Screenshot/Good Morning America
Felix Sater, the controversial Soviet-born New York figure who had past real-estate dealings with Donald Trump, said in an interview that his emails to Trump lawyer Michael Cohen were merely reactions to the possibility of their friend’s presidency and were only attempting to close a deal for a Trump building in Moscow. The emails between Sater and Cohen, which were made public in August, show Sater saying Trump could become president and “we can engineer it” after getting “Putin’s team to buy in on this.” In a Good Morning America interview that aired Friday, Sater said the emails were just him and Cohen being “beyond giddy that someone that they knew and worked for was running for president... I was trying to do a real-estate transaction. I clearly was not involved in the campaign.” Sater told George Stephanopoulos that he had been in real-estate dealings with Trump for years, being close enough to the family to take Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump on a tour of the Kremlin in 2006. However, Donald Trump denied knowing who he was in a 2013 disposition. Sater also confirmed that he wrote emails pushing for Putin to speak positively about Trump’s real-estate acumen, writing, “If he says it we own this election.” Sater said he did not know if anyone in Trump’s circle was working with the Russians during the election campaign, and told Stephanopoulos that anyone who did collude ought to be sent to jail.