Want to support more reporting like this? Become a BuzzFeed News member today. All the oligarchs would line up to live in the same building as Putin.” A second source confirmed the plan. “My idea was to give a $50 million penthouse to Putin and charge $250 million more for the rest of the units. “In Russia, the oligarchs would bend over backwards to live in the same building as Vladimir Putin,” Sater told BuzzFeed News. Sater told BuzzFeed News today that he and Cohen thought giving the Trump Tower’s most luxurious apartment, a $50 million penthouse, to Putin would entice other wealthy buyers to purchase their own. The two men worked furiously behind the scenes into the summer of 2016 to get the Moscow deal finished - despite public claims that the development was canned in January, before Trump won the Republican nomination. But Cohen said in court documents that he regularly briefed Trump and his family on the Moscow negotiations.īuzzFeed News first reported in May on the secret dealings of Cohen and his business associate Felix Sater with political and business figures in Moscow. The plan never went anywhere because the tower deal ultimately fizzled, and it is not clear whether Trump knew of the intention to give away the penthouse. The revelation that representatives of the Trump Organization planned to forge direct financial links with the leader of a hostile nation at the height of the campaign raises fresh questions about President Trump's relationship with the Kremlin. Cohen acknowledged in court that he had lied to Congress about the plan in order to protect Trump and his presidential campaign. The Trump Tower Moscow plan is at the heart of a new plea agreement by Cohen, who led the negotiations to bring a gleaming, 100-story building to the Russian capital. Two US law enforcement officials told BuzzFeed News that Michael Cohen, Trump’s personal lawyer at the time, discussed the idea with a representative of Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s press secretary. It means nothing but an expression of interest that means very little unless it goes to a contract and it never did," Giuliani elaborated.President Donald Trump’s company planned to give a $50 million penthouse at Trump Tower Moscow to Russian President Vladimir Putin as the company negotiated the luxury real estate development during the 2016 campaign, according to four people, one of them the originator of the plan. In an interview with The New York Daily News, Giuliani dismissed the letter as "bullshit" because he claimed the project didn't go anywhere. There was a letter of intent to go forward, but no one signed it."Ĭuomo concluded his segment by explaining that while this isn't a legal issue, he believes that Trump and his team are preparing for a public relations campaign to put a positive spin on their lie. Cuomo then displayed a quote from Rudy Giuliani, the former New York City mayor who currently works as the president's lawyer, in which Giuliani said, "It was a real estate project. Then he gave a different story where the letter kind of came up, but not in the context of his signing it."Ĭuomo then cut to the president saying that Cohen had signed the letter, but not Trump himself. "You know for a deal that didn't mean anything, it's a lot of pages, man, with a lot of detail about what they wanted and how they wanted it and how they'd be paid," Cuomo explained while showing more details from the letter. First he said there was no deal."Īt that point, Cuomo cut to a series of videos in which Trump denied any connection with Russia. Now I want you to take a walk down memory lane to remind you what the president himself has said about this project. How do I know? Well, because we've been told it was by his lawyer and because it is. All right?" Cuomo said while showing the letter on air. "This is the letter of intent for the proposed Trump Tower Moscow. On Tuesday night, CNN's Chris Cuomo drew attention to a letter of intent signed by President Donald Trump for a Trump Tower in Moscow - even though the president has previously denied that he had any business projects going on with Russia.
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