Whispers of a Trump Tower in Moscow are in the wind again
Donald Trump, from left, Tevfik Arif and Felix Sater at the Trump Soho Launch Party in September 2007 in Manhattan. Credit: WireImage/Mark Von Holden
Don’t be shocked if you see the name Felix Sater, a Sands Point resident until a few years ago, dropped into uncorroborated reports about President Donald Trump or the Trump Organization doing future business in Russia.
The Moscow Times, an independent English and Russian language news site, this week quoted unnamed Kremlin sources saying that government officials there have discussed reviving abandoned plans for a Trump Tower skyscraper in their nation’s capital. The reported goal would be to "lure" the American leader into a "big deal" to restore bilateral relations.
Let’s say from the get-go that floating this notion is far from solid and far from flattering to Trump, given the context. It implies that Trump could let his personal money interests become a factor in talks over Russia's three-year-old Ukraine war.
On Sunday, Trump himself helped fuel all manner of speculation about private business with Russia, talking anew about helping to end the war. In all capital letters, he posted on his Truth Social site: "Both will then start to do big business with the United States of America, which is thriving, and make a fortune!"
Even if this cannot be called a revival of his own real estate ambitions, Trump is famously pressing for odd and seemingly unlikely acquisitions for the U.S. He has expressed, as in his first term, a desire to take over Greenland. He touts the idiosyncratic notion of adding Canada as the 51st state. He proposed having the U.S. redevelop bomb-and-missile-ravaged Gaza as a Mideast "Riviera."
Part of what the administration calls its "final offer" for a peace deal in Ukraine involves real estate. While the U.S. would recognize Crimea as part of Russia, Ukraine would be required to sign an agreement with the U.S. on mineral resources.
None of this seems likely at the moment. But as with Trump’s past associations with such ambitious real estate players as Sater and Russian-Turkish developer Tevfik Arif, Trump does see a link between diplomacy and private real estate.
Sater, now 59, pushed for the Moscow Trump Tower project during the 2016 campaign when it wasn’t a sure bet the controversial Republican would win. A 2015 email from him to Trump’s then-lawyer/fixer Michael Cohen said of Trump if the deal succeeded: "Our boy can become President of the USA and we can engineer it ... I will get Putin on this program and we will get Donald elected."
Despite Sater’s multiple mentions in the Mueller report on Trump-Russia contacts, there is no evidence he came through on persuading Russian officials. Sater reportedly departed Long Island for Los Angeles in 2018. Last year, in federal district court in Manhattan, he came out on the losing end of a money laundering lawsuit with the city of Almaty, Kazakhstan which was awarded $32 million in damages.
In 1998, Sater pleaded guilty to one count of racketeering for his role in a $40 million stock fraud scheme. Later, he became an FBI informant; his help was highly praised by former prosecutors including Todd Kaminsky of Long Beach.
In 2019, Sater, who grew up in Brooklyn, was listed as having sold for $2.03 million his four-bedroom Sands Point home on 2 acres purchased 15 years earlier. There’s no sign he’s involved any more with the Trump Organization.
But in the world where Sater and Trump connected long ago, business is business, criminal convictions aren’t always ruinous, and big deals don't die, just get shelved. Could the Moscow tower return as Rasputin legendarily did?
Columnist Dan Janison's opinions are his own.
Dan Janison is a member of the Newsday editorial board.
