The man at the center of the latest bombshell reports on the Russia scandal is a convicted felon. As a young stockbroker in 1991, Felix Sater stabbed a man in a Manhattan bar and was subsequently sentenced to prison and effectively barred from selling securities by the National Association of Securities Dealers. Later, he was implicated in a Mafia-connected stock manipulation scheme in 1998.  Despite that fact, Sater went on to work Donald Trump throughout the 2000s, partnering with him on the scandal-plagued Trump Soho and Fort Lauderdale projects that were the subject of various lawsuits.

Sater is also a former executive of the Bayrock Group, a scandal-plagued real estate firm that worked extensively with the Trump Organization. And as reported in the last 24 hours, on an unsuccessful project in Moscow, Sater advised Trump Organization lawyer Michael Cohen to email Vladimir Putin’s top press aide for help in expediting the development. According to the Washington Post, the email “marks the most direct interaction yet documented of a top Trump aide and a similarly senior member of Putin’s government.”

Sater boasted in emails that the Moscow project would bolster his campaign for president. He emailed Cohen, “Our boy can become president of the USA and we can engineer it.” He also wrote, “I will get all of Putins team to buy in on this, I will manage this process.”

To read Bridge Project’s full report on Felix Sater, click here.