Proof of Collusion

by Seth Abramson

  Sater tells Cohen in his note in October that “we” (Sater and Cohen) “will help [Putin] agree on [the] message” the construction of the tower is intended to embody: “that commerce & business are much better and more practical than politics.”36 Sater tells Cohen and Trump that the goal of this deal is to “help world peace and make a lot of money.”37 What exactly Trump must do to “help world peace” in order to “make a lot of money” is not specified in Sater’s note—but when Trump mentions Russia on the campaign trail, much of the time he emphasizes the need to get along with Moscow and, more particularly, to make deals with Putin that would include eliminating sanctions against Russia. It is the fifth month of his presidential campaign.

  On November 3, Sater writes Cohen to say, “I know how to play it, and we will get this done. Buddy, our boy can become President of the United States of America and we can engineer it. I will get all of Putin’s team to buy in on this.”38 By the time he sends this note, Sater has lined up financing for the Trump-Rozov tower with VTB—a then sanctioned Kremlin-owned bank.39 The next month, however, new sanctions are leveled against VTB, meaning that unless Trump wins the presidency and removes U.S. sanctions on Russia, he will not be able to get the money that Sater has secured for him.40 Sater, knowing the connection between Trump’s Russia policy and his ability to get a Trump Tower Moscow approved by the Kremlin, adds in his November 2015 email to Cohen that he is “eager to show video clips to his Russian contacts of instances of Mr. Trump speaking glowingly about Russia, and . . . he would arrange for Mr. Putin to praise Mr. Trump’s business acumen.” “If he [Putin] says it we own this election,” Sater writes Cohen. “America[’]s most difficult adversary agreeing that Donald is a good guy to negotiate [with].”41 Sater’s view is that Trump announcing—and Putin implicitly blessing—a Trump Tower Moscow in late 2015 or early 2016 will help propel Trump’s presidential campaign forward. It is the most explicit juxtaposition of politics and business that any of Trump’s business associates have proposed to date.

  In January 2016, however, that mark will be bested—as Cohen contacts Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesman, to directly ask for the Kremlin’s help with Trump’s Trump Tower Moscow deal with Rozov.42 That Cohen is seeking Kremlin assistance on a financial transaction even as Trump is pushing his pro-Russia foreign policy with voters—and that Trump has chosen to hide this transaction not only from voters but even from many at his own company—is an indication that Trump and his team are working on two tracks with the hope that each will reinforce the other.

  By late 2015, Torshin is hosting two dinners in Moscow for a high-level NRA delegation that includes NRA president David Keene, top NRA donor Joe Gregory, NRA board member Pete Brownell, and Sheriff David A. Clarke, a Trump supporter who will later become a key Trump surrogate.43 They are joined at one of their dinners by Dmitry Rogozin, a “hardline deputy to Putin” who is at the time (and still is) under U.S. sanctions.44 During the delegation’s visit, members are also introduced, according to reporting by McClatchy, to other “influential Russian government and business figures.”45

  In December 2015, retired U.S. Army lieutenant general Michael Flynn, who has been advising Donald Trump and four other GOP candidates on national security issues for at least two months, goes to a gala in Moscow in celebration of the Kremlin’s media outlet, RT—for whom Flynn works as an analyst.46 He is seated immediately to the right of Putin. Former U.S. ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul will later tell NBC News, “Of course, it is not coincidence that General Flynn was placed next to President Putin. Flynn was considered a close Trump advisor. . . . Why else would they want him there?”47 Flynn will subsequently fail to report any of his income from the event—approximately $40,000.48

  One of the other candidates Flynn is advising is Ben Carson; one of Carson’s national security advisers is George Papadopoulos.49 Papadopoulos will be hired as a member of Trump’s national security team, after an interview with Trump campaign cochair Sam Clovis, at a time when Flynn and a just-hired Jeff Sessions (R-AL) constitute the entirety of the Trump campaign’s national security apparatus.50

