deal but obviously the deal was already dead and there wasn t much kremlin involvement if any. that s how it felt. now today we have new reporting which suggests that that e-mail was not the end of that project. it was actually the start of a whole new phase of that project. anthony cormier and jason leopold reported buzzfeed news today that four days after michael cohen sent that e-mail to the cremin, to dimitri peskov, cohen received a reply. he received a letter from a russian mortgage tycoon and broxing promoter. the letter said, in furtherance of our previous conversations regarding the development of the trump tower moscow project we would like to respectfully invite you to moscow for a working visit. oh. the meeting would be to tour potential plots of land for the potential tower, to have round table discussions and coordinate a follow-up visit by mr. trump himself. the same day this letter was sent michael cohen s partner on the moscow project, trump
so qatari officials have explained to u.s. reporters. well, now, now we ve had sort of just as sudden a switch back to qatar once again being treated back in an ally treated as an ally. they re back in america s good graces. the president is hosting the emir of qatar at the white house, calling him a friend, dropping all the terrorism complaints. and directing qatar s neighbors to stop with that blockade after all. why the switch back? here s the headline. kushners near deal with qatar-linked company for troubled tower. this is today. t the new york times first to report today that jared s dad, charles kushner, has convinced qatar to come through after all with a big investment, basically a bailout, for the kushner family real estate company and that skyscraper they bought that
they really can t afford. this deal they have reportedly all but sealed is with brookfield properties. as the times puts it today, brookfield has financial ties to the government of qatar. the qatar investment authority is the second largest shareholder in brookfield properties ranking only behind brookfield s parent company. bloomberg puts an even finer point on it noting the kushner company is doing this deal with a specific upt of brookfield and the single largest owner of that unit is qatar. the qatar investment authority which invests on behalf of qatar s government. so who says big city real estate has to be complicated? or foreign policy for that matter. qatar tells the kushner family real estate company no, we re not going to give you hundreds of millions of dollars to bail you out of your failing sky skraiper in midtown. u.s. policy toward qatar almost immediately turns suddenly and radically hostile against qatar. qatar freaks out a little bit,
but when michael cohen wrote to the kremlin for help he sent his e-mail to the general kremlin press account. like the e-mail address you might find on the website for general kremlin inquiries. like you know, help@kremlin.ru wasn t exactly it but you got the idea. sort of made it seem like maybe michael cohen didn t have much of a direct line to the kremlin. michael cohen and the kremlin s spokesman dmitry peskov both said there was no reply to cohen s request. cohen told reporters that the trump moscow deal was abandoned shortly after that e-mail was sent. that e-mail to the kremlin has seemed like maybe it was a kind of ham-handed last-ditch effort by michael cohen to salvage a deal but obviously the deal was already dead and there wasn t much kremlin involvement if any. that s how it felt. now today we have new reporting which suggests that that e-mail was not the end of that project. it was actually the start of a whole new phase of that project.
or whether this is a whole new group of individuals. we re beginning to piece all of that together. duo you have any clearer sene of why this was secret? we had trump bluntly declaring during the campaign that he had no deals in russia, that he had nothing to do with russia. we know now and we ve learned since and it s added to by your reporting today that he was actively pursuing a very big deal, would have been one of the biggest deals of his life, in russia. he was signing a letter of intent the same day that he was participating in one of the republican primary debates. now based on your reporting we can say this dealmaking and this effort to build this project went on for months after they have previously admitted. why was there so much secrecy around this deal and are you confident we now know the extent of it? we know a good deal of it. i m not certain why they kept it so secret. i can only assume it is because you re negotiating with sort of