Two other cooperating witnesses

Rinat Akmetshin, a Russian-American lobbyist who was present at a meeting between a Russian lawyer; Donald Trump Jr; President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner; and Paul Manafort, has also now appeared before a grand jury.

[...]

Rinat Akhmetshin gave evidence under oath before a grand jury convened by Mueller for several hours on 11th June this year about, among other things, the Trump Tower meeting where he was taken by Veselnitskaya. Akhmetshin, a lobbyist, has acknowledged serving as a counter-intelligence officer in the Soviet military in the past. He is now, he said in a newspaper interview, “a mercenary”, but not a Russian spy and does not work for the Kremlin. “I spend other peoples’ money to achieve other peoples’ goals” was the way he explained his work. The Senate Judiciary Committee is investigating Akhmetshin’s US citizenship, his military background and whether he improperly lobbied for Russian interests.

[...]

And then there is Felix Sater, a key to Trump’s alleged Russian money train. A criminal with connections to Russian and American organised crime, a man who has already been a federal informant in the past is now once again helping the authorities.

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Felix Sater [...] is likely to be centre-stage if Trump’s downfall comes from his Russian monetary connections. Born Felix Sheferovsky in Russia he is one of the most colourful characters in the Trump chronicles: someone once jailed for stabbing a man in the face with a cocktail glass (for a margarita) and who later avoided a possible 20-year sentence and $5m (£3.8m) fine by becoming a federal informer in another case, that of fraud and extortion by the mafia targeting the elderly, some of them Holocaust survivors.

[...]

Sater does not deny working for the government, but he says he did not inform on the mafia.

  UK Independent

Yeah, nobody wants to be known for that.

Sater boasted that he was so close to the Trump family that he was asked by Donald to squire Donald Jr and Ivanka on a trip to Moscow and that during it he arranged for Ivanka to sit in Putin’s chair in the President’s office in the Kremlin. Ivanka acknowledges the trip took place and it may have involved sitting at Putin’s desk.

[...]

Sater is a lifelong friend of Michael Cohen, Trump’s lawyer and a former vice-president of the Trump Organisation. Sater was convinced that Putin would help Trump to get to the White House and he and Cohen would receive the credit due for this. “Can you believe two guys from Brooklyn are going to elect a president?” was the email sent to Cohen at one stage.

[...]

Cohen had initially denied having “any dealings” whatsoever with the Russians in his work for Trump. But newly leaked emails show that he asked for [Putin’s spokesman Dmitri] Peskov’s help with a Trump real estate project in Moscow in 2016 when Trump was already campaigning to secure the Republican nomination for the presidency, thus raising issues of conflicts of interest.

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Sater has agreed to help a federal inquiry into alleged money laundering by Viktor Khrapunov, Kazakhstan’s former energy minister and the former mayor of the city of Almaty who was charged by Kazakh authorities with abuse of power. He is on the Interpol wanted list at the behest of Kazakh authorities. Khrapunov’s family allegedly used shell companies to buy Trump SoHo properties worth an estimated $3.1m. It is not known if any or how much of the supposedly laundered money went to Trump.

Any relevant information from the Kazakh inquiry about Donald Trump is expected to be sent to Robert Mueller. We have to wait to see whether Felix Sater, whose previous “cooperation runs a gamut that is seldom seen” according to the Justice Department has more to reveal about the US President – the man he had helped, as he had once excitedly claimed, to get to the White House.

Yeah, this will have to be made into a TV series so we can all see the whole thing one day.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 1/2/18:

Seth Abramson's latest thread on Sater's involvement.

Vanity Fair article on same.