Working from a 24th-floor office in Manhattan's Trump Tower, Felix Sater spent years trying to line up lucrative deals in the United States, Russia and elsewhere in Europe with Donald Trump's real estate organization. For much of that time, according to court records and U.S. officials, Sater also worked as a confidential informant for the FBI, and — he says — U.S. intelligence.
"I was building Trump Towers by day and hunting Bin Laden by night," Sater, now 50, told the Los Angeles Times in a phone interview from New York.
As managing director of Bayrock Group LLC, a real estate development firm, the Russian-born businessman met Trump in 2003, court records show, when Trump was looking to expand his business and branding organization around the globe. Although few projects were built, Sater worked on hotel and condominium deals with the Trump Organization through 2010 in New York, Florida, Arizona, London, Moscow and elsewhere even as he secretly helped the FBI infiltrate and take down organized crime figures, according to court records.
In January (2017), Sater and Trump's personal attorney, MICHAEL COHEN, met in a New York hotel with a UKRANIAN LAWMAKER who asked them to bring the White House a pro-Russian peace deal for Ukraine. "I was only trying to stop a war," Sater said of his role linking the lawmaker, ANDREI ARTEMENKO, with Cohen.
The New York Times, which first reported the meeting, quoted Cohen as saying he gave the envelope containing the proposal to MICHAEL FLYNN, then Trump's national security advisor, but Cohen now denies delivering it. "I acknowledge that the brief meeting took place, but emphatically deny discussing this topic or delivering any documents to the White House and/or General Flynn," Cohen wrote in an email to the Los Angeles Times. The White House has "no record" of receiving the Ukraine peace proposal, according to spokesman Michael Short. He also said that "no one in the White House" had discussed the matter with Cohen.
There is no question that Sater led a double life during the years he worked with the Trump Organization.
At his sentencing hearing, several FBI officials vouched for Sater's help. He got his biggest endorsement in January 2015 when LORETTA LYNCH was asked at her Senate confirmation hearing for U.S. attorney general why court records had been sealed in the fraud case. Sater had secretly worked with federal prosecutors and the FBI for more than 10 years, "providing information crucial to national security and the conviction of over 20 individuals, including those responsible for committing massive financial fraud and members of La Cosa Nostra" — the Mafia — according to Lynch, who had served as U.S. attorney in the Eastern District in New York.
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https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-sater-trump-20170223-story.html