Former Sands Point resident Felix Sater, whose efforts to help Donald Trump with a real estate development in Moscow during his run for president in 2016 was the subject of the investigation headed by Robert Mueller, was featured in recent days not only in the U.S. Senate’s intelligence committee’s report on the election, but also a forthcoming HBO documentary on the subject set to air next week.
Sater is featured as an interviewee in the two-part documentary “Agents of Chaos,” directed by Emmy Award winner Alex Gibney (“Going Clear”), about Russian interference in the 2016 election.
“The was a Herculean effort that was reminiscent of the cleaning of the Augean stables in terms of difficulty,” Gibney said in an interview with trade magazine Variety. “While a lot has been written about certain aspects of this story, much of it was done in such a superficial way that it was hard for people to penetrate. We felt there was value in presenting this as one all-encompassing narrative.”
The magazine says the documentary is expected to cover topics like Russian troll farms, where politically incendiary Facebook posts and viral videos were created and disseminated in attempts to sway the election; an in-depth account of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort’s secret communications with Russia during the campaign; the Steele “Dossier,” which contains memos claiming links between Trump and Russia that helped trigger a political firestorm; and Sater’s efforts to build a Trump Tower in Moscow.
In addition to Sater, interviewees for the documentary include lead prosecutor for the Mueller Investigation Andrew Weissmann; former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe; former CIA director John Brennan; Trump campaign advisor Carter Page; and Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson, among others.
Co-directing the film with Gibney is documentarian Javier Alberto Botero, and former “60 Minutes” producer Lowell Bergman, a key player in the story that inspired the movie “The Insider,