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The two men had known each other since they were roughneck teenagers hanging out in Brooklyn. Sater, who was born in the Soviet Union and came to the US when he was 6, became a stockbroker, lost his license after a bar brawl, then helped scam investors out of $40 million in a stock fraud. He escaped prison time for that crime by becoming a valuable confidential source for US intelligence agencies and the FBI, doing everything from locating al-Qaeda training camps to spying on Russia’s military-industrial complex to going undercover to catch cybercriminals.
Cohen, meanwhile, grew up in Long Island, got his law degree, and worked as a personal injury attorney in Queens. He was an owner of a failed casino boat venture in Florida, and his family amassed taxi medallions and real estate holdings in New York City before he landed a job as Trump’s personal fixer.
Cohen and Sater grew closer during their time at the Trump Organization. Both men hooked up again sometime in 2006 and were intimately familiar with how the company structured its deals across the globe.
But now, Cohen lashed out at his friend with a fusillade of angry text messages on Dec. 30. “One month plus since the signing of the LOI that I wasted my time on. I put the others all on hold and still, despite every conversation with you, nothing.” He went on: “I will not let you fuck with my job and playing point person.” And he revealed his deep-seated need for Trump’s approval: “Not you or anyone you know will embarrass me in front of Mr. T when he asks me what is happening.”
Like Cohen, Sater was also supposed to visit St. Barts over the holidays with his family, but he wrote Cohen that he was too hurt and embarrassed by a recent ABC News story that quoted Trump, from a 2013 deposition, saying he wouldn’t know Sater if he walked in the room.
Cohen: “I don’t give a shit about the story that lasted all of one day. No one picked it up because no one cares.”
Sater: “It lasted one day because I kept my mouth shut for you and your team.” He added: “The schmuck that I am I said no comment. Because you told me to kill it, and we have bigger fish to fry.”
The messages ended with a sharp rebuke from Cohen: “Not going to argue with you. Please don’t reach out to anyone any longer regarding this.”
The picture has changed a great deal since this reporting however, This story kind of gave credence to the story Cohen was telling at the time-that the Trump Tower Moscow project ended in late 2015-before the first primary voting. Cohen has since testified both for Mueller publicly before Congress that they continued to try to build the Trump Tower in Moscow until June-after the Washington Post report about the hacks of the DNC. Then Giulani clumsily let it slip that they were still working on the project through the election and beyond.
Then we got the report that Papadopoulos was being investigated by the FBI again on the question of him and Sergei Millan continuing to work on the Moscow project post election.