Monday brought the return of Felix Sater's name to the tragicomedy of American national politics. The Russian-American, who immigrated from Moscow to Brooklyn at age six, is a former real estate associate of President Trump's who also happens to be, in Bloomberg's estimation, "a career criminal with ties to both organized crime and federal law enforcement." Sater has at times worked as an informant, including to escape jail time for "a sprawling investment scam targeting senior citizens and Holocaust survivors and involving Russian and American organized crime members." In part, Sater provided intelligence to the Feds from his government contacts in Moscow.

Sater did indeed go to prison for stabbing a man in the face with a martini glass during a bar fight, but went on to bigger and better things, partnering with Trump on "a series of high-profile and unsuccessful real estate deals." Sater claims to have met with Trump at Trump Tower countless times to discuss deals, and yet Trump has repeatedly distanced himself from Sater, even claiming he wouldn't recognize him if they were sitting in the same room.

Maybe he had good reason to. Reports from The New York Times and The Washington Post on Monday showed that Sater was working actively on a project to bring a Trump Tower to Moscow while Trump was running for president. The emails between Sater and Michael Cohen, a lawyer at the Trump Organization, are almost comically straightforward. From the Times:

The associate, Felix Sater, wrote a series of emails to Mr. Trump's lawyer, Michael Cohen, in which he boasted about his ties to Mr. Putin. He predicted that building a Trump Tower in Moscow would highlight Mr. Trump's savvy negotiating skills and be a political boon to his candidacy.

"Our boy can become president of the USA and we can engineer it," Mr. Sater wrote in an email. "I will get all of Putins team to buy in on this, I will manage this process."

And later:

"I will get Putin on this program and we will get Donald elected," Mr. Sater wrote.

Considering multiple congressional committees and a Justice Department special counsel, Robert Mueller, are all investigating whether associates of Donald Trump colluded with Russian officials to influence the 2016 election, this is not great news for the president. Some reports indicate Sater is a bit of a blowhard who overstates his credentials and connections, and certainly he seems to be loud in the way he operates. So that might explain Trump's public distancing, though not why Trump would choose to do business with him anyway.

An old interview has resurfaced via Anthony De Rosa to further drive home the point. A 2017 edition of BBC Panorama included a clip from a 2013 interview between Trump and a BBC reporter, Jon Sweeney, which broached the subject of his ties to Sater. Sweeney is direct about who Sater is, and Trump is direct in his decision to walk out of the interview almost immediately:

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There seem to be a couple takeaways here.

1) We should get a few more British blokes asking questions of political leaders on this side of the pond.

2) Trump desperately wants to avoid talking about Felix Sater.

One suspects this isn't the last time Sater's name will pop up in the months to come.

Jack Holmes Politics Editor Jack Holmes is the Politics Editor at Esquire, where he writes daily and edits the Politics Blog with Charles P Pierce.

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