Longtime Trump business partner told family he knows he and POTUS are going to prison: report [View all]

[Julian Englis]

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Source: Raw Story

Felix Sater, one of Donald Trump’s shadiest former business partners, is reportedly preparing for prison time — and he says the president will be joining him behind bars.

Sources told The Spectator‘s Paul Wood that Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s deep dive into Trump’s business practices may be yielding results. Trump recently made remarks that could point to a money laundering scheme, Wood reported.

“I mean, it’s possible there’s a condo or something, so, you know, I sell a lot of condo units, and somebody from Russia buys a condo, who knows?” the president said.

Sater, who has a long history of legal troubles and is cooperating with law enforcement, was one of the major players responsible for selling Trump’s condos to the Russians.

Read more: http://www.rawstory.com/2017/08/longtime-trump-business-partner-told-family-he-knows-he-and-potus-are-going-to-prison-report/

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From the Spectator story, Forget Charlottesville – Russia is still the true Trump scandal
https://www.spectator.co.uk/2017/08/forget-charlottesville-russia-is-still-the-true-trump-scandal/

This is why it is so important that the FBI investigation, led by a special counsel, Robert Mueller, now appears to be reaching back into Trump’s business past. Mueller’s team of prosecutors includes a number of experts in money-laundering and New York real estate. The US media is speculating that he is trying to build an old-fashioned wire fraud, tax evasion and racketeering case against Trump. This is a neuralgic issue for the President. In a New York Times interview he agreed that any investigation of his finances was a ‘red line’ Mueller should not cross. ‘I would say yeah. I would say yes. By the way, I would say, I don’t — I don’t — I mean, it’s possible there’s a condo or something, so, you know, I sell a lot of condo units, and somebody from Russia buys a condo, who knows?’ Trump’s most recent partner in ‘selling a lot of condos’ was a man called Felix Sater. Sater was once jailed for stabbing a man in the face with the broken stem of a martini glass. He was convicted of a massive stock fraud — a partnership between the Russian and Italian-American mafias — but stayed out of jail by becoming an FBI informant.

For several weeks there have been rumours that Sater is ready to rat again, agreeing to help Mueller. ‘He has told family and friends he knows he and POTUS are going to prison,’ someone talking to Mueller’s investigators informed me. Sater himself added fuel to this fire when he told New York magazine last week: ‘In about the next 30 to 35 days, I will be the most colourful character you have ever talked about. Unfortunately, I can’t talk about it now, before it happens. And believe me, it ain’t anything as small as whether or not they’re gonna call me to the Senate committee.’

Sater and Manafort together would pose a deadly threat to Trump’s presidency if they testify that Russian money in his businesses led to information being exchanged with Russian intelligence. This is exactly the relationship — an ‘exchange running between them for at least eight years’ — that the former MI6 officer Christopher Steele described in his ‘dossier’. At a news conference this week at his New Jersey golf club, the President bizarrely asserted that the Steele dossier had been paid for by Russia in order to damage him. This is the latest twist in Trump’s response to the dossier, which began with flat denials in January that he had been filmed by Russian intelligence with prostitutes in a Moscow hotel room.

That remains unproven. Nevertheless, Steele is not the only source. I heard of Russian kompromat — compromising material — on Trump from two sources months before the Steele dossier came to light. That might be evidence for Trump’s statement that Russian intelligence, as well as the US agencies, are out to get him. There are, though, reports of witnesses in the hotel who corroborate Steele’s reporting. These include an American who’s said to have seen a row with hotel security over whether the (alleged) hookers would be allowed up to Trump’s suite. The dossier’s account of hookers in a Moscow hotel room was the subject of gossip among a select group of journalists, politicians, and intelligence people for months before it was published. Now, claims are circulating of more tapes showing even more extreme behaviour. Expect these allegations to emerge in due course.