Russian Mobster Felix Sater Advised The Trump Campaign

Donald Trump and the former Senior Advisor to the Trump Organization, Felix Sater Trump Campaign

A Russian mobster named Felix Sater told the Moscow media that he met with Trump’s campaign before the election, and revealed intimate details about his relationship with the man who Donald Trump swears he doesn’t know.

The newly unearthed Russian language interview with Felix Sater was published on November 15th, 2016 and was discovered by Democratic Coalition senior advisor Scott Dworkin’s #TrumpLeaks research operations.

This entire story is about a man — Felix Sater — whom Donald Trump claimed literally not to know during the Republican primary campaign

Felix Sater’s admitted contact with the Trump campaign during the election — which he would not admit to Politico in August 2016 after visiting Trump Tower — culminated in an incident where he carried an abortive secret “peace plan” between Russia and the United States over Ukraine that dovetailed with Donald Trump Jr.’s paid trip to speak a Putin-supported, Paris “peace conference” with a Syrian group.

After a lengthy IRS investigation beginning just after Sater meet Trump, the casino formerly named Trump’s Taj Mahal got slapped with a massive fine from the US Treasury’s criminal investigative division FinCEN.

The Senate wants to know about it, now.

New details from the Senate’s Trump Russia investigation in the last 48 hours since FBI Director James Comey was fired, confirm the importance of the time period when secretly convicted felon Felix Sater worked for Donald J. Trump, and the new Russian interview reveals that he openly moonlighted in the Trump Organization as US secret agent for the FBI and CIA, after he was convicted racketeering with the New York mafia in 1998 — which took a Supreme Court ruling to reveal.

Donald Trump hired the convicted felon, Russian emigre as his Senior Advisor during the decade-long period of time from 1998–2008 which saw him transform from bankrupt developer, to reality TV star with the aid of Producer Mark Burnett, who also did business with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The New York Times profiled Felix Sater in-depth 10-years ago solely because of his special relationship to the man who played a real estate developer on reality TV, who now resides in the White House.

A massive body of evidence points to a special relationship between Felix Sater, Donald Trump — and the federal government, who could have apparently allowed the pair to use Trump casinos to turn over “bad guys” to law enforcement, and which implies that he had the ability to shelter his associates from criminal charges for criminal acts; specifically for money laundering at the Trump casino empire.

It was a casino empire in New Jersey without any form of anti-money laundering controls, for two decades.

Not only does Sater tell the story of meeting Donald Trump in that interview on snob.ru, and talk about his ten years of regular contact with him — sometimes as much as twice a day — but he confirms two very important details about his relationship with our Russophile President.

First, Felix Sater claims that Trump knew about his “secret agent” activities with the FBI and CIA.

While there’s no direct way of proving the President’s knowledge of Felix Sater’s covert activities, the Trump Organization was a sponsor of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers in both 2002 and in 2003, which lends some credence to the idea that Donald Trump knew what was going on.

Former Trump campaign advisor James Woolsey is on the board of AFIO, which is a mainstream organization for America’s former intelligence officers.

Former President George Bush is also a member.

Secondly, Sater claimed to have regular contact with the Trump campaign last year.

We now know that Sater and Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael D. Cohen were caught by the New York Times with Sater, who was attempting to run a private diplomatic mission in Ukraine — an action discussed in the Christopher Steele intelligence dossier .

Via New York Times story “A Back-Channel Plan for Ukraine and Russia, Courtesy of Trump Associates”

The apparent plan to drop sanctions against Russia failed.

Shortly thereafter, Cohen’s Ukrainian relative was found dead under mysterious circumstances.

Trump’s connections to gangsters from Russian and former Soviet states mafiosos and oligarchs alike, all multiplied during Sater’s tenure.

To be clear, there is no question about Felix Sater’s service to the US government either.

It happened.

After Trump was sued for Sater scamming his Florida condominium buyers in the Trump Fort Lauderdale tower, his Senior Advisor fought all the way to the Supreme Court seeking to keep his 1998 felony conviction for racketeering sealed by a then-little known federal prosecutor in the Eastern District of New York.

The federal government lost in the Supreme Court, leading to what the Miami Herald’s Michael Sallah called dozens of explosive documents.

