"Odin iz nashikh? ... [one of ours]? ... (II)

Shmykov image from below-cited article, with caption: Mr. Sater tapped Evgeny Shmykov, a former general in Russian military intelligence, to help with the Moscow project.

Excerpt from Mike McIntire, Megan Twohey and Mark Mazzetti, "How a Lawyer, a Felon and a Russian General Chased a Moscow Trump Tower Deal," The New York Times (Nov. 29, 2018); see also

When Donald J. Trump took a run at building a tower in Moscow in the middle of his 2016 presidential campaign, it was the high point of a decades-long effort to plant the “Trump” flag there.

The role his former lawyer Michael D. Cohen played in the endeavor entered the spotlight again on Thursday after he pleaded guilty to misleading Congress. But the effort was led in large part by Felix Sater, a convicted felon and longtime business associate with deep ties to Russia.

 

Image from article, with caption:  Felix Sater, a longtime business associate of President Trump’s, drew on deep Russian contacts to pursue a real estate deal during the 2016 campaign. One of those contacts was a former intelligence official in Russia.

To get the project off the ground, Mr. Sater dug into his address book and its more than 100 Russian contacts — including entries for President Vladimir V. Putin and a former general in Russian military intelligence. Mr. Sater tapped the general, Evgeny Shmykov, to help arrange visas for Mr. Cohen and Mr. Trump to visit Russia, according to emails and interviews with several people knowledgeable about the events. ...

Mr. Sater drew on connections he had made in Russia in the late 1990s when he began secretly working for American intelligence agencies [JB emphasis], which in turn helped reduce his penalty after a guilty plea in a $40 million securities fraud case. (He was previously convicted after slashing a man’s face in a Manhattan bar fight in 1991.) ...