Donald Trump’s lawyer emailed Vladimir Putin’s spokesman during the US presidential campaign asking for help with a Trump real estate project in Moscow, according to email evidence presented to Congress.

Michael Cohen, who was vice-president of the Trump Organization at the time as well as being Trump’s attorney, sent an email to Dmitry Peskov, a top Kremlin official, according to the Washington Post.

“Over the past few months I have been working with a company based in Russia regarding the development of a Trump Tower-Moscow project in Moscow City,” the Post reported, citing “a person familiar with the email”.

“Without getting into lengthy specifics the communication between our two sides has stalled,” Cohen said in the Peskov email, which is the most direct high-level communication between the Trump camp and the Kremlin to have emerged so far in the sprawling investigation into Trump-Moscow links.

In a dossier of allegations of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian officials compiled by former British intelligence official, Christopher Steele, Peskov is cited as being in charge of a Kremlin operation to damage Hillary Clinton’s candidacy and promote Trump’s.

The Steele dossier also portrays Cohen as being a key player in the alleged collusion to skew the election, a role Cohen has repeatedly denied.

According to the Post, Cohen wrote to Peskov: “As this project is too important, I am hereby requesting your assistance,” adding: “I respectfully request someone, preferably you, contact me so that I might discuss the specifics as well as arranging meetings with the appropriate individuals. I thank you in advance for your assistance and look forward to hearing from you soon.”

The email is a vivid illustration of the blurred lines between Trump’s business and political activities. When it was sent, Trump was in full campaign mode, holding daily rallies in Iowa, New Hampshire and other states critical to the Republican primary contest.

Other emails published on Monday showed that the Trump Tower project was being promoted by a Russian-born business associate of Trump who was claiming he could persuade Vladimir Putin to back the real estate scheme and help get Trump elected president.



The new details about Trump’s links with the Kremlin, now being investigated by a special prosecutor, emerged from the leaks of emails sent by Felix Sater, who worked for the Trump Organization pursuing property deals around the world.

Sater’s emails, sent in late 2015 to Trump’s lawyer and then Trump Organization vice-president, Michael Cohen, gave an upbeat assessment of the chances of getting Putin to back the development of a Trump Tower in Moscow and the positive knock-on effect that would have on Trump’s presidential campaign.

“Our boy can become president of the USA and we can engineer it,” Sater said, according to an email published by the New York Times. “I will get all of Putin’s team to buy in on this, I will manage this process.”

In another email, Sater looked forward to the eventual ribbon-cutting on a Trump Tower in the Russian capital. “I will get Putin on this program and we will get Donald elected,” he wrote.

It is unclear, from the email excerpts published, to what extent Sater expected Putin to intervene directly to help Trump’s election campaign, but he clearly presented the Russian leader as crucial in determining the outcome of the US vote. However, the Trump Tower in Moscow never materialized. Cohen said in a statement published by the New York Times, that he had suspected Sater of overstating the prospects of success.

“He has sometimes used colorful language and has been prone to ‘salesmanship’,” Cohen said. “I ultimately determined that the proposal was not feasible and never agreed to make a trip to Russia.”

According to a statement Cohen submitted to Congress, also obtained by the Washington Post, he said he had written to Peskov on Sater’s recommendation, in an effort to get Russian government approval of the Trump Tower project. He said he did not recall receiving a response from the Kremlin spokesman and the project was abandoned two weeks later.

The Trump Organization is reported to have handed the emails to congressional committee carrying out a parallel investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. It issued a statement Monday saying: “To be clear, the Trump Organization has never had any real estate holdings or interests in Russia.”



However, the Cohen email to Peskov suggest that the organization was still eagerly pursuing a Trump Tower development in Moscow months after Trump entered the presidential race.

According to Bloomberg News, Cohen said in his statement to Congress that he had discussed the Trump Tower-Moscow project with Trump himself on three occasions and that the Trump Organisation signed a non-binding letter of intent with a Russian developer in October 2015. However, Cohen said the building permits were not forthcoming from the Russian government, and that he had taken the decision to close down the project in early 2016 without referring to his boss, and for purely “business reasons”.

Sater has emerged as a central figure in the Trump-Moscow investigation. He was born Felix Sheferovsky in Moscow in 1966 and moved to the US with his family when still a child. He was imprisoned for stabbing a man in the face with the stem of a smashed margarita glass in 1991, and avoided jail for involvement in a mob-related money-laundering and stock-fraud scheme by becoming an informant for the FBI on organised crime and arms trafficking.

The assistant attorney-general who signed Sater’s plea deal in 1998, Andrew Weissman, is now working in the special prosecutor team investigating a Trump-Moscow links.

The Financial Times reported that Sater is also cooperating with an international investigation into a Kazakh money-laundering network.

Sater and Cohen are reported to have known each other since they were teenagers in New York. Sater established a business relationship with Trump when he was working for a real estate company Bayrock, which partnered with the Trump Organization to build the Trump SoHo hotel in New York, which was completed in 2010. The same year Sater was distributing business card identifying him as a “senior adviser” to Trump.

However, the Trump Organization denied it ever formally employed Sater. Questioned in late 2015, about the time Sater was sending emails about Moscow, Trump claimed not to remember him.

“Felix Sater, boy, I have to even think about it,” he told the Associated Press. “I’m not that familiar with him.”