Former Sands Point resident Felix Sater, a businessman with confirmed ties to both Russian officials and President Donald Trump as well as a figure of interest in the investigations into Russian collusion in the 2016 presidential election, was featured in recent days not only in the U.S. Senate’s intelligence committee’s report on the election, but also a forthcoming HBO documentary on the subject set to air next month.
Sater is extensively mentioned in Volume 5 of the Senate report, which deals with “counterintelligence threats and vulnerabilities.”
On first mention in the report, Sater is described as a “longtime business associate of Trump,” who he first met when Bayrock Group, the real estate investment firm that he managed, began operating out of the 24th floor of Trump Tower in Manhattan.
The report then says that along with Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, who was reported to be Sater’s childhood friend, Sater pursued a deal to build a Trump Tower in Moscow.
“Sater told Cohen about high-level outreach to Russian businessmen and officials that Sater claimed to have undertaken related to the deal,” the report reads. “While Sater almost certainly inflated some of these claims, the Committee found that Sater did, in fact, have significant senior-level ties to a number ofRussian businessmen and former government officials, and was in a position, through intermediaries, to reach individuals close to [Russian President Vladimir] Putin.”
The committee then says by the end of 2015, Cohen would reach out to the Kremlin directly to seek the Russian government’s assistance. The report says that the outreach was “separate” from Sater’s efforts to reach out to Russian individuals, though senior officials in that country were aware of the deal by January 2016.
“Cohen and Sater continued negotiations through the spring of 2016,” the report reads. “Their conversations largely focused on efforts to travel to Russia to advance the deal, but the Committee found no evidence of other concrete steps to advance the deal during this time. On June 14, 2016, Cohen and Sater met in person in Trump Tower, and Cohen likely relayed that he would not be able to travel to Russia at that time. During the summer, attempts to advance the deal stopped.”
Sater’s past is then discussed in the report, including a 1998 federal investigation into money laundering and stock manipulation, much of which is redacted in the report, and his time as an informant for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, where he would pass along information learned from his Russian contacts about cyber crime, al-Qaeda, Russian military and defense matters, and Russian organized crime.
“At Sater’s sentencing, a [Department of Justice] representative told a federal judge that ‘[t]here was nothing [Sater] wouldn’t do. No task was too big. He … was the key to open a hundred different doors that [the FBI] couldn’t open prior to that time,'” the report says.
The committee then says that Sater left Bayrock in 2007, and in “late 2009 or early 2010” was given office space on the 26th floor of Trump Tower, just a few offices away from Trump, to source international deals, with Sater given the title of “senior advisor to Donald Trump.”
“Sater was not paid a salary, but was promised a share of proceeds from successful business deals he brought in,” the report reads. “Sater used business cards with the Trump Organization logo arid traveled on behalf of the Trump Organization, meeting developers and other investors. This arrangement, and Sater’s office space on the 26th floor of Trump Tower only several office’s away from Trump, gave Sater greater access to Trump, allowing Sater the ability to see Trump frequently and “pitch” business opportunities to him. During this time, Trump would see Sater every day, generally more than once. In general, Sater recalled that he had interacted with Trump “hundreds” of times over the course of their relationship. After less than a year, Sater left his advisory role to the Trump Organization without completing any new deals.”
The report then describes Sater accompanying two of the president’s children, Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump Jr., on a trip to Russia “in part to research potential deals,” during which he managed to take them on a tour of the Kremlin.
Plans for the Trump Tower in Moscow would fall through following Trump’s nomination to the presidency at the Republican National Convention in July 2016, with the report quoting Sater as saying that it became obvious that there was “just no way that a presidential candidate could build a tower in a foreign country.”
“As a result, efforts on the project ceased,” the report reads.
In addition to the report, Sater is featured as an interviewee in the two-part documentary “Agents of Chaos,” directed by Emmy Award winner Alex Gibney (“Going Clear”). Sater appears near the end of the film’s trailer, which premiered on YouTube on Sept. 24.
“Everyone wants to create a huge conspiracy,” Sater says in the trailer. “Give me a break.”
The film will premiere in two parts on pay cable channel HBO, with the first half airing on Sept. 23 and the second on Sept. 24.
Sater, who was born in the then-Soviet Union and whose family emigrated to the United States when he as refugees when he was 7, sold his Sands Point home in February of 2019 in order to relocate to waterfront property, said local real estate agent Kathy Levinson. He had purchased the home in 2004 and moved from another property within Port Washington.
