Felix Sater Tells Buzzfeed About Time As Intel Source In Attempt To Rehab 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)
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In an attempt to rehabilitate his image as special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation intensifies, Felix Sater is touting the years he spent serving as a source for U.S. intelligence officials, according to a Buzzfeed News report published Monday.

Buzzfeed News’ report on Sater (pictured above on the right), one of President Donald Trump’s former business partners and a figure in the Russia probe, details the years he spent as an intelligence asset for the U.S. government. During that time, according to the report, Sater provided information on several foreign adversaries, including al Qaeda and Russian criminals.

Buzzfeed News spoke to Sater in Los Angeles and reviewed congressional testimony and court documents from the U.S. government about Sater’s work to confirm that:

  • He obtained five of the personal satellite telephone numbers for Osama bin Laden before 9/11 and he helped flip the personal secretary to Mullah Omar, then the head of the Taliban and an ally of bin Laden, into a source who provided the location of al-Qaeda training camps and weapons caches.
  • In 2004, he persuaded a source in Russia’s foreign military intelligence to hand over the name and photographs of a North Korean military operative who was purchasing equipment to build the country’s nuclear arsenal.
  • Sater provided US intelligence with details about possible assassination threats against former president George W. Bush and secretary of state Colin Powell. Sater reported that jihadists were hiding in a hut outside Bagram Air Base and planned to shoot down Powell’s plane during a January 2002 visit. He later told his handlers that two female al-Qaeda members were trying to recruit an Afghan woman working in the Senate barbershop to poison President Bush or Vice President Dick Cheney.
  • He went undercover in Cyprus and Istanbul to catch Russian and Ukrainian cybercriminals around 2005. After the FBI set him up with a fake name and background, Sater posed as a money launderer to help nab the suspects for washing funds stolen from US financial institutions.

Sater in 1998 was convicted for stock fraud. He later went on to work for the Trump Organization, where he helped secure funding for Trump Soho and tried to broker a deal for a Trump building in Moscow.

In 2017, as Sater was working on a deal to sell energy abroad from Ukrainian power plants, he and Andrii Artemenko, then a Ukrainian parliamentarian, approached longtime Trump lawyer Michael Cohen about a “peace plan” between Russia and Ukraine. Cohen delivered the plan, a Russia-friendly policy that would have led to the easing of sanctions, to the White House after Trump took office.

Read Buzzfeed News’ entire report here.

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Notable Replies

  1. We’re sorry Mr Sater but that Trump Stank can not be removed by anything known on this planet.
    It will follow you to the grave

  2. Well, let’s talk about mr Slater and Donald Trump. I’m sure Donald will be happy…

  3. …and if you need further confirmation, ask John Kelley’s former legacy. You’ll find it in the trash heap of History.

  4. Does Sater have permission from US Intelligence to talk about this? Also how can we believe him - a convicted fraudster about any of this without verification?

  5. Article is an amazing read. If accurate, it makes Sater look like the Forrest Gump of spies. It would also explain why the USIC looked the other way while he was cavorting with Trump. They thought his base criminality could be used as a hook to gather intel and go after Al-Qaeda types and other crooks. They found Trump a useful tool to track other crooks, and didn’t realize that Trump himself was a bigger crook than all of them. I would also give kudos to Loretta Lynch for making the right call on protecting Sater as a confidential asset. FBI and CIA, however, were quite slow to understand what Trump was up to (imho) and left a s**t sandwich of treason and Russian conspiracy for President Obama to deal with. Had the USIC properly tracked Trump and took him seriously beforehand as a Russian asset, they could’ve planted some things out there to keep him from advancing to the nomination.

    Andrew Weismann and the other Mueller attorneys who know Sater and have worked with him for years have probably received a detailed data dump from him about Trump’s business practices and operations. If you follow the money and the law that should lead to indictments and the break up of the Trump enterprise.

Continue the discussion at forums.talkingpointsmemo.com

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