How many quid pro quos are there?
by digby
President Donald Trump’s company planned to give a $50 million penthouse at Trump Tower Moscow to Russian President Vladimir Putin as the company negotiated the luxury real estate development during the 2016 campaign, according to four people, one of them the originator of the plan.
Two US law enforcement officials told BuzzFeed News that Michael Cohen, Trump’s personal lawyer at the time, discussed the idea with a representative of Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s press secretary.
The Trump Tower Moscow plan is at the heart of a new plea agreement by Cohen, who led the negotiations to bring a gleaming, 100-story building to the Russian capital. Cohen acknowledged in court that he lied to Congress about the plan in order to protect Trump and his presidential campaign.
The revelation that representatives of the Trump Organization planned to forge direct financial links with the leader of a hostile nation at the height of the campaign raises fresh questions about President Trump’s relationship with the Kremlin. The plan never went anywhere because the tower deal ultimately fizzled, and it is not clear whether Trump knew of the intention to give away the penthouse. But Cohen said in court documents that he regularly briefed Trump and his family on the Moscow negotiations.
BuzzFeed News first reported in May on the secret dealings of Cohen and his business associate Felix Sater with political and business figures in Moscow.
The two men worked furiously behind the scenes into the summer of 2016 to get the Moscow deal finished – despite public claims that the development was canned in January, before Trump won the Republican nomination. Sater told BuzzFeed News today that he and Cohen thought giving the Trump Tower’s most luxurious apartment, a $50 million penthouse, to Putin would entice other wealthy buyers to purchase their own. “In Russia, the oligarchs would bend over backwards to live in the same building as Vladimir Putin,” Sater told BuzzFeed News. “My idea was to give a $50 million penthouse to Putin and charge $250 million more for the rest of the units. All the oligarchs would line up to live in the same building as Putin.” A second source confirmed the plan.
Is this the “art of the deal?” Promising payoffs to a foreign power in exchange for approval for a personal project — and help sabotaging your political rival’s campaign? Was he expected to sweeten the deal with some sanction relief if he won?
Did Putin and his henchmen know all about Trump’s years of exposure as a money launderer and held it over Trump’s head as well?
Sure looks like it could be all of that and possibly more. There’s a reason that the trump campaign was crawling with Russians from every direction. That’s not normal.
Trump’s been lying about all of this. And Vladimir Putin knew all about it. In fact, they were clearly using the same talking points.
You want kompromat? You don’t need the pee tape. This is more than enough.
This is one of the most stunning moments in American history and we now can see exactly why he was an obsequious toady toward his handler:
Maybe the strangest of all the 542 days of @RealDonaldTrump’s reign of error… #TrumpPutinSummit pic.twitter.com/wZjL7MQAj8— Jimmy Kimmel (@jimmykimmel) July 17, 2018
Read the above linked article and the one Buzzfeed published last spring.
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