The court revealed that Felix Sater was nabbed by the feds for his involvement in a New York Cosa Nostra stock scheme in 1998 and had his arm twisted to begin working for both the FBI and CIA.

One person who certainly knew about these activities was former Obama Administration Attorney General Loretta Lynch, who described (p. 142) the convicted felon Sater’s government activities thusly in sworn testimony to the US Senate at the request of Republican Senator Orrin Hatch from Utah, over his concerns about sealed convictions that allowed criminals to roam the streets, without informing Americans that they might be dealing with a confidential informant that could rob them with immunity from criminal prosecution:

The defendant in question, Felix Sater, provided valuable and sensitive information to the government during the course of his cooperation, which began in or about December 1998. For more than 10 years, he worked with prosecutors from my Office, the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York and law enforcement agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other law enforcement agencies, 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.
For that reason, his case was initially sealed.

Forbes Media recently filed an action in federal court seeking to unseal the remaining records from Felix Sater’s secret criminal conviction, which contains a treasure trove of compiled research on Trump’s former advisor, and included a report by freelance investigative journalist Bill Conroy about the implications of cooperation with the FBI and intelligence agencies. (This paragraph was added the day after publication of this report.)

If his spectacular claims are to be believed, Sater also hunted down the financing for 9/11, helped the Clinton Administration target Osama Bin Laden and all manner of covert activities in his life as a secret operative.

However, the dark side of America’s deal to fight terror included allowing a Mafia-linked felon to have a free hand to conduct a criminal enterprise.

Indeed, Felix Sater did defraud thousands of Americans around the country, and has never faced criminal charges for his activities.


Trump’s Real Business Was Casino Money Laundering, Real Estate Was Just A Side Gig

Yesterday, the Senate Intelligence Committee delivered a subpoena to obtain documents about Trump’s casino empire from the US Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) whose job is to protect America’s financial system from crimes and police money laundering activity.

Only three key facts related to the FinCEN action lead to a startling, but factually grounded conclusion that Russia’s “kompromat” against Donald Trump is likely detailed evidence of his material participation in international money laundering rackets, through his old Trump casino businesses in Atlantic City, and then later in the Trump Soho Condo-Hotel project in New York City.

Firstly, in 2015 the Department of Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) levied what was then the largest ever Patriot Act violation penalty assessed against a casino to that date, at the Trump Taj Mahal Casino in Atlantic City.

The Trump casino empire wound up investigated by the IRS who determined that he casually ignored the Banking Secrecy Act’s requirements altogether and FinCEN levied a $10 million dollar fine based on their findings.

Alleged anti-money laundering violations happened all the way back in 2003 when Donald Trump was still the head of the Taj Mahal’s public parent company, Trump Entertainment Resorts.

Casinos can function just like banks — without any account names or numbers — tailor made for money launderers.

Secondly, Trump’s public gaming company consistently lost money, even when the gaming industry as a whole took off, but over a 20-year period.

Trump Entertainment Resorts improbably violated the principal rule of running a casino, the house always wins; yet, against all business logic, these casinos stayed open.

Paper losses can be used to hide real gains, or launder cash.

Thirdly, Donald Trump and the Trump Organization has been named as a witness in a federal civil racketeering trial in New York involving the Trump Soho and the Mafia-linked company Bayrock who is the defendant in the case.

When FinCEN issued its findings in 2015, Trump’s Taj Mahal applied the same level of “extreme vetting” to prevent money laundering as his administration has applied to infamous figures like General Michael Flynn — which is to say literally none at all. This is beyond suspicious and could only continue for so long, while under IRS investigation, with official blessing from inside the federal government.

That is where the Sater relationship appears to have born fruit of a similar nature for Donald Trump — immunity from prosecution for committing illegal acts.

Trump’s Largest Casino Didn’t Even Have A Written Anti-Money Laundering Plan

This portion of the interview includes information on background from a Treasury department official who could not be named on the record, but explained the findings of FinCEN’s order against the Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

If losing casinos close, then why did the Trump Casinos remain a going concern for so long, aside from endlessly patient (or foolish or fooled) investors?

Because nothing in the world could provide an easier front for money laundering than a casino.

Especially a Trump casino.

