BUSTED: Felix Sater Lied to MSNBC’s Chris Hayes about his felony conviction
Mob connected Trump associate Felix Sater went on a public relations tour last week, appearing on CNN, ABC and MSNBC in the same day, after a Buzzfeed investigation confirmed a few details of his years as a cooperating witness for the FBI.
MSNBC’s Chris Hayes spent 24 minutes questioning Sater about his past, but the twice convicted felon began with some earnestly delivered, bald-faced lies about what he termed a “drunken bar brawl” where he stabbed a man in the face with the stem of a margarita glass in Midtown Manhattan.
A review of the relevant court records — which includes this appeals brief (embedded below) filed with the New York Supreme Court Appellate Division, by the New York County District Attorney — puts to bed entirely the notion of Sater’s drunkenness first.
Felix Sater told a New York criminal court — under oath — that he was not drunk, nor impaired during the 1991 incident. Contrary to Sater’s statements last week, he didn’t act in self defense either according to the two below excerpts.
Felix Sater told MSNBC’s Chris Hayes:
Sater: [I] went on to work on Wall Street had a very successful career on Wall Street as a young man unfortunately one night in a drunken bar brawl, one guy went for a beer bottle, I went for a margarita glass and that changed the trajectory of my life.
Hayes: You did a year for that.
Sater: I went to jail and I did a year for that bar fight when I came out I had no money young child had no money and in a moment of weakness — nothing that I’m proud of then or now or have I ever been — got involved in the stock scam which is the shady side of Wall Street.
In fact, Sater was the aggressor in the fight, in which his victim suffered multiple broken facial bones and lasting scarring about the face and neck from his onslaught.
The victim’s friend restrained the younger, rampaging Sater —perhaps keeping him from committing murder — but then faced his fury.
The enraged young Wall Street trader Sater proceeded to grab another piece of glass, to unleash a fearsome tirade about familial sexual relations, race and religion, that hasn’t aged well with time.
Sater threw that piece of glass at the crowd.
Felix Sater’s criminal past is an issue, solely because of his close association with Donald Trump the businessman and eventually with Donald Trump the political candidate and — unexpectedly — carrying a back channel peace plan for now-President Trump.
As he admitted — and publicly apologized in the below interview for perpetrating — Sater went on from his murderous rampage to commit a $60 million (in 2018 dollars) stock pump and dump swindle.
That crime led Felix Sater to become a cooperating witness for the FBI.
He told interviewers that he was merely a “confidential source” but that is another fabrication, since Sater received protection from the legal consequences of crimes he committed in exchange for his witness testimony.
Sater’s company Bayrock, was partners with Donald Trump in the Trump SoHo hotel, and he pitched projects in Moscow during that time. At issue today is Trump’s knowledge of Sater’s crimes during their business relationship.
For some reason, Felix Sater didn’t include any mea culpa during his MSNBC interview over his many failed Trump projects which resulted in a thick tangle of civil lawsuits across the country.
But it must be made clear that Sater’s words are not trustworthy.
The first thing Felix Sater did when given a substantive, live interview on national cable news, was to tell a really bold lie about the first terrifying act of violence that he admits is what drew him into a life of crime, which ultimately led him to create and maintain close personal business with one Donald J. Trump.
If Felix Sater had to lie to MSNBC about something so obviously verifiable from 27 years ago, just to establish his credibility today, then just consider how credible or not his statements are, about the real reasons for his interactions with Trump’s fixer, the attorney Michael Cohen, both during and after the election.
After he left the program, Hayes’ panel called Sater the lynchpin of a “Whitey Bulger situation.”
Here is the All In with Chris Hayes interview with Felix Sater:
Appeals court brief from 1994 by the New York County D.A. in The People of the State of New York against FELIX SATER:
