If the FBI can prove the Trump campaign colluded with Russia, “send ‘em to jail,” said Felix Sater, the Soviet-born American businessman, former spy, and former Trump associate.
Sater, outed this week as a U.S. spy, made several media appearances on Friday morning that revealed that he was much closer to Trump than the U.S. president has claimed. He’s said he’s talked to the president “hundreds of times.” While Sater said he doesn’t know if anyone within Trump’s orbit was working with the Russians to undermine the the 2016 election, the FBI should lock them up if its investigation can prove collusion.
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“Anybody who colluded with anybody — with any other country against America — is guilty of crimes against our country,” Slater told ABC News.
Sater said he worked with Trump on real estate deals as far back as 1999 “to build some beautiful buildings,” he told ABC. That’s why the businessman was “disappointed” when Trump said that he “wouldn’t really know what [Sater] looked like” just a few years ago, in 2013. Sater also contradicted the Trump Organization’s general counsel who said that Sater being in Moscow in 2006 at the same time as Trump’s children, Don Jr. and Ivanka, was just a coincidence.
“The president asked me to be in Russia at the same time as them to look after them,” Sater told CNN.
READ: Trump was planning a Trump Tower in Moscow during the election
BuzzFeed revealed earlier this week that Sater has worked for everyone from the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency tracking Osama bin Laden to the FBI as a source providing intel on the mafia and North Korea for over a decade. He’s still an informant, even now, according to Buzzfeed.
Sater balked at being called an FBI informant in his interview with ABC and described himself as a “confidential source” for the agency.
But there’s also a darker side to Sater’s past. He was jailed for a year for slashing a man with the stem of a margarita glass. After that, he was convicted for his involvement in a stock-exchange scam run by the mob to con people into buying worthless shares.
Sater said he was conducting the interviews Friday morning to clear up some misconceptions about his past and his relationship with Trump. But he failed to answer one question: Has special counsel Robert Mueller’s team questioned him?
READ: Here are all the Trump associates who have been linked to Russia
Sater repeatedly declined to answer the question when pressed by CNN’s Chris Cuomo on “New Day.” Even when Cuomo said he would be legally entitled to say he hadn’t been questioned, Sater bluntly responded: “I choose not to.”
Sater and Mueller do know each other, however. The FBI special counsel was head of the bureau when Sater was working as a confidential source.
Here are some of the most interesting points Sater revealed in his Friday morning interviews with ABC and CNN:
- Enemies: Asked about the fact that he has a huge number of enemies who may be seeking revenge, including al Queda, the Cosa Nostra, North Korea, and the Russian mob, Sater said: “I have been scared every day of my life, but courage is not the absense of fear — courage is conquering.”
- Trump: Sater said he spoke to the then-businessman “hundreds of times,” despite Trump’s 2013 claim that the pair were not close.
- Kremlin: Sater said he organized a visit to the Kremlin for Trump’s children which included a private tour of Putin’s office. He said Ivanka asked if she could sit behind Putin’s desk. “She sat down behind the desk, spun twice in the chair, was very happy about it.” Trump’s daughter has said she doesn’t recall the incident.
- Collusion: When asked if he had ever worked with the Russians to undermine the 2016 election, Sater said: “I would certainly never, in any way shape or form, work with people who are our geopolitical opponents, to the detriment of our country.”
Cover image: Donald Trump, Tevfik Arif and Felix Sater attend the Trump Soho Launch Party on September 19, 2007 in New York. (Photo by Mark Von Holden/WireImage)
