It looks like The Trump Organization wasn’t just trying to build a mega building in his boo’s native land but the Trump Tower Moscow would’ve included a $50 million penthouse gift to his sidepiece, Russian President Bae-dimir Putin.
Felix Sater, a real estate developer with ties to the Russian government, told the New York Daily News on Thursday that he had the brilliant idea to offer the penthouse suite to Putin in an attempt to woe investors. According to Sater, in the summer of 2016, he worked with the president’s then-personal lawyer Michael Cohen on ways to entice investors in the Trump Tower Moscow.
BuzzFeed News claims that Cohen not only liked the idea but being the mover and shaker that he once was, he reached out to a representative for Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s longtime adviser and press secretary, about pushing the plan forward. Because Russia has been and most likely always will be mob territory, Sater knew that having the biggest mob boss in its newest building would bring all of those who wanted to be close to the don.
“Would the oligarchs bend over backwards to live in the same building as Putin? Obviously,” Sater told the Daily News.
Sater notes that Cohen loved the idea but added that he had no knowledge as to whether Cohen actually broached the idea to the Kremlin.
“To me, it was really simple: selling the unit to a celebrity is marketing 101 to get other people to invest. Who’s celebrity number 1 in Russia?” he continued. “This was pure marketing. I was being a marketing guy.”
Cohen did not return the Daily News’ request for comment, maybe because he’s busy trying to find out if he gets his own house shoes once he’s in the pokey. Trump’s former fixer agreed to cooperate with special counsel Robert Mueller on Thursday after pleading guilty to lying to lawmakers about Trump’s involvement in the Trump Tower Moscow deal.
The Daily News reports:
Cohen testified to the Senate Intelligence Committee that discussions about the Moscow project ended in January 2016. But he admitted in his guilty plea that was a lie and that discussions in fact stretched until the summer of 2016. Cohen said he lied to Congress to protect Trump and his presidential campaign.
According to Cohen, Trump and his family members were briefed on the Trump Tower Moscow discussions throughout the campaign — a claim the President’s legal team denies.
It’s not clear if Trump was aware of the discussions between Cohen and the Kremlin or whether he was ever filled in on the idea of giving a luxury pad to Putin.
Trump’s prepaid legal counselor Rudy Giuliani laughed at all of it.
“Who the hell would even come up with that?” Giuliani told the Daily News. “The president has never heard of it. If it’s coming from Cohen or Sater or any of those guys, I can’t speak to the truth of it.”
Giuliani also said there is no record of any of this because he’s dumb but not that dumb.
“If you did something like that,” Giuliani said of the proposal, “you would go right to jail.”
From Giuliani’s mouth to God’s ears.