosa Nostra.

Sater cooperated with the FBI when he first met Donald Trump in 2002, he cooperated when he first went to work at Bayrock, two floors below Donald Trump, in 2003, and he cooperated when he and Trump built Trump Soho together in 2006—the same year he escorted Ivanka and Don, Jr. to Moscow.

Sater’s cover was publicly blown by the New York Times in 2007. Trump was undeterred and continued to work with Sater, while Sater kept working with the FBI.

Being exposed by the New York Times would ordinarily dull the effectiveness of someone cooperating with the Feds. But not Sater, who spent the years after that Times article building monuments to money laundering for Trump while delivering Osama Bin Laden’s cell phone number and almost proving the Trump-Russia conspiracy.

Preet Bharara calls it the most unholy alliance in justice. “Cooperators assist cops and, as a result, may literally get away with murder,” the former SDNY prosecutor writes in “Doing Justice”. “They operate as double agents against the people closest to them.”

The FBI never paid Sater for his work but allowed him to walk away with the proceeds of his criminality, which may explain why Trump would still trust Sater.

Who’s trapping whom?

Republicans and the GOP are committed to framing the Mueller Report as a trap set by dirty cops. They will most certainly question Sater’s FBI cooperation for the entire decade he worked alongside Trump and his work with the FBI beforehand.

Republicans will no doubt point to Mueller and his crucial prosecutor, Andrew Weissmann. Weissmann, then an assistant US attorney, signed Sater’s 1998 FBI cooperation agreement for the Department of Justice. Loretta Lynch authorized the deal. Mueller was the FBI director for most of the time Sater served as a source.

Sater also worked with other staff at the Special Counsel’s Office: FBI Special Agent William McCausland and crossed paths with Zainab Ahmad and Greg Andres.

Sater also worked with other staff at the Special Counsel’s Office: FBI Special Agent William McCausland and crossed paths with Zainab Ahmad and Greg Andres.

These “entrapment” claims are, of course, unfounded. The FBI always starts organized crime investigations proactively. It’s possible they placed an inside man at the Trump Organization a decade before Trump had even announced his candidacy because they had good reason to suspect he was committing crimes. Narativ has learned that the Southern District of New York and New York DA’s office had already initiated criminal investigations into the Trump Organization before 2015.

These “entrapment” claims are of course unfounded. The FBI always starts organized crime investigations proactively. It’s possible they placed an inside man at Trump Organization a decade before Trump had even announced his candidacy because they had good reason to suspect he was committing crimes. Narativ has learned that the Southern District of New York and New York DA’s office had already initiated criminal investigations into the Trump Organization prior to 2015.

Donald Trump
Donald Trump debates other Republican candidates the day he signed the Moscow Tower letter of intention.

“I never forgive.”

Trump had even more swagger than usual when he took to the stage on October 28, 2015, for the third Republican debate.

“Maybe my greatest weakness is that I trust people too much. I’m too trusting,” Trump told the audience. “And when they let me down, if they let me down, I never forgive. I find it very, very hard to forgive people that deceived me,” Trump said. So, I don’t know if you would call that a weakness, but my wife said: “let up.”

This vindictiveness was at odds with what should have been a celebratory day. Earlier that day, Trump signed a letter of intent to build a Trump Tower in Moscow.

On its surface, the Moscow project appeared to have been a straightforward barter: Putin would wield his influence to help Trump get elected. Once elected, Trump would drop sanctions, and the Moscow Tower would be green-lit.

Just three weeks after inking the Letter of Intent, Putin publicly praised Trump. “He is a bright and talented person without any doubt,” Putin said, adding that Trump is “an outstanding and talented personality.”

On the campaign trail, Trump ramped up the chants at his rallies. “No Russia, no Russian contacts, no Russian deals…” he would say – and then, minutes later, he would turn to Cohen to ask: “What’s going on in Russia with the Tower Project?”

Inside the Trump Organization, the “Moscow Project” was Cohen’s file. Ivanka and Don Jr. were involved but only from behind Cohen’s firewall. Sater was the go-between.

