What Trump presumably didn’t know about Sater when the former Russian underworld operator entered his corporate milieu was that Sater had just finished up a federal cooperation deal that allowed him to escape jail on racketeering and fraud charges.125 Harding notes that Sater’s decision to begin working for the Bayrock Group in 2000 was either an attempt to “efface his past sins by returning from Moscow and working diligently for the FBI” or Sater “exploiting the fact that his fraud record was under seal . . . to make a lot of money.”126 Regardless of Sater’s intentions, in mid-2002, the year “Putin’s girl” was crowned Miss Universe by Donald Trump, Bayrock’s founder, Tevfik Arif, made the decision to move Bayrock’s offices into Trump Tower—just two floors below Trump’s office.127 The Soviet-born Arif had worked for seventeen years in the Soviet Ministry of Commerce and Trade. His decision to move himself inside Trump’s perimeter both literally and financially, and so soon after Trump had himself come into the orbit of Vladimir Putin and Russian mobster Vladimir Golubev, seems significant. Together, Arif and Sater were central to the Trump Organization’s recruitment of Soviet-born Tamir Sapir into the Trump SoHo project. According to Washington Monthly, Sapir had “ties to Russian intelligence.”128 By 2013, Tamir’s son Alex and Rotem Rosen—CEO of Tamir’s Sapir Organization—were running the Trump SoHo project and, according to both men, receiving numerous inquiries from Russian “oil and gas” oligarchs about when Trump would construct a new tower in Moscow.129 They passed these entreaties on to Trump, who took them to heart by signing a letter of intent for Trump Tower Moscow soon after (see chapter 2). In this way, Sater became essential not only to numerous Trump licensing deals but also to Trump’s two most ambitious corporate projects in this century: Trump SoHo and Trump Tower Moscow.
Trump SoHo was announced in mid-2006, after a lengthy buildup in 2005; plans for Trump Tower Moscow were announced in 2013. According to Forbes, Sater received in 2005—perhaps in recognition of his work recruiting the Russian intelligence-connected Tamir Sapir to the Trump SoHo project—“an exclusive deal to develop a project in Russia.”130 Sater referred to this as “the Moscow deal” and said in a 2008 deposition that the “deal” had a site already selected; he was still working on the deal when he gave Ivanka a special-access tour of the Kremlin.131 According to Professor Treisman of UCLA, that coincidence of facts suggests Sater had intimate access to Putin—and a high security clearance at the Kremlin—at the same time he was hard at work running point on a “Moscow deal” for Trump.132
While we don’t know why Sater and Arif entered Trump’s business network between 2002 and 2003, Trump associate Michael Cohen—who the Washington Post says met Trump in the “late 1990s”—may be one explanation.133 Cohen and Sater are childhood friends, bonding at a time when the young Cohen was trying to “emulate” the gangs of Soviet immigrants then ubiquitous in his hometown, Brighton Beach.134
There is evidence that Sater has at times jumped the fence to the “right” side of the law—albeit under duress and only intermittently. As reported by ABC News in March 2018, “Sater . . . says that for the past two decades he has served as a high-level intelligence asset for the DIA, CIA and the FBI. . . . help[ing] bust mafia families, capture cybercriminals and pursue top terrorists—including Osama bin Laden—and earning praise from some of the country’s top law enforcement officials.”135 And, ABC adds, while “he won’t say whether he’s been interviewed by the special counsel, it’s almost certain that Mueller knows his body of work well. [Mueller] served as FBI Director for much of Sater’s clandestine career.”136
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eTN describes Trump Jr.’s depiction of Trump Organization activities in Moscow this way: “Despite a current [Russian] government that projects a ramrod posture, to Trump the current leaders [of Russia] make the scene more scary. Holding back his grin, he said, ‘It’s so transparent—everything’s so interconnected that it really does not matter what is supposed to happen as what it is they want to happen is ultimately what happens’ ” (emphasis added). It is unclear from eTN’s coverage of the Trump Jr. speech who the “they” is that the young Trump Organization executive is referring to.
Putin was Russia’s president (the first time) from May 7, 2000, to May 7, 2008, and is widely reported to have exercised tight control over the Kremlin during that period. The Guardian wrote, in May 2015, that Putin spent his first two terms in office “mov[ing] toward greater consolidation of his own power.”137
When Putin first ascended to power in Russia in 2000, he ushered in an era of brutality, corruption, and fear in a nation whose landmass is the world’s largest.138 Since Putin assumed control of the former Soviet Union—minus its many breakaway republics—it has come to be ranked 180 out of 199 nations in press freedom; PolitiFact notes that “[Putin’s] regime began to commandeer the press” the very year Putin came to power.139 As of 2015, when Trump announced his presidential run and immediately began praising Putin and his leadership, the rate at which journalists were being killed in Russia was 34 times that of the United States.140 Putin has married this hostile environment for journalists with a deeply unsettling romanticizing of the Soviet era, publicly decrying Soviet repression while, according Kremlin critics inside Russia, “attempt[ing] to whitewash the image of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin” by printing “government-sponsored school textbooks that [paint] Soviet dictator Stalin in a largely positive light.” These critics call such actions part of Putin’s deliberate, systematic “rollback on democracy.”141
Putin’s conspicuously deliberate retreat from democratic processes and rights has given rise to the term “Putinism” to describe the system of government in Russia. Putinism was decribed by Putin critic Boris Nemtsov, prior to his assassination 100 days before Trump announced his presidential campaign, as “a one-party system, with censorship, a puppet parliament, the ending of an independent judiciary, firm centralization of power and finances, [and a] hypertrophied role of special services and bureaucracy, in particular in relation to business.”142 Nemtsov’s killers were paid a quarter of a million dollars to assassinate him, with the New York Times noting the evidence suggests a close ally of Putin was behind the payments.143
But Putin has done more than neutralize his opponents and arrest protesters and opposition leaders. In February 2014, his forces invaded Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula just one day after its Kremlin-backed president, Viktor Yanukovych, fled the country. Yanukovych was the leader Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort worked for from 2005 to 2016.144 Putin’s unilateral military aggression in Europe deeply unnerved America’s longtime European allies and resulted in sanctions in July 2014, leveled by a broad coalition of nations, including the United States, Canada, and all the nations of the European Union.145 Since their initial imposition, the sanctions, which have been increased and enhanced multiple times, have devastated the Russian economy, with CNBC crediting the restrictions on Russia’s international trade and business operations for having “taken a big bite out of Russia’s economy.” The sanctions have had a crippling effect on Russian oil revenues in particular, “help[ing] spark a collapse in Russia’s currency, the ruble, sending the prices of Russian consumer goods soaring.”146
Meanwhile, CNBC notes that the effect of U.S. sanctions against Russia on American businesses has been negligible, as “Russia makes up less than 1 percent of U.S. exports.”147
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Trump Jr. also discusses the Trump Organization’s reliance on Russian investors investing in the United States. “We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia,” he says.
A March 2017 Reuters investigation of Trump properties found twenty units in Trump Towers I, II, and III purchased by customers with Russian passports or addresses. This figure is sixteen for Trump Palace, twenty-seven for Trump Royale, and thirteen for Trump Hollywood.148
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In the summer of 2008, a Russian billionaire named Dmitry Rybolovlev offers nearly the full asking price for the property—$95 million—despit
e Trump having no competing offers. Trump thereby makes $54 million in forty-eight months. Rybolovlev immediately destroys the structures on the property that Trump had renovated and divides the land into three parcels; by 2018, he is hoping to make an $18 million profit—one-third of Trump’s—in over a decade of holding the land.
By January 2018, artnet News had reported that Rybolovlev had sold two of the three lots for a total of $71.34 million, with the final lot still listed at $42 million.149 If Rybolovlev earns his asking price, he will have made an $18 million profit on the property in ten years.
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After Fedorova wins the 2001 Miss Russia pageant, rumors abound—spurred in part by the presence of Putin’s domestic intelligence service, the FSB, acting as security at the competition—that the pageant has been rigged so that Fedorova will win.
Putin’s fixation on Fedorova, whether reciprocated or not, was both conspicuous and infamous in 2001. An April 2001 article in the Telegraph, a British media outlet, was entitled “Putin ‘Rigged Miss Russia Contest as Policewoman’s Secret Admirer.’ ”150 The article, written by the Telegraph’s Moscow correspondent, referenced not just “whispers that [President Putin] personally intervened in the [Miss Russia] contest,” but “accusations” in local media that the Kremlin had actually “dictat[ed] the result of this year’s . . . beauty contest.”151 At a minimum, Oxana Fedorova’s victory in that national competition—which sent her to the 2002 Miss Universe pageant—was “hailed . . . as ‘politically correct’ [because] Mr. Putin has been described as a secret admirer of Oksana Fyodorova and is said to possess a photograph of her. The contest organisers allegedly picked her as winner in a feudal display of loyalty to the head of state.”152 That these rumors were so ubiquitous in Moscow in 2001 that they were repeated by a media outlet in the United Kingdom is an indication that major investors in the Moscow real estate market could easily have come across them.
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There is substantial press attention on the pageant in Moscow as Fedorova wins the competition and makes pageant history as the first Miss Universe from Russia.
Fedorova had to be removed from her post almost immediately. As the New York Post detailed in September 2002, Fedorova’s was a tumultuous reign that lasted only 120 days—making her the first Miss Universe to be fired in the then fifty-year history of the pageant.153 According to the Post, Fedorova had a “tangled love life, mysterious links to Russian President Vladimir Putin, a seemingly endless supply of cash and diamond jewelry and an attitude that tested even the most seasoned officials of the Miss Universe Organization.”154 Fedorova, from St. Petersburg, had a publicly acknowledged boyfriend—a “notorious” “Russian gangster” (per Pravda) named Vladimir Semenovich Golubev, commonly known as “Barmaley”—who also lived in St. Petersburg. Even so, she “insisted on spending most of her time in Moscow,” wrote the Post, which likely helped fuel rumors about her and Putin.155
Lest it seem unlikely that Trump would fire a Miss Universe pageant winner he’d rigged a pageant to crown, a September 2002 CBS News report clarified that the Miss Universe Organization didn’t actually fire Fedorova—it merely found that she “was unable to fulfill her duties,” as Miss Universe Organization president Paula Shugart put it at the time.156 “[Fedorova] needed to spend a lot of time in Russia,” Shugart said. “I believe her mother was ill at one point.”157 For her part, Fedorova said “she gave up the title herself,” because while “the duties of a world beauty are wonderful . . . my prime goal is my studies and career in Russia.”158 The notoriously loquacious Trump was muted, saying that it was “too bad it didn’t work out better with Oxana.”159 Meanwhile, rumors on both sides of the Atlantic—rumors spread, even, by CBS News—held that Fedorova had had to give up her crown because she was pregnant; the Daily Mail noted in November 2009 that pageant officials were concerned because she suddenly “put on weight.”160 While those rumors were never confirmed or denied, Fedorova was at the time connected romantically—whether you believe her, Russian media, or both—to only two men: Vladimir Putin and Vladimir Golubev, both strongmen no woman could cheat on, one imagines, without repercussions.
What makes these allegations of a pregnancy worth noting here, however, is another, related allegation spread by Fedorova herself: that she quit her position because, as International Business Times put it in September 2011, “she was forced [by Trump’s Miss Universe Organization] to go on The Howard Stern Show.”161 It was during that June 25, 2002, interview with longtime Trump friend Howard Stern that Oxana was asked the following question: “At what point during the contest did you have sex with Mr. Trump?”162 When Fedorova said that she had not slept with Trump and added that he had a beautiful girlfriend (the then Melania Knauss), Stern replied, “Mr. Trump likes everybody.”163 A cohost added, “Could you repeat that question to her?”164 Rumors that Fedorova had indeed slept with Trump were so persistent that fourteen years later Fedorova would report to the Express, a British media outlet, that “she became annoyed and frustrated during Trump’s presidential campaign because Western media pestered her for information to defame the billionaire.”165 The Express noted that Trump had “[taken] an interest in Ms. Fedorova,” and that after her victory he “took care of her” as her handler.166
Trump’s interest in Fedorova could just as easily have been financial instead of political or romantic, however. Fedorova’s boyfriend, Golubev, was, according to Forbes Russia, a silent partner in a holding company known as Adamant that in the 2000s boasted $540 million in annual profits.167 Adamant’s business included restaurants, jewelry businesses, an industrial glass manufacturer, an advertising agency, a medical center, and—most significant to Trump, surely—a massive real estate construction and management operation.168 While noting that there were “many reports [in the 1990s] of [Golubev’s] links with organized crime,” Forbes Russia reported in 2013 that Golubev had since gone straight and was helping Adamant ensure its “operations were conducted without collisions with or participation in the well-known St. Petersburg crim[inal community]. . . . [P]articipants in the real estate market of St. Petersburg believe that it was Golubev who helped [Adamant] in the 1990s successfully resolve issues with criminal structures.”169 As with any Russian business, Adamant also had to stay on the right side of local government officials; in the mid-1990s, the first deputy chairman of St. Petersburg was a man named Vladimir Putin. Perhaps it’s little surprise, then, that when local beauty Oxana Fedorova won Miss St. Petersburg in 1999, just thirty-six months after Putin moved from St. Petersburg to Moscow to take up his new post there, she became a favorite of his.
Trump’s business profile suggests that business with Adamant—partly controlled by the new Miss Universe’s boyfriend—was a possible motive for attempting to rig the 2002 pageant. At the time, Adamant was building the first large-scale shopping center in St. Petersburg, which history suggests is the sort of real estate project that would draw Trump’s attention.170 Eleven years later, when Trump signed a letter of intent to build a Trump Tower Moscow, it was for a site in Moscow’s Crocus City complex—whose centerpiece is a shopping mall built by Aras Agalarov.
While Forbes Russia may be right that, by 2013, Golubev had decided to leave organized crime, as late as October 2002—just days after Fedorova’s reign as Miss Universe ended—Golubev was being called a “criminal boss in St. Petersburg” by Pravda.171 The Russian news outlet added at the time that Golubev was “involved in the construction business” but also “sometimes extorts money from oligarchs with the help of his allegedly powerful links in the criminal world.”172 Trump becoming Fedorova’s handler put him immediately within hailing distance of Golubev’s orbit as well as Putin’s, apart from any interest he may have had in Fedorova. By 2002, Trump had learned that building in Russia is about who one knows, not the capital one has.
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The eyewitness asserts that Trump “told the judges who to vote for,” adding that a subsequent conversation among the celebr
ity judges revealed that several had had the same impression. The judges vote for Miss Russia, who thereby becomes Miss Universe until her dethroning 120 days later for failure to faithfully execute the duties of her office. The contest’s judges are subsequently told by parties affiliated with the pageant that Fedorova has been dethroned because of unspecified criminal conduct by her boyfriend, Vladimir Golubev.
In a September 2009 statement published by CNN and other media outlets, Paula Shugart told the media that Trump’s involvement in the Miss Universe selection process ends before the final phase of the competition; the Miss Universe Organization does not appear to have ever acknowledged Trump’s involvement in the selection process beyond that point.173 However, Shugart indicated that the current pageant rules were put in place in 2005, suggesting that Trump had carte blanche to intervene prior to that year.174 Trump’s co-ownership of the pageant with NBC didn’t begin until 2003, raising the distinct possibility that NBC instituted a new judging policy in 2005 in part because it had, by then, seen how Trump comported himself at his pageants.
Rigging televised contests is a crime under both state and federal statutes. The applicable federal statute, 47 U.S.C. § 509 (prohibited practices in contests of knowledge, skill, or chance) carries a maximum penalty of one year in prison per count.175 Trump, who allegedly committed the crime while in Puerto Rico—where federal law applies—would have faced two counts, the first for “engaging in any artifice or scheme for the purpose of prearranging or predetermining in whole or in part the outcome of a purportedly bona fide contest,” and another for “participating in the production for broadcasting of” a contest tampered with under 47 U.S.C. § 509.176 Also in question is whether Trump’s actions would have contravened state or federal statutes protecting advertisers from being defrauded by the organizers of a purportedly “bona fide” broadcast competition.
Proof of Collusion Page 4