53 Transcripts: Real Estate Promoters

In May and June of last year I wrote a series of posts (53 Transcripts) after reading the nearly 6,000 pages of testimony given to the House Intelligence Committee in 2017 and early 2018 regarding alleged Russian interference with the 2016 presidential election.  This testimony had been suppressed for nearly a year and a half by Representative Adam Schiff after the Democrats seized control of the House because it debunked their theories of Trump collusion with the Russians and exposed Rep Schiff as a serial liar.  I recently discovered one last post that mistakenly was left in draft form and wanted to post it to complete the series.

Before doing so a couple of summary comments on what has proven to be the Russian Collusion Hoax and the greatest political scandal in American history; a concerted attempt to remove an elected President by the opposition party, entrenched federal bureaucrats and supported by supposedly non-partisan media.  The post Election Tampering sums up my views and you can read all the Russia Collusion posts here.

I initially thought there might be something to the allegations regarding Trump based on his own statements during the campaign and after the election.  I was wrong.(1)

There were two pillars upon which the investigation rested.  The first was the Steele Dossier, which proved to be a creation of the Clinton campaign and Russian intelligence, a fact so embarrassing to the Mueller investigation that all mention of the dossier was excised from the collusion section of its final report.  The second was the March 2016 conversation between Professor Joseph Mifsud and junior Trump foreign policy wannabe George Papadopolous.  What was said remains in dispute.  Mifsud, interviewed by the FBI in February 2017, denied making any statements regarding Russian possession of damaging information regarding Hillary Clinton and the Mueller team never charged Mifsud with making a false statement.  What appears to be the case as of now is that Mifsud was not a Russian intelligence asset and not working for the FBI.  But what was he?  If, as I suspect he was tasked by a friendly foreign intelligence service to approach Papadopolous it puts an entirely different light on the beginnings of this affair.  I hope that Special Counsel John Durham's investigation will reveal whatever the truth is about Mifsud.  For more background on Mifsud see Footnote 2 of this post.

Looking back it is also revealing the depths to which the Democrats and their allies stooped to conspiracy mongering.  Just as we have QAnon, we also have what some have aptly referred to as BlueAnon, and the Russian Collusion Hoax was the starting point for an unending wave of conspiracy theories from the Left.

Russian Collusion was a conspiracy theory and it had many sub-components.  As a reminder here are some of them (ones I wrote about as part of the 53 Transcript series are in bold):

Carter Page as key link in collusion

Trump Tower Meeting

Trump Tower Moscow

Miss Universe Moscow and the "salacious allegations" (Fake news, but relevant because Russians.)

Russian Financiers of Trump Org (except there weren't any, but relevant because Russians)

Russian Condo Buyers (after Trump Tower was built, which contains condos separate from the office space, some of the original condo purchasers resold their unit to Russian buyers.  The Trump Organization was not involved but somehow this was relevant because Russians.)

Russian Buying Florida Mansion (Trump bought a Florida mansion and sold it a few years later to a Russian and made tens of millions.  Relevant because Russians.)

Deutsche Bank (so stupid even the D's on the Intelligence Committee gave up on this one.)

Alfa Bank  (Russian owned bank with its servers allegedly connected directly with Trump Org.  Fake news, but relevant because Russians)

Ukraine Plank on GOP Platform

Paul Manafort.  (Supposed co-mastermind behind it all.  Not.  Targeted by Ukrainians working with Hillary Campaign in 2016).

Michael Flynn & The Ruskies (this one completely fell apart with revelations later in 2020)

The Hacks (DNC, DCCC, John Podesta)

Wikileaks (Bumbling clowns Roger Stone and Jerome Corsi try to get info from Assange but fail).

Michael Cohen in Prague.  (And, according to Steele Dossier, co-mastermind with Manafort of collusion.  I was surprised and impressed with Cohen's testimony - precise, knows the real estate world, impassioned rebuttal of the Steele Dossier, and refused to be pushed around by Schiff and Swalwell.)

Cambridge Analytica.  (Bad because it used data from Facebook, unlike the Obama people in 2012 who were good because they used data from Facebook.  More recent information indicates this was a phony story from the start).

This doesn't even include the continuing barrage of "fake news" stories from major media outlets.  For three examples just from one week in December 2017 read Footnote 4 from this post.

Real Estate Promoters

The Democrats on the Intelligence Committee were fixated on the attempt to build a Trump Tower in Moscow based on a complete misunderstanding of how the Trump Organization operated and developed and financed its projects.

There were two primary witnesses on this subject, Felix Sater and long-time Trump Organization lawyer Michael Cohen.

By the time he testified Felix Sater was being portrayed in the press as a Russian asset who was loyal to Putin.  He gave a lengthy opening statement refuting these allegations.  Sater, who was a U.S. citizen after emigrating from Russia with his family at the age of seven, started:

"I was born in 1966 in Moscow, Soviet Union, with the word 'Jew" stamped on my passport under nationality, not Russian, as has been reported about me". 

Sater had previously been the promoter for the Trump SoHo project in Manhattan and had known Michael Cohen since they were both teens.  In discussing some of his emails and his claims regarding contacts with the Russian government as he pursued the Trump Tower project he was unabashed about the fact he would say anything to get a deal done.

"Guys, I'm a real estate promoter.  Until the bank writes the check, it's all salesmanship and promotion to try to get many, many parties towards the center to try to get the deal done." 

Reading this in light of the Trump presidency and, in particular, the debacle he created between the 2020 election and the inauguration, it is clear how much of Trump's political strategy derived from his real estate experience.  The Trump projects were transactional and one-time events.  Each stood alone.  Trump never had to think about longer-term strategy and it hampered him as President.  After the election he employed his real estate techniques, making outlandish and insupportable statements about election fraud, specifically the Dominion software allegations.  He simply didn't care if they were true or not as long as he got enough of his supporters to believe they were.  He would say anything, regardless of longer-term consequences, if it could get him the deal.

Sater was an independent contractor.  If he could put together the deal and the parties in an acceptable form the Trump Organization could agree to proceed with his proposal.  There was never any need for he or anyone else to talk with the Trump Org or banks about financing because the Trump Org only did licensing deals, it provided its brand name and management skills if a project proceeded, that was it - there was no need for financing, so all the talk about being dependent on Russian banks for financing was fake news.

 

It was Sater and Michael Cohen working on the Trump Tower Moscow project and it was only if it came together that it would go to Trump for approval.  Cohen confirmed the contingent nature of Sater's efforts, telling the committee that in a real estate deal, "the loyalty is to who brings the check first."  

 

Sater stated he was ambivalent about Trump entering the presidential campaign because its potential effect on the deal was uncertain:

"I had a concern both that if we won and the project couldn't move forward, because maybe he couldn't do it as the President . . . or if he lost and the other side would lose interest in financing it".  

Cohen testified he discounted some of Sater's email claims and never discussed them with Trump.

"What Mr Sater is is a salesman, and he uses very colorful language".

Cohen went on to say the deal failed because partner could never establish control of property and "I had lost confidence in the licensee [Sater]" by January 2016. 

 

In general, Cohen's testimony demonstrated the complete lack of business knowledge by the Democrats on the committee.

 

He also testified the only time Donald Trump spoke with him regarding Putin was to ask, "Did you see that President Putin said some really nice things about me?", underscoring Trump's lack of interest in the details of foreign policy as well as his belief that if you say nice things about him he will say nice things about you.

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(1) In this, as in other instances, Trump was his own worst enemy.  His statements about Putin and Russia during the campaign and during his Presidency were often terrible and frequently embarrassing.  I wrote that at his 2018 Helsinki summit with Putin, the president sounded like a starstruck teenage girl.  This contrasted with his actions, including sanctioning additional Russian oligarchs, authorizing the attack that killed 200 Russian mercenaries in Syria, the unprecedented American-Swedish-Finnish military exercises in the Baltic aimed at Russia, sanctions halting the Nordstream 2 gas pipeline from Russia to Germany, and an energy policy damaging to the Russian economy.

It's the exact opposite of the Biden Administration so far.  Biden talks very tough about Russia and Putin but, so far, he's given Putin everything he wants.  Trump had refused to extend the Intermediate Nuclear Missile Treaty with Russia unless Russia improved compliance and unless China, which is now a bigger threat, became a party.  For Putin this was a problem because if the treaty was not extended it would place enormous economic pressure on Russia.  Biden immediately announced a five year extension with no additional conditions and without China joining.  Biden has also effectively withdrawn sanctions on Nordstream 2 and with his domestic energy policy he is driving a reduction in U.S. output and an increase in oil prices which suits Putin just fine.  Little noticed in the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment on Russian election interference was a mention in the appendix that the undisputed conclusion was that the Kremlin was supporting American environmental groups trying to block fracking and energy production because it would create favorable conditions for the sale of Russian fossil fuels.