In email after email, Sater described the quid pro quo. “Putin gets on stage for a ribbon cutting for Trump Moscow, and Donald owns the Republican nomination,” Sater wrote in one. “Buddy, our boy can become president of the USA, and we can engineer it,” Sater wrote in another. “I will get all of Putin’s team to buy in on this and manage this process.”

All told negotiations on the Trump Tower Moscow began in mid-2015 and were “going on from the day I announced to the day I won,” Trump told Rudy Giuliani, according to the New York Times. Think about that: negotiations for the Tower lasted for over a year, all predicated on Trump winning the election, running on a parallel track to the campaign, yet just as they reached their stated goal, negotiations ground to a halt.

Sater enlisted Evgeny Shmykov, a former Russian Intelligence General, whom he knew for years.

Spy v. Spy

Felix Sater’s frequent trips to Russia and continued access to Putin’s confidantes, despite the Kremlin likely knowing about his role as an FBI informant, raise intriguing questions.

Between 2007 and 2015, Sater traveled to Russia to form partnerships for a Trump Tower Moscow project. While Sater claims to be a “Jewish James Bond,” there may be more to his story than he reveals, like his connections to Russian intelligence.

Shortly after the letter of intent for Trump Tower Moscow was signed in late 2015, Sater reached out to his friend Evgeny Shmykov, a former general of Russian military intelligence, to help organize Donald Trump’s proposed visit to Moscow. It seems rather excessive to involve a GRU general in a task that a travel agent could easily handle.

However, Sater and Shmykov had a history of espionage exploits that previously yielded valuable intelligence for the U.S. In 2004, Sater successfully persuaded Shmykov to provide the identity and photographs of a North Korean operative procuring nuclear equipment, as well as classified information about al-Qaida.

According to Russian-American author Yuri Felshtinsky, Shmykov could not have shared such sensitive material without Putin’s authorization without facing severe consequences.

Given his ongoing communications with a Putin-linked former GRU official, it is unclear if Sater was acting as a double agent —witting or unwitting.

Adding to the intrigue, Trump’s Moscow tower ambitions had previously been linked to Russian intelligence. In 2009, a subsidiary of Oleg Deripaska’s company – a man Felshtinsky alleges has been an FSB spy since the 1990s = hosted the Trump family during a visit to Moscow.

Cashing in?

There’s an essential footnote to what we know about this deal. The proposed Moscow Tower’s Russian developer, Andrei Rozov, had been Sater’s friend for almost two decades before they both worked at Russia’s Mirax. Sater contends that he works for himself, but according to Rolling Stone, Sater was employed by Rozov.

A month after Trump and Alex Rozov signed the Letter of Intent for the Moscow Tower, Felix Sater and Rozov sold an office building they co-owned in New York. Despite owning the building for only a year, they managed to earn a profit of $8 million from the sale. Sater refused to comment on the reason behind the ownership listing and sale of the office building when asked.

Donald Trump and Putin
Check-mate.

Catch 22

Despite the abundant evidence of suspicious connections and interactions, why did Robert Mueller not find sufficient evidence to conclude beyond a reasonable doubt a criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia?

Russian intelligence expert Yuri Felshtinsky is not surprised by the absence of a smoking gun, which is unsurprising:” An excellent secret service never leaves any tracks.” However, another critical factor may be at play—Felix Sater’s dual roles as a Trump associate and an FBI informant.

Sater’s status as an informant, which provided him with some immunity from prosecution, could have hindered Mueller’s ability to build a conclusive case around the Trump Tower Moscow dealings. It’s plausible that Russian intelligence could have exploited Sater’s immunity from prosecution by using him as a conduit to pass information and proposals, thus avoiding legal consequences.

This creates a Catch-22 situation where the person who could have been central to proving a conspiracy may have also been shielded from prosecution, making it nearly impossible to connect the dots conclusively. Sater may have genuinely acted in the best interests of the U.S. by informing them of these dealings, or his actions ultimately insulated the Trump Organization and Russian government from accountability.

You and I will get Donald and Vladimir on a stage together very shortly,” Sater wrote. “That is the game changer. America’s most difficult adversary agrees that Trump is a good guy to negotiate with.”
Sater wrote.

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