  In 2016, the annual NRA conference is held in Louisville, Kentucky, and once again Torshin and Butina attend. A few days before the conference, Butina’s boyfriend, Erickson, writes Trump campaign aide Rick Dearborn to inform the Trump campaign that the Kremlin is “quietly but actively seeking a dialogue with the United States that isn’t forthcoming under the current administration,” adding that “the Kremlin believes that the only possibility of a true reset in this relationship would be with a new Republican in the White House.”51 Erickson notes that Torshin will attempt to make “first contact” with the Trump campaign at the NRA convention.52 Erickson adds, “Putin is deadly serious about building a good relationship with Mr. Trump. He wants to extend an invitation to Mr. Trump to visit him in the Kremlin before the election.”53

  At the same time that Torshin approaches Dearborn through Erickson, he also uses Rick Clay, whom the New York Times describes as “an advocate for conservative Christian causes,” to get the same message to Dearborn: Putin wants to meet with Trump, and Torshin wants to meet with Trump first to set up the meeting.54 Dearborn sends the email from Clay on to Jared Kushner, who nixes the idea, according to two sources interviewed by the New York Times.55 It is unknown whom else, if anyone, Dearborn or Kushner pass the email to after reading it, but in fact Torshin does end up dining with Donald Trump Jr. at the NRA convention several days later.56

  Per Vanity Fair, Trump Jr.’s attorney Alan Futerfas says the two men engaged in no more than “gun-related small talk,” but according to McClatchy and the New York Times, Torshin was in fact trying to set up a one-on-one meeting with candidate Trump at an event honoring wounded veterans being hosted at a location near the convention; he even told the campaign he was bringing a gift to the event for Melania.57

  NRA expenditures on the 2016 presidential primaries and general election were far higher than the NRA initially reported—and eventually reach and exceed $70 million, according to a McClatchy report in January 2018.58 The figure is a record-shattering one for the NRA.59 Trump, who had originally promised voters he would spend $1 billion of his own money on his campaign, by the end of the primary season has spent only about 6.5 percent of that total—while paying his own companies $12 million from his campaign coffers in reimbursements for travel, lodging, meals, and other services.60 In May 2016, upon clinching the nomination, he announces that he will not be financing his general election campaign and will take funds from the Republican National Committee (RNC) instead.61 Massive spending by the NRA and the RNC on Trump’s behalf make it possible for him to abandon his self-funding promise from the primary and nevertheless be adequately funded for the November election. In the end, the NRA spends more than the billionaire Trump does on his own election.

  The FBI and Special Counsel Robert Mueller will eventually reveal they have initiated an investigation into whether Torshin and Butina had any effect on the NRA’s remarkable outlay of funds on Trump’s behalf; Torshin will later be sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department and Butina will be indicted. As noted by Vanity Fair in June 2018, “The FBI and special counsel Robert Mueller are investigating meetings between NRA officials and powerful Russian operatives, trying to determine if those contacts had anything to do with the gun group spending $30 million [in direct support] to help elect Donald Trump—triple what it invested on behalf of Mitt Romney in 2012. The use of foreign money in American political campaigns is illegal.”62

  On October 4, 2016, just a month before the presidential election, Paul Erickson writes an email to an acquaintance that reads, “Unrelated to specific presidential campaigns, I’ve been involved in securing a VERY private line of communication between the Kremlin and key [GOP] leaders through, of all conduits, the NRA.”63

  Annotated History

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  From the moment Trump formally announces his presidential candidacy on June 16, 201
5, he tends to discuss two topics with great regularity: first, how good he will be at “getting along” with the Russians and “making deals” with them; second, how well he knows Vladimir Putin and, moreover, Putin’s perspective on whom he can (and whom he wants to) “make deals” with.

  In an interview with Fox News host Bill O’Reilly in June 2015, Trump remarked, “I was over in Moscow two years ago and I will tell you—you can get along with those people and get along with them well. You can make deals with those people. Obama can’t.”64 It is unclear how Trump knew, in June 2015, the ease with which he personally could “make deals” with the Russians and that Obama could not. One explanation comes in an interview with Sean Hannity three days after Trump’s conversation with O’Reilly. When asked if he’s ever had contact with Vladimir Putin, Trump answers “yes” and adds, “I was there two years ago. . . . And I got to meet everybody.”65 When Hannity pressed Trump to confirm that he’d spoken to Putin during the pageant, Trump replied, cryptically, “I don’t want to say,” repeating that answer twice.66 He also guaranteed that Putin hated Obama, though once again he wouldn’t confirm whether the information had come from Putin himself.67 The next month—the same month as FreedomFest—Trump told CNN’s Anderson Cooper, with respect to Putin, “I get along with him fine. . . . He hates Obama. He doesn’t respect Obama. . . . [H]e has no respect for Obama. Has a hatred for Obama.”68 Perhaps most telling was a comment Trump made to Cooper about how, as president, he would work to terminate former NSA contractor Edward Snowden’s continued asylum in Russia: “If I’m president, Putin says [to Snowden], hey, boom, you’re gone [from Russia]. I guarantee you this.”69

  Trump’s 2015 comments assuring American voters that he had met with Putin and indeed knew his mind on presidential politics—at a time when Trump was himself running for president—are so voluminous that only a few of them can be compiled here. On July 15, 2015, Trump told Hannity, “Putin has no respect for President Obama.”70 On July 26, 2015, he wrote on Twitter, “Putin knows that Obama is a danger to the world. Putin will respect President Trump.”71 At a July 30, 2015, presser at his golf course in Scotland, he observed that “[Putin] hates Obama.”72 A March 2017 CNN compendium of Trump-Putin quotes also reveals that Trump assured American voters he would get along with Putin during events on June 16 and 29 (telling the City Club of Chicago, “I had the Miss Universe over there [in Russia] two years ago; I got to know these guys well. We can get along with them well. We can get along with them well”); July 8, 26, and 30; August 12, 14, 20, 23, and 29; and September 23.73

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  As related by Rolling Stone in April 2018, Torshin is a member of Putin’s political party with “close ties to Russia’s internal security service, the FSB, which awarded him a medal in 2016.”

  According to a May 2018 NPR article, Torshin had spent “years of travel [dating] back to 2009 . . . cultivat[ing] ties with American conservatives.”74 The article quotes Steve Hall, a retired CIA chief of Russian operations:

  [Vladimir] Putin and probably the Russian intelligence services saw [Torshin’s connections] as something that they could leverage in the United States. They reach out to a guy like Torshin and say, “Hey, can you make contact with the NRA and some other conservatives . . . so that we can have connectivity from Moscow into those conservative parts of American politics should we need them?” And that’s basically just wiring the United States for sound, if you will, in preparation for whatever they might need down the road.75

  NPR reported that Torshin took a trip to Alaska in 2009 seeking an audience with Sarah Palin, a request he communicated to the Alaska governor’s office through Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak. While Palin did not meet with Torshin, government records indicate that Alaska’s lieutenant governor, Sean Parnell—now the state’s governor—was slated to meet with Torshin in her stead. He now says that he does not recall the meeting.76

  Some of Torshin’s U.S. activities puzzle observers. In March 2015, he gave a speech in Washington, D.C., in his capacity as the deputy governor of the Bank of Russia, and one attendee, a former U.S. official, told NPR that “for anyone at the lunch who’s remotely familiar with finance or the world of central banking, Torshin demonstrated no significant expertise in either realm.”77

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  Within sixty days of Trump’s telling Butina at FreedomFest that he doesn’t see the need for sanctions on Russia, longtime Trump business partner and Russian mafia-linked fixer Felix Sater approaches Trump’s attorney Michael Cohen with a new business opportunity. Sater has been promising Trump a new Moscow tower deal since 2005 but has been unable to deliver; now, he has a willing investor by the name of Andrei Rozov. Sater and Rozov have both been on the executive board of a Moscow real estate company called Mirax Group since 2008, but until Trump announces he is running for president, Rozov betrays no interest in partnering with Trump. Now, he agrees to let Sater approach Cohen with the idea.

