Ivanka Trump could soon be under FBI investigation. Donald Trump’s daughter was in contact with a Russian athlete, who offered to introduce Donald Trump to Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to the Business Insider .
Leaked emails, first supplied to Buzzfeed , and four sources the outlet spoke with, reveal that the proposed meeting meant to help pave the way for a Trump Tower in Moscow. Ivanka Trump pushed Michael Cohen, former vice president of the Trump Organization and special counsel to Trump, to meet with former Olympic weightlifter, Dmitry Klokov.
Trump’s and his inner circle’s contacts with Putin-affiliated individuals have been the subject of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, and Ivanka Trump has managed to stay out of the focus, but that, too, seems to have changed with the surfacing of emails obtained by Buzzfeed .
There is no evidence, however, that Ivanka Trump’s contact Dmitry Klokov was illegal or that it had anything to do with the election, and it remains unclear whether Ivanka had introduced her father to Vladimir Putin. Still, congressional investigators have, Buzzfeed noted, reviewed the emails and questioned witnesses about the interaction.
Michael Cohen, who is currently under criminal investigation, played a key role in many of Donald Trump’s business deals. In 2015, as Trump was campaigning to become president of the United States, Cohen negotiated with Felix Sater, Trump’s longtime business associate, and agreed with a Russian developer to build the Trump tower in Moscow.
Donald Trump personally signed a nonbinding letter of intent during his presidential campaign, allowing a Russian developer to build the Moscow tower. The deal proposed that Ivanka Trump would be granted the final say on all spa facilities in the tower.
Ivanka, who was an important asset in Trump’s business organization, now works in her father’s administration. A spokesperson for Ivanka Trump’s attorney told Buzzfeed that Ivanka Trump never spoke to Dmitry Klokov.
“Ms. Trump did not know and never spoke to Dmitry Klokov. She received an unsolicited email from his wife (who she also did not know) and passed it on to Michael Cohen who she understood was working on any possible projects in Russia. She did no more than that.”
However, according to Buzzfeed ‘s sources, Ivanka Trump told Cohen to speak with the Russian weightlifter, with whom Cohen had at least one phone conversations. Apart from that, the two men exchanged a string of emails that are now reportedly being examined by congressional investigators and FBI agents probing Russia’s election meddling.
