Paul Wood

Mueller subpoenas Trump Organisation’s Russia documents

When Donald Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, went to Moscow in 2006, she did all the usual tourist things: walked around Red Square, visited the Kremlin… sat in Vladimir Putin’s private chair. At least she did according to Trump’s broker and business partner Felix Sater. ‘I arranged for Ivanka to sit in Putins private chair at his desk and office in the Kremlin,’ Sater said in an email, which was later leaked. Ivanka put out a statement more or less confirming this, saying that she ‘might have’ sat in Putin’s chair, but couldn’t exactly recall.

The rest of Sater’s emails were more important as they gave details of his efforts to fix a deal for a Trump Tower in Moscow. ‘I will get Putin on this program and we will get Donald elected… Buddy our boy can become President of the USA and we can engineer it. I will get all of Putin’s team to buy in on this.’

The ‘Buddy’ in this email is Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen.

Written by
Paul Wood
Paul Wood was a BBC foreign correspondent for 25 years, in Belgrade, Athens, Cairo, Jerusalem, Kabul and Washington DC. He has won numerous awards, including two US Emmys for his coverage of the Syrian civil war

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