The revelations in the Trump-Russia scandal have been breaking at a striking pace in recent days, so it’s probably worth taking a moment to get up to speed, because much of what we’ve learned has been rather stunning.
For example, this Washington Post report, published late yesterday, is a doozy.
A top executive from Donald Trump’s real estate company emailed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s personal spokesman during the U.S. presidential campaign last year to ask for help advancing a stalled Trump Tower development project in Moscow, according to documents submitted to Congress on Monday.
The request came in a mid-January 2016 email from Michael Cohen, one of Trump’s closest business advisers, who asked longtime Putin lieutenant Dmitry Peskov for assistance in reviving a deal that Cohen suggested was languishing.
Despite Trump’s repeated denials that his business operation had no dealings with Russia, a member of his inner circle was, during the campaign, trying to complete a major real-estate deal in Moscow. Not only was a top Trump aide working on this as recently as last year, and not only did the aide reach out to a member of Vladimir Putin’s team, but as Rachel explained on last night’s show, the financing for the deal was coming by way of a bank owned and controlled by Putin’s government in Russia.
This, in and of itself, is quite a revelation. While it’s true the deal didn’t come together, we now know that as recently as last year — not exactly ancient history — Trump pursued the Republican presidential nomination while also pursuing a major business deal with the Russian government. Voters, however, weren’t aware of any of this — though they may have noticed Trump’s effusive praise of Putin at the time.
And this isn’t a situation in which a Trump lieutenant tackled a business venture on his own: as the Post‘s report added, Michael Cohen ‘said that he discussed the deal three times with Trump and that Trump signed a letter of intent with the company on Oct. 28, 2015.” That’s several months after Trump launched his campaign. (He even participated in a debate that evening.)
This is the same business deal Felix Sater, a Russian-born real estate developer and Trump associate, who also tried to help close, saying in an email that completing the agreement would help put Trump in the White House.
“Our boy can become president of the USA and we can engineer it,” Sater wrote in an email obtained by the New York Times. “I will get all of Putins team to buy in on this, I will manage this process.”
If you’re thinking this bolsters allegations of possible collusion between Team Trump and Moscow, you’re not alone.
Let’s also not forget that the president recently said if Special Counsel Robert Mueller looked into Trump’s finances, the president would consider that an unacceptable breach.