At Trump’s Taj Mahal there wasn’t even a written plan for anti-money laundering enforcement when the feds landed in 2010 after seven long years of warnings.

Here’s a copy of the final order:

The simplest form of laundering that Trump’s casinos were cited for failing to report is “suspicious activity” involving $5000 or more. FinCEN’s enforcement judgment calls this minimal gaming activity, which means that a player buys chips with dirty cash, lingers in the casino, or makes a few insignificant bets as cover and then brings cash to the teller window and just walks away with a cashier’s check to take to the bank.

The Trump casino was cited for failing to maintain files on “rated players” i.e. a casino’s file on each player, which can be used as the basis for reporting or detecting illegal behavior. Ditto for maintaining any controls on the paper tickets for cash into and out of its slot machines.

Even more appalling, Trump’s casinos failed to report “cage markers” — short-term credit extended by the house to a gambler, or “front money” transactions, where a gambler deposits money with a casino in advance, seeking to play later.

This means that a known money launderer at the Trump Taj Majal only had to arrive and sign a marker to obtain cash with which to gamble.

The money launderer could then walk out of the money wth clean cash, deposit it into their bank with a check and later bring dirty cash to pay off the loan. Since Trump wasn’t even bothering to keep player rating files, criminals had nothing to fear about their identity being discovered by law enforcement.

Since Trump wasn’t even bothering to keep player rating files, criminals had nothing to fear about their identity being discovered by law enforcement.

This is also unusual since it means that Trump was not tracking card sharks, high stakes players or really anyone, which all modern casinos have done for decades.

The only reason to do something like this is to make a completely anonymous casino aka the perfect bank to the mafia.

Trump’s casinos were so lax that a money launderer could easily drop off illicit cash as “front money” and then return days, weeks or months later to pick up a check and declare the cash “clean” with a bank deposit.

Another move available for high rollers at the Trump casino, a launderer might buy into the casino’s chips, gamble and then cash out ahead.

Once the funds are “won” then the money launderer simply declares those winnings, and the money is now “clean” without any further fuss, and he deposits it into his bank.

The casino would have to report the winnings on an IRS W2-G form, but without the anti-money laundering report, the gambler’s initial investment into chips gets washed without any records whatsoever.

The three reasons our government made money laundering illegal and enforces those laws vigorously are prevention of organized criminal behavior, terrorism prevention and tax avoidance.

The IRS has primer video (along with an easy to read transcript) on casino compliance with the Bank Secrecy Act.

If you’re not interested in the details of financial regulation, rest assured that their main advice calls to train all casino employees to prevent money laundering, and says that some casinos track anti-money laundering compliance all the way down to $500 bets.

America’s Bank Secrecy Act requires casinos to log all transactions of $10,000 and to be reported. The Patriot Act in 2001 vastly strengthened and expanded the money laundering regulations across financial businesses.

If a casino owner simply refuses to track all of their transactions, then money launderers can use the facilities with impunity to exchange dirty cash for declared, clean money.

Sadly, the $10 million dollar fine against Trump Taj Mahal after a 12 year investigation will do little to discourage that kind of illicit behavior by casinos.

More importantly, there was no legitimate reason for the IRS to investigate for 12 years, when they knew about Trump’s bad behavior going back to the late 1990s.

However, it would make sense that Trump was allowed to pick winners and losers, in conjunction with a confidential FBI informant — like Felix Sater — working with prosecutors in New York’s Eastern District.

In 2009, Trump lost managing control of his casino empire after yet another bankruptcy. Without a source of income — like money laundering — the Trump Organization with Sater at the helm, moved further into brand licensing, but began an ambitious program of developments, which also lost money, but created victims.

They also purchased numerous golf courses with Russian money during the financial crash.

Trump Casinos Lost and Lost and Lost, With Mobsters Nearby

The owner of Trump’s failed Taj Mahal was then and is now Trump Entertainment Resorts, though the name of the public company vehicle and persons who hold the shares have changed over the years.

Donald Trump’s public casino company shareholders lost a fortune.

According to the New York Times an investor who bought 1995 IPO shares, then held them lost over 93% of the stock’s value in a twelve year period.

An investor who bought the Russell 3000 casino index in 1995 would’ve gotten a 250% return on investment over that same 12 year period. Keep in mind that the above chart reflects that America’s economy was in the midst of the Bush-era, Wall Street credit-fueled bubble in 2007.

