• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

CNN: Document details scrapped deal for Trump Tower Moscow, documents from Oct 2015

Tovarisc

Member
Around the time presidential candidate Donald Trump was touting his real estate dealings at a Republican primary debate, a proposal was in the works to build a Trump Tower in Russia that would have given his company a $4 million upfront fee, no upfront costs, a percentage of the sales, and control over marketing and design. And that's not all: the deal included the opportunity to name the hotel spa after his daughter Ivanka.

An internal Trump Organization document from October 2015, obtained by CNN on Thursday, reveals the details of a 17-page letter of intent that set the stage for Trump's attorney to negotiate a promising branding venture for Trump condominiums, a hotel and commercial property in the heart of Moscow. Trump signed the document later that month, according to Michael Cohen, his corporate attorney at the time. The document CNN obtained does not have Trump's signature because it is a copy of the deal that Cohen brought to Trump to sign.

Cohen pulled out of the arrangement three months later as the project failed to get off the ground.

Trump did not mention during the presidential campaign that his company explored the business deal in Russia. Instead, he insisted that he had "nothing to do with Russia." Even when talking about his past dealings with Russians -- like the Miss Universe pageant he held in Moscow in 2013 -- Trump never referred to the prospective licensing deal that fell through a few weeks before the Iowa caucuses.

While the potential Russian deal was still on the table, Trump was speaking positively about working with Russian President Vladimir Putin and also minimized Russia's aggressive military moves around the world. His willingness to accept narratives favored by the Kremlin contrasted with not only the Obama administration but also his Republican opponents.
Felix Sater, a Russian-born former Trump business associate and mob-linked felon who figured prominently in development of the Trump SoHo property in New York, served as an intermediary in the Moscow venture, shuttling documents between Cohen and the Russian development firm he was hoping to partner with.

In an email to Cohen, Sater wrote the project could "possibly fix relations between the countries by showing everyone that commerce and business are much better and more practical than politics." He continued, "That should be Putin's message as well, and we will help him agree on that message. Help world peace and make a lot of money, I would say that's a great lifetime goal for us to go after."

The preliminary agreement for the Moscow project was signed by Trump on or around October 28, 2015, according to a statement Cohen gave last week to Congressional committees investigating Russian meddling in the 2016 election. Also signing was Andrey Rozov, owner of I.C. Expert Investment Company, which would have been responsible for developing the property, which they hoped to build in the heart of Moscow.

The general outlines of the potential deal, and its collapse, came to light in Cohen's statement last week. But the new details in the document obtained by CNN reveal a branding bonanza in which the Trump Organization would have had no responsibility for financing the project — the potential cost of which is not even mentioned — but have control over the property's management and appearance.

This letter of intent was not a legally binding contract. But it was an agreement that the two parties would try to forge a more formal agreement down the road. It set the contours of the negotiations.
and a lot more at http://edition.cnn.com/2017/09/08/politics/document-trump-tower-moscow/index.html
 
Trump to Schumer: "Pennington! I thought we had a deal!"

(If anybody besides Sanjuro gets that reference, I'll be impressed)
 

Wingfan19

Unconfirmed Member
Trump to Schumer: "Pennington! I thought we had a deal!"

(If anybody besides Sanjuro gets that reference, I'll be impressed)
I can hear it in my head but I can't place where it's from and it's killing me, haha.

EDIT - FUCK it's from Ninja Turtles! Wooooow. I could hear the actor's voice in my head over the phone screaming at April's boss.
 
Top Bottom