Russian Influence on Trump's Business Ties

You know, that guy has eight billion dollars more

than me because he was in such

extreme debt at that point, you know?

The Russians, they have a particular type of mark whom

they go after.

They go after somebody who has business resources,

perhaps some shady morals so that they're amenable to the

bribery,

or perhaps are in a difficult financial situation, and either has

political connections or aspirations.

I've just described Donald Trump.

He was the perfect mark for the Russians.

The Russians saved him. They rescued him.

He would not have gotten back in business without them.

I think it's safe to say he couldn't have run for president if he had just been a

guy who was four billion dollars in debt.

When the Russian mafia does something, it's with Putin's permission,

and it's serving his interests.

Have you ever knowingly done business with what I like to call organized

crime?

Have they ever stopped by and said-

Well, I've, I've really tried to stay away from them

as much as possible.

Right.

Although, I must say, I have met on occasion a few of those

people.

Sure.

They happen to be very nice people.

You just don't wanna owe them money.

Yeah, I understand.

Don't owe them money.

But now...

Semyon Mogilevich, he had made a decision to make the move on

Trump after studying Trump's 2004 bankruptcy

filings.

Noticing that Trump had lost his credit lines, they

felt he would not be in the position to say no.

A Russian, uh, real estate firm, Bayrock, started

leasing space in Trump Tower.

Putin needs to keep track of his oligarchs, and one way of

keeping tabs is knowing where their money is.

Bayrock may well have been a way of doing that.

To me, that's a turning point because what we

have here is a

very serious intelligence operation, and it is in the

belly of the beast. It is in the home of the man who becomes

president of the

United States, and it was operating there for many, many

years.

One of the key people putting it together, Felix Sater.

A lieutenant in the Mogilevich crime family.

Very connected into the nexus

between the Russian criminal organizations and the Russian national

security organizations.

He became managing director of Bayrock.

He himself had been convicted of two felonies.

Slashing a guy's face

in a bar.

Another was a pump and dump stock scheme.

But he ended up cooperating with the feds, and he started

providing information on sales of weapons to

Al-Qaeda.

Mogilevich, according to FBI reports, was selling weapons to Al-Qaeda.

That raises very interesting questions 'cause I don't think Felix Sater

would betray Mogilevich.

He famously threatened an investor with electrocuting his

testicles.

Trump worked with Sater for many, many years

after it was revealed that he was a criminal.

He continued to work for Trump, and in fact, had a business card saying

that he was a senior advisor to the Trump organization.

There's multiple photographs of the two of them together.

He had an office in Trump Tower.

Trump was the public face of Bayrock.

And yet, when he was placed under oath in a

deposition and

confronted about Sater, he simply says, uh-

If he were sitting in the room right now, I, I really wouldn't know what he looked

like.

Mm-hmm.

Trump actually personally asked Sater to escort his

two children, Ivanka and Donald Trump Jr., on a trip to

Moscow and show them around the town.

He seems to be playing a consistent role in-