Ex-Trump Affiliate Worked for FBI, CIA
Unsealed 2009 letter from prosecutors details Felix Sater's decade of secret cooperation
By Michael Rothfeld
Aug. 23, 2019
A Russian-born businessman at the center of a plan to build a Trump-branded tower in Moscow spied for U.S. law-enforcement and intelligence agencies, providing cooperation at a "breadth rarely seen" against mobsters and others in matters unrelated to the president, federal prosecutors wrote in a newly unsealed letter.
Felix Sater, a former business associate of President Trump, began working with the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 1998, after he was caught in a stock-fraud scheme. As he pleaded guilty, Mr. Sater turned on his coconspirators, federal prosecutors in Brooklyn wrote in an Aug. 27, 2009, letter, unsealed Friday, to U.S. District Judge I. Leo Glasser, who was overseeing the case. He had gone on to assist various agencies in different areas of law enforcement for years, they wrote.
"Sater went above and beyond what is expected of most cooperators and placed himself in great jeopardy in doing so," the prosecutors wrote in pushing for him to get a lighter sentence. On the strength of his continuing cooperation, they had put off his sentencing for more than a decade, an unusually long period for such arrangements.
In an interview, Mr. Sater said he assisted the government primarily to help his country and to compensate for the crimes of his youth, rather than solely to avoid prison, though that was a factor.
"I have done wrongs, but when I go before my maker, I know that I did a lot more good than I did wrong," he said.
Mr. Sater said his cooperation ended in 2017. He said he told Mr. Trump in the mid-2000s that he was aiding the government on national security matters. Mr. Trump in a 2011 deposition in a civil lawsuit denied knowing anything about Mr. Sater's background.
Mr. Sater said he gave Mr. Trump a fuller accounting of his history when Mr. Trump decided to run for president. Mr. Trump was inclined to go public with it but his attorneys advised against it, Mr. Sater said. A spokesman for the White House didn't respond to requests to comment.
The revelations about Mr. Sater's work for the government, which included going undercover in Cyprus to catch Russian cybercriminals and passing along tips about terrorists and a possible presidential-assassination plot, provide a more nuanced view of one past associate of Mr. Trump. They also add a new element to the story of a president whose life history has brought him into contact with an unusually colorful cast of characters.
Many of these events were detailed in an article by the news organization BuzzFeed, but the letter's unsealing is the first public acknowledgment by government officials of Mr. Sater's cooperation.
Mr. Sater, who moved to the U.S. as a boy, worked on the development of the Trump SoHo condominium hotel in the late 2000s.
He became the focus of stories during Mr. Trump's presidential campaign because of a criminal record that included an assault conviction and jail time for breaking a margarita glass on a man's face in a bar fight in the early 1990s. After his release, Mr. Sater became an architect of the stock-fraud scheme, in which he worked with others on Wall Street and in organized crime to buy stakes in cheap stocks, pump up their prices and dump them, according to records from his case.
After Mr. Trump's election, Mr. Sater returned to the public eye when investigations by special counsel Robert Mueller and in Congress delved into his pursuit, starting in the fall of 2015, of a deal to build a Trump World Tower in Moscow. The facility was planned to have 250 luxury condominiums and a 15-floor first-class hotel, as well as offices and a commercial component.
The letter from prosecutors outlining Mr. Sater's work with law enforcement was written to Judge Glasser before his 2009 sentencing under a section of federal law that provides for leniency for cooperators who provide substantial assistance.
The judge gave Mr. Sater no prison time in part based on the letter, but kept the sentence confidential after prosecutors asserted that the information would jeopardize ongoing investigations.
Prosecutors said Mr. Sater began cooperating with the government in 1998 after learning while traveling overseas that he was wanted by law enforcement. Trying to build goodwill, he contacted U.S. intelligence officers overseas and offered information about the Northern Alliance, a group of militias battling the Taliban in Afghanistan, prosecutors wrote.
Mr. Sater provided the U.S. government with information, including serial numbers of Stinger missiles the Northern Alliance wanted to sell back to the U.S., the prosecutors wrote, adding he used contacts with Russian military and intelligence officers and relayed information to the CIA.
"People asked me why I did it, and some may say I am wrapping myself in the flag. And I'd say, f--, yeah. I am. I am proudly wrapping myself in the American flag," he said. "I know this is the greatest country on the face of the earth."