An associate of U.S. President Donald Trump once tried to set up a business deal with Russia in 2015, and promised that such a deal would help Trump get elected, according to reports.
In separate reports, The Washington Post and the New York Times say that while Trump was running for president, Felix Sater bragged about how he’d help get the current president elected.
In another email obtained by the Times, Sater said: “I will get Putin on this program and we will get Donald elected,”
According to the Post, Sater was trying to develop a plan to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. He also tried to get Trump to visit Russia and suggested he could get Russian President Vladimir Putin to say “great things” about him.
Sater, who was born in the Soviet Union, signed a letter of intent to build the tower, but the project didn’t go forward.
When asked, Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen said that the language used was just “salesmanship” and that no plans ever came through. Cohen acknowledged the correspondence to the House intelligence committee investigating the ties between Trump’s campaign and Russia, saying the plan was abandoned “for a variety of business reasons.”
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In the two-page statement obtained by The Associated Press, Cohen said he emailed Putin’s press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, after Sater suggested that “the proposal would require approvals within the Russian government that had not been issued.” Cohen said he did not recall any response to his email, or any other contacts with Peskov or other Russian government officials about the project.
Cohen portrayed the proposal as one of “countless” that the Trump Organization has received for developments around the world, noting that Trump had properties and developments in about a dozen different countries.
Cohen said that the project first came to his attention in September 2015 when he received a proposal for a “Trump Tower Moscow” that would house a luxury hotel, office spaces and condominiums.
*with files from the Associated Press
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