While waiting for new non-Barr stories to break this morning, we take a visit to the “way-back” machine, and review an old story with a  new eye.

Long ago, back in the halcyon days of 2017, when we thought that Trump would just be a batshit crazy president controlled by “adults in the room,” (remember those things? cute idea that didn’t wear well) Business Insider published a story about our old friend Felix Sater. Uncle Sater is the fuzzy sentimental guy who likes to break cocktail glasses into people’s jaws, you remember him. He also liked to take his “fave” pretend niece and nephew, Don Jr. and Ivanka, on trips –  specifically trips to Moscow in 2006.

Now, you are heartily encouraged to wonder what in the ever living fck an organized crime goon like Sater was doing taking those adorable Trump rascals to Moscow in 2006 and what “business” they could possibly have in being there.

Without regard to the fact that we cannot answer the above question, the New York Times obtained a 2015 email in which Sater bragged that during that 2006 trip, he had Ivanka sit in Putin’s private chair in Putin’s Kremlin office. We assume Putin wasn’t also sitting in the private chair in the private Kremlin office at the same very private time, though we have no idea why we’d assume such a thing.

The first line of the email, which was obtained by The New York Times and published on Monday, alludes to a trip to Moscow that two of Trump’s children, Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump Jr., took in 2006.

“I arranged for Ivanka to sit in Putins private chair at his desk and office in the Kremlin,” Sater wrote to President Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, in November 2015.

Ivanka Trump said she had no involvement in discussions about the deal, according to the Times. She also did not confirm or deny whether she sat in Putin’s chair, only saying that she has “never met President Vladimir Putin.”

Coy girl. Still, even if we believe her, that she did not in fact “Meet President Vladimir Putin,” we are assured that she wasn’t just another tourist:

“Sitting at Putin’s desk is certainly not on the regular Kremlin tours,” Daniel Treisman, a UCLA political science professor and expert on Russian politics, told Business Insider in an email. “If true, this would show that Ivanka’s guide inside the Kremlin had the highest security clearances and was personally trusted by Putin.”

Thus we have a situation where a person – Sater – is trusted enough by Donald Trump to take his young adult children to Moscow, while at the same time is trusted enough by Vladimir Putin to “drop by the office.” That’s a lot of “trust” in one guy. We assume the trust extends only so long as he doesn’t have a drink in his hand.

Here is what I want. A new constitutional amendment with a new requirement for the presidency. Yes one must be 35 years old, born a citizen, but also “never once having had a child taken by a mob boss to sit in the private office of the Russian despot, or any dictator, king, viceroy or emperor,” or something to that effect.

Has anyone else noticed that our president’s personal and financial life all seems to overlap with Russia? Up to, and possibly including, even a daughter sitting in Putin’s lap? And the nation just stands around, looking at each other nervously like  “if 0nly there was something that could be done about it.”

Time to get out of the way-back machine, because it does nothing but infuriate us when we realize how many warning signs were right in our faces the whole time.

I wonder what Sater’s up to now?

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Peace, y’all

Jason

[email protected] and on Twitter @MiciakZoom