Buzzfeed has just published a story that claims what is perhaps one of the weirdest twists in Trump-Russia to date.
Sater is described as Donald Trump’s former business partner, a convicted stock swindler who was born in the Soviet Union, worked in Russia, tried to win Trump a deal in Moscow, and even helped broker a Ukrainian peace plan that Vladimir Putin would have loved.
Basically, he’s portrayed as something just short of a Russian spy.
Effectively, he has been a spy — but for the United States. For the first time, BuzzFeed News has verified the surprising sweep of Sater’s undercover work and many of his specific exploits.
The Buzfeed-verified list of Sater’s undercover exploits is HUGE. Top of the list is that Sater cooperated by providing the friggin’ satellite cell phone numbers of Osama Bin Laden to the government.
He obtained five of the personal satellite telephone numbers for Osama bin Laden before 9/11 and he helped flip the personal secretary to Mullah Omar, then the head of the Taliban and an ally of bin Laden, into a source who provided the location of al-Qaeda training camps and weapons caches
Sater also appears to have been actively been feeding info about Trump. Sater’s testimony could easily be the most damming for Trump to date. There is far too much good stuff in the story to put it here, go read the whole thing. If anybody actually WAS wearing a wire inside Trump Tower, it was likely to be Sater.
I would like to share a video that makes the story even weirder. One of the lesser dispersed facts about Sater is that in 2014 he was named “Man of the Year” by his Rabbi, at the Chabad orthodox synagogue he attends in Port Washington, Long Island. A video exists of the award ceremony. Last year, I remember watching the video and thinking that Sater was just one of the many corrupt Mafioso types who associated with Trump. The Rabbi’s speech—in which he says Sater is an American hero who had saved hundreds of American lives—could not possibly be true and that rather the Rabbi had been completely taken in by the charming but highly criminal Sater. I just watched it again after reading the Buzzfeed article. Wow, whole ‘nuther perspective.