In a statement to the Post, Cohen downplayed the importance of the deal as “simply one of many development opportunities that the Trump Organization considered and ultimately rejected.” He also dismissed the idea that it was in any way tied to Trump’s presidential bid, telling Congress in a statement Monday, “The decision to pursue the proposal initially, and later to abandon it were unrelated to the Donald J. Trump for President Campaign.” He added that he only sent the e-mail to Peskov at the urging of Sater and does not remember receiving a response. But he did also note that he discussed the Trump Tower Moscow deal with Trump on three occasions and said the president signed the letter of intent in 2015, according to an ABC News report.

The revelation that the Trump Organization reportedly sought a massive commercial real-estate deal in Moscow during the campaign may help explain why Trump was so passionate about thawing relations between the United States and Russia. Trump praised Putin on several occasions while his real-estate company was reportedly seeking the Moscow deal. During an interview with Morning Joe on December 18, 2015, Trump dismissed the allegations that Putin killed journalists who criticized him while simultaneously taking a swipe at Barack Obama. “He’s running his country and at least he is a leader, unlike what we have in this country,” Trump told host Joe Scarborough. He defended the Russian president again, two days later, in an interview with ABC’s Meet the Press.

The e-mails also belie repeated denials by both Trump and his legal team that he had any business interests in Russia. In August 2016, Alan Garten the general counsel of the Trump Organization, told Politico that the company was not seeking deals in Russia and said Sater was not advising the real-estate company. Both statements may have been true at the time, but not several months earlier. (In a statement to the Times on Monday, the Trump Organization wrote, “To be clear, the Trump Organization has never had any real estate holdings or interests in Russia.”)

The Post report is the latest in a string of recent revelations that have thrown light on Trump’s murky relationship with Russia and Russian business interests. Last week, CNN reported that Rick Dearborn, a former Trump campaign adviser who is now Trump’s deputy chief of staff, sent an e-mail informing senior Trump campaign staffers that an individual sought to arrange a meeting between the presidential candidate and Russian President Vladimir Putin. An earlier report revealed that a low-level Trump campaign staffer, George Papadopoulous, also tried to arrange a similar meeting. Both stories follow Trump Jr.’s admission last month that he, Paul Manafort, and Jared Kushner met with a Russian lawyer at Trump Tower last summer after being promised damaging information about Hillary Clinton as part of a Russian government effort to assist their campaign.

Cohen and Sater have been recurring figures in the Russian melodrama currently roiling Capitol Hill. In February, The New York Times reported that Cohen and Sater met with Andrii Artemenko, a member of the Ukrainian parliament, to discuss a proposal outlining how Trump could lift U.S. sanctions against Moscow. According to the Times, Cohen told the outlet that he hand-delivered the “peace plan” to then National Security Adviser Mike Flynn. (Cohen later denied that he delivered it to the former general.)

Sater, who pleaded guilty for his involvement in a Mafia-related stock manipulation scheme in 1998, has also worked closely with Trump on a number of real-estate deals in the past, including the controversial Trump SoHo development. He has also been among the president’s most earnest defenders, though the White House might have preferred he stay quiet. “The next three years of hearings about Trump and Russia will yield absolutely nothing. I know the man, they didn’t collude,” he told New York magazine in an interview earlier this month. “Did a bunch of meetings happen? Absolutely. The people on the Trump team who had any access to the Russians wanted to be first in and be the guys that ran the whole détente thing. Michael Flynn wanted to be the détente guy, and then [Paul] Manafort, I’m sure, wanted to be the détente guy. Shit, I wanted to be the détente guy, why not? But was it really a conspiracy between Putin and Donald to get him elected? A little bit of a stretch.”

This article has been updated.