Even a rising tide failed to lift the Trump Entertainment Resorts’ boat, and it appears just from the chart that Trump executed a classic pump and dump scheme with the IPO, because the share price peaked within the first two years, before its inexorable slide towards multiple bankruptcies and the closing of the Trump Taj Mahal, which is only recently starting the process of being renamed.

Regardless, the years of losses suddenly become easily explainable if you imagine that Trump was carefully doling out shareholder value along with laundered cash to the many players at his casino, which included known mobsters and which he has consistently lied about, even under oath.

Trump’s extensive mob ties have been chronicled going all the way back to the construction of Trump Tower.

The IPO deal to create Trump Entertainment Resorts bailed Trump out of a looming personal bankruptcy in 1995 and simultaneously delivered to him a $916,000,000 paper loss on his income taxes by utilizing a loophole that Congress made illegal in 2006.

That tax loophole let Donald Trump sell his failed businesses to investors, but claim the losses incurred by his bondholders as a profitable (and legal, though dubious) tax shelter.

Reports indicate that Trump’s casino IPO yielded back to the destitute real estate developer up to a $50 million dollar annual tax break for 15 years (and possibly three prior years if he paid taxes).

Amazingly, Trump laid the groundwork for his multi-billion dollar ‘loss-making for profit scheme’ by testifying to Congress that America was no different than the Soviet Union for businesspeople.

Apparently, using communism as the bogeyman was a more effective strategy then than now (see outcry when President Trump caused an uproar making similar remarks comparing America and Russia on Fox News) because Congress passed enhanced passive loss deductions for real estate professionals in 1993 and Trump drove a Mack Truck through the moneymaking tax preference.

All told, Trump could have used those unlimited losses to easily launder dirty cash, in addition to their usefulness in the real estate development world in avoiding the IRS’ onerous 263A rules that require taxes to be paid by builders based on the cost of the property being built during construction.

The Trump casinos lost a fortune, and paid $39 million dollars in management fees to Trump for the privilege.

Trump with Bayrock’s Tevfik Arif and Felix Sater

Trump’s SoHo Project Is The Subject Of A Racketeering Lawsuit and Tax Fraud Action

The Trump SoHo project in Manhattan collapsed into a furious pile of lawsuits, though the building is just fine and operated by the President’s family for his benefit today.

Felix Sater and mysterious Kazakstani investor Tevfik Arif who owns the Bayrock Company were behind this failed Trump project.

It all began when the Trump Soho condo-hotel project was financed with an Icelandic bank linked to Putin, and a byzantine legal structure best described as a plate of spaghetti made out of shell companies.

The American Interest made this map of Trump SoHo’s shell companies.

Trump tried to extinguish the fires started by this most troubled of New York real estate deals by paying over a $3 million dollar settlement with disgruntled buyers in 2011.

It didn’t work.

Disgruntled former employees have filed a federal racketeering lawsuit and said in court that this was no ordinary business dispute:

Bayrock leaders had planned and structured businesses from conception as criminal enterprises intended to defraud investors. Kriss also accused lawyers for Bayrock co-owner Felix Satter of trying to “gravely mislead” the court into looking at the underlying issues as a typical business dispute inappropriate for a RICO action.
Kriss and Ejekam accused Satter, Arif and others connected to Bayrock and related entities of fraudulently inducing them into working for the company in exchange for ownership stakes and then engaging in a series of misdeeds and illegal payments.

As the presidential race heated up last year, the AP sued and won release of documents related to the SoHo case.

Trump SoHo is also in New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s sights. Last summer, relators put out a press release unsealing a major tax fraud action called a Qui Tam lawsuit — after the AG gave them clearance to proceed — that names Sater as Bayrock’s silent partner and majority owner, and others as parties to a massive tax fraud.

A Manhattan judge has unsealed a civil tax fraud case brought in behalf of New York State against associates of Donald Trump. The suit accuses convicted racketeer and Felix Sater, Bayrock Group, and prominent law firms of conspiring to launder as much as $250 million dollars of profit on Trump projects Bayrock was co-developing out of the country in a scheme to evade $100 million dollars of state and federal income tax. It alleges that Bayrock — aided by law firms Kramer Levin, Roberts & Holland, and Duval & Stachenfeld — brought a foreign partner into the projects but then hid it behind a Delaware shell company and further disguised the transaction so wholesale transfers of profits corruptly headed overseas to that partner would falsely appear to be debt repayments to a U.S. lender. Defendant Nixon Peabody is charged with facilitating a separate multimillion withholding tax fraud by disguising Sater as a salaried employee to help hide the fact that he owned much of Bayrock.
At this time Mr. Trump is a material witness. Initial investigation of the case uncovered no evidence that he was culpable, as the papers themselves, written some time ago, state. However, in the time since it was filed, especially as a result of media interest, new, relevant Trump and Bayrock information has surfaced, from sources including Mr. Trump himself, which may significantly change that calculus.

One of the plaintiffs lawyers in the tax case — which is being prosecuted with information from a separate whistleblower lawsuit — pointed out that Trump Soho was a lynchpin case in unraveling several realty scams perpetuated by Sater under the employ of the future president in the last decade:

“This is an important case because it not only exposes how Bayrock, while developing Trump SoHo in New York, Trump International in Fort Lauderdale, and Trump Camelback in Phoenix in association with Mr. Trump, took advantage of Delaware secrecy to arrange to siphon most of the profits out of the country untaxed, it also exposes how major law firms were willing to facilitate it.

It all seems improbable and highly unlikely, but the truth about Donald Trump is staring anyone in the face when all of the facts are put together. Trump wouldn’t be the first known FBI confidential informant to inhabit the Oval Office either, that “honor” belongs to Republican icon Ronald Reagan.

Donald Trump was a knowing asset of the federal government, working with a high-profile confidential informant for the better part of a decade, until all of the scams and dodges they were allowed to run got exposed for ripping off hundreds of investors and thousands of Americans when you include victims Trump University who recently settled.

After his money laundering scheme — getting paid by his untouchables, but turning over “bad guys” to the FBI — broke down, Trump’s foray into real estate development laid bare the rusty skills of a trust-fund baby who hadn’t had to earn a living the old fashioned way for years.

The results are scattered across America’s court system in the form of over 3,500 lawsuits against Trump through the years, dozens of which are ongoing today.

Now, President Trump has fired the FBI Director James Comey, and he isn’t afraid to tell the entire world it’s because his Russia investigation was getting uncomfortably close to hitting paydirt.

How else could a known multi-millionaire investor spend a third of his adult life participating in known rackets — including ten years with a known CIA and FBI confidential informant — and escape all forms of federal criminal action while running a casino with zero anti-money laundering controls for that long?

The arc of Trump’s business evolution from a casino manager to the global evolution of his business to the former Soviet states — announced by his synonymous son in Moscow in 2008 — and his entry into the golf market with Russian cash dovetails with what appears to be the end of his relationship with Felix Sater.

All of that coincided with the worldwide economic credit freeze and economic crisis.

Financing is the lifeblood of the real estate business, and at the time, things were so bad that Trump sued his own bankers, just to delay payments that he plainly couldn’t make.

It appears that after the financial crash, the end of Republican one-party rule and after his golden ticket with Sater and his relationship with the federal government terminated, it appears Trump did anything it took to survive, with anyone who would lend him a hand.

Those hands were Russian, Ukrainian, Chinese, Kazakhstani, Filipino and Turkish, and probably on Cyprus too.

One thing is for certain, none of Trump’s lies won’t help him disassociate himself from Felix Sater.

The most logical conclusion to this story is that New York’s FBI office enabled another “Black Mass” situation, where a confidential informant — or in this case pair of informants — were so highly placed, that they effectively ran federal police activity to support their own criminal enterprise’s operations.

And that Donald Trump would do literally anything to repeat his massively embarrassing downfall in the early 1990s that left him a beggar to his own family.

Perhaps this is why Russia’s top “Americanist” Professor told reporters last October that for Putin to help Donald Trump to win the election, he would have to be a “real Russian agent.”

Because he sure looks like one now.


Here’s Felix Sater’s business card:

Here’s select clips from the Felix Sater interview which have been machine translated by Google:

Translated images from an interview with former Trump Senior Advisor Felix Sater