(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today it filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the Department of Justice seeking all records of communications, including FBI 302 interview reports and offer agreements between former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office and Felix Sater, a former Trump organization official who was recently confirmed to be an informant for the FBI and CIA. Sater reportedly pushed a Russian real estate deal in 2016 while working at the Trump organization.
Sater reportedly “began working with the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 1998, after he was caught in a stock-fraud scheme.” It was Andrew Weissmann who, as supervising assistant U.S. attorney, signed the agreement that brought Sater on as a government informant. Federal prosecutors wrote a letter to Sater’s sentencing judge on August 27, 2009, in an effort to get him a lighter sentence: “Sater’s cooperation was of a depth and breadth rarely seen.”
Sater also was reportedly a CIA informant in the mid-2000s for the CIA during his undercover work with Russian military and intelligence officers.
The Mueller report mentions Sater more than 100 times but fails to mention that he was an active undercover informant for the FBI/CIA for more than two decades. In 2017, Sater was the subject of two interviews conducted under a proffer agreement with Mueller’s office according to page 69, footnote 304 of Mueller’s report on his Russian collusion investigation.
Judicial Watch filed the lawsuit in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia after Mueller’s office, a component of the DOJ, failed to respond to a June 12, 2019, FOIA request for FBI “302” interview reports of Sater that are referred to in the Mueller report; any offer agreements between Sater and the U.S. government; and records of communications between Sater and government employees (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:19-cv-02568)).
In a June 25, 2019 report, Judicial Watch chief investigative reporter Micah Morrison highlighted that:
Beginning in late 2015, Sater repeatedly tried to arrange for [Trump attorney Michael] Cohen and candidate Trump, as representatives of the Trump Organization, to travel to Russia to meet with Russian government officials and possible financing partners.
Though his proposal appears to have been rejected by the Trump campaign, Sater persisted. “Into the spring of 2016,” the Mueller Report notes, “Sater and Cohen continued to discuss a trip to Moscow.” Sater emails Cohen that he is trying to arrange a meeting between “the 2 big guys,” Putin and Trump.
Sater’s re-emergence “suggests the possibility of a more sinister counter-narrative: that someone may have been trying to lure Trump into a trap—a politically damaging entanglement with Moscow money,” Morrison wrote.
Sater reportedly testified for eight hours in a closed-door session before the Schiff-led intelligence committee on July 9, 2019. Sater previously said he believes the Trump Tower Moscow project was no different from other Trump real estate projects that were also in the works. “I have worked on probably five or six Trump Tower projects in the United States and at least that many internationally….”
“Was a Russian real estate deal being pushed on the Trump Organization part of a set-up by a FBI/CIA informant?” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said. “The new Judicial Watch lawsuit attempts to shed light on what could be another aspect of Deep State abusive Spygate operation targeting President Trump.”
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