  Cohen and Sater are childhood friends from Brighton Beach, also known as “Little Odessa,” in the southern portion of the New York City borough of Brooklyn, where Sater’s father was a small-time crime boss and Cohen a boy who admired the area’s many Russian émigré gangs from afar.78 By 2015, Cohen had become Trump’s most loyal foot soldier. As reported by Business Insider in April 2018, Cohen once said, “If you do something wrong [to Mr. Trump], I’m going to come at you, grab you by the neck, and I’m not going to let you go until I’m finished.”79 It’s no surprise, then, that Cohen has been called Trump’s “pit bull,” and told Vanity Fair in a September 2017 article that “I’m the guy who would take a bullet for the president. I’d never walk away.”80

  Cohen, who attended what Politico calls “the worst law school in America,” was found by a judge reviewing his client records to have only three clients: Sean Hannity, GOP fund-raiser Elliott Broidy, and Donald Trump.81 The Republican National Committee named Broidy a deputy finance chair of the RNC alongside Cohen in April 2017, while Hannity acted as a Trump adviser during the 2016 campaign and has continued to advise him throughout Trump’s presidency. Broidy would eventually be caught in a “hush money” payoff of a former mistress almost identical in its mechanism and its secrecy to the one Cohen pleaded guilty to orchestrating on Donald Trump’s behalf in August 2018—with Broidy’s mistress using the same Cohen-recommended attorney to negotiate her payment from Broidy that one of Trump’s mistresses used to get a $130,000 payment from Trump.82 According to a March 2018 New York Times article, a witness cooperating with Robert Mueller in the Trump-Russia investigation, George Nader, has revealed to the special counsel a yearlong effort to turn Broidy “into an instrument of influence at the White House for the rulers of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.” The article says, “Hundreds of pages of correspondence between the two men reveal an active effort to cultivate President Trump on behalf of the two oil-rich Arab monarchies. . . . High on the agenda of the two men. . . . [is] repeatedly pressing the president to meet privately outside the White House with the leader of the UAE.”83 The Times further reports Nader offering Broidy more than $1 billion in contracts for the latter’s private security company in exchange for preferred access to Trump by the UAE and its agents, including Nader. It is not yet known what if any conversations Trump’s attorney, Cohen, had with Broidy about the UAE when Cohen was representing Broidy and both men were Trump-appointed deputy finance chairs at the Republican National Committee.

  Cohen’s tiny client roster is partly explained by the fact that he was, for a long time, also an executive vice president at the Trump Organization. In testimony before the House Intelligence Committee in December 2017, Donald Trump Jr. explained his belief that, in conversations among executives at Trump Tower, as long as one of the people in the room is a lawyer—or, as applicable, also a lawyer in addition to being a Trump Organization executive—anything said in the room is covered by attorney-client privilege. All that is required, per Trump Jr.’s testimony, is that there be “a lawyer in
the room during the discussion.”84 This is, of course, incorrect.

  In September 2015, per an ABC News report from August 2017, Felix Sater approached Cohen with what he called a “signature development opportunity”: a chance to build a Trump Tower in Moscow separate from the one Trump had previously agreed to build (and was still under a letter of intent to build) in Moscow’s Crocus City complex with the Agalarovs.85 At the end of that September, reported ABC, “Trump Organization officials told ABC News that Sater inflated his connections to the company. Alan Garten, a senior Trump Organization attorney, told ABC that ‘there’s really no direct relationship’ between Sater and [the Trump Organization]. ‘To be honest, I don’t know that he ever brought any deals,’ Garten said.”86 Garten’s statement was inaccurate at best and dishonest at worst: not only had Sater helped secure partners for Trump’s Trump SoHo project—one of the most important projects of Trump’s career—but he’d also sent a number of Russian oligarchs in Trump’s direction. Whoever told Garten to deny Sater’s long-standing relationship with the Trump Organization and his ongoing value to Trump’s bottom line was presumably anxious to forestall public discovery of that arrangement should Sater’s long-awaited “Moscow deal” finally bear fruit—as looked to be the case by September 2015. According to ABC, Cohen kept Sater’s proposal from everyone at the Trump Organization but Trump.87

  Several weeks later, on October 13, 2015, Sater emailed Cohen, saying that he’d secured an investor for his proposal and was enclosing, for Trump’s signature, a letter of intent. Sater had appended a note to the letter of intent that read, in full, according to a September 8, 2017, story by New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman: