Government watchdog Judicial Watch has issued a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the Department of Justice in order to obtain documents and information about Felix Sater. Sater was working inside the Trump Organization in 2016 on behalf of the FBI and reportedly pushed the Trump Moscow project. That Moscow project was often cited as "proof" by Democrats and media that President Trump had business dealings with the Russians.
According to a release, Judicial Watch is "seeking all records of communications, including FBI 302 interview reports and offer agreements between former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office and Felix Sater."
Here are the background details (bolding is mine):
Sater reportedly “began working with the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 1998, after he was caught in a stock-fraud scheme.” It was Andrew Weissmann who, as supervising assistant U.S. attorney, signed the agreement that brought Sater on as a government informant. Federal prosecutors wrote a letter to Sater’s sentencing judge on August 27, 2009, in an effort to get him a lighter sentence: “Sater’s cooperation was of a depth and breadth rarely seen.”
In a June 25, 2019 report, Judicial Watch chief investigative reporter Micah Morrison highlighted that:
Sater also was reportedly a CIA informant in the mid-2000s for the CIA during his undercover work with Russian military and intelligence officers.
The Mueller report mentions Sater more than 100 times but fails to mention that he was an active undercover informant for the FBI/CIA for more than two decades. In 2017, Sater was the subject of two interviews conducted under a proffer agreement with Mueller’s office according to page 69, footnote 304 of Mueller’s report on his Russian collusion investigation.Beginning in late 2015, Sater repeatedly tried to arrange for [Trump attorney Michael] Cohen and candidate Trump, as representatives of the Trump Organization, to travel to Russia to meet with Russian government officials and possible financing partners.
Though his proposal appears to have been rejected by the Trump campaign, Sater persisted. “Into the spring of 2016,” the Mueller Report notes, “Sater and Cohen continued to discuss a trip to Moscow.” Sater emails Cohen that he is trying to arrange a meeting between “the 2 big guys,” Putin and Trump.
In addition to working with the Mueller probe, Sater has reportedly cooperated with the Democrat's separate investigation, led by House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff.
"Was a Russian real estate deal being pushed on the Trump Organization part of a set-up by a FBI/CIA informant?” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton released in a statement. “The new Judicial Watch lawsuit attempts to shed light on what could be another aspect of Deep State abusive Spygate operation targeting President Trump.”
Meanwhile, the DOJ Inspector General report about the origins of the Russia probe is complete and is expected to be released to the public any day.
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