Your Tuesday morning Russia investigation news dump. So much to see here.

I already wrote about that deal for another Trump property in Russia yesterday, which also featured this Felix Slater fella.

However that was only the tip of the bad news iceberg for Donald Trump.

Courtesy of the New York Times: 

The associate, Felix Sater, wrote a series of emails to Mr. Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, in which he boasted about his ties to Mr. Putin. He predicted that building a Trump Tower in Moscow would highlight Mr. Trump’s savvy negotiating skills and be a political boon to his candidacy. 

“Our boy can become president of the USA and we can engineer it,” Mr. Sater wrote in an email. “I will get all of Putins team to buy in on this, I will manage this process.” 

(Okay if this is not proof of collusion with Russia I will eat my hat.)


The emails show that, from the earliest months of Mr. Trump’s campaign, some of his associates viewed close ties with Moscow as a political advantage. Those ties are now under investigation by the Justice Department and multiple congressional committees.

Sater also apparently arranged special access for Trump's daughter Ivanka. 

Yeah, I have not heard of too many people who can brag that they sat in Vladimir Putin's chair.


However Trump has downplayed the friendship with his rather powerful associate for years, even walking out of an interview in 2013 when questioned about it:

Back in 2013, British program BBC Panorama directly asked Trump why he was still doing real estate deals with Sater, and Trump frantically tried to deflect the question before walking out of the interview all together. 

“Well, first of all, we were not in business together, that was a licensing deal,” Trump said. 

“But your name’s on it, Mr. Trump!” replied reporter Jon Sweeney. 

“Excuse me, but I don’t know, you’re telling me things that I don’t even know about,” Trump replied. “I mean, you’re telling me about Felix Sater. I know who he is…” 

Sweeney then interrupted him. 

“But for a year, you stayed in bed with Felix Sater, and he was connected with the mafia!” Sweeney pressed. 

“Again, Jon, maybe you’re thick, but when you have a signed contract, you can’t, in this country, just break it,” Trump replied. “And by the way, Jon, I hate to do this, but I do have that big group of people waiting, so I have to go.” 

Trump at that point got up and walked out of the interview.

Touchy, touchy.

I am not buying that one licensing deal gets your daughter access to the chair of the most powerful man in Russia. But nice story bro.

In other Russia investigation news, Mueller is looking at what Trump knew about that meeting in Trump Tower between Junior and the Russian lawyer:

Federal investigators working for Special Counsel Robert Mueller are keenly focused on President Donald Trump's role in crafting a response to a published article about a meeting between Russians and his son Donald Jr., three sources familiar with the matter told NBC News. 

The sources told NBC News that prosecutors want to know what Trump knew about the meeting and whether he sought to conceal its purpose.

As you may remember Trump supposedly helped draft a letter which explained the meeting away as just a talk about Russian adoptions.

Later of course we learned that it was really about Russian sanctions and sharing dirt on Hillary Clinton, which made Trump's letter a complete lie.

ANOTHER complete lie. 

This of course is only one of many avenues being explored by Mueller and his team of investigators, which seems to be moving ever closer to obtaining the evidence needed to start impeachment proceedings against Trump.

Perhaps that is why there is one GOP lawmaker looking to pull the rug out.

Rep. Ron DeSantis.

Courtesy of Politico: 

Rep. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) is pushing an amendment to severely curtail special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia. DeSantis has put forward a provision that would halt funding for Mueller’s probe six months after the amendment’s passage. 

It also would prohibit Mueller from investigating matters that occurred before June 2015, when Trump launched his presidential campaign.

Of course the reasoning DeSantis uses for pushing this amendment is that he does not want this investigation to become a "fishing expedition."

Makes sense, after all this is not about something important like the Benghazi investigation or looking into Hillary Clinton's emails, right?

Sadly for DeSantis it appears that many of his colleagues, including Paul Ryan, are supportive of the Mueller investigation so it does not appear that his amendment will find much support.

It seems like just about every day we learn something explosive about Trump's ties to Russia. If this were a disaster movie, right around now the Trump character would be hanging by his fingertips from the edge of the crevasse just moments before he fell to his doom.

Let's see how long he can hang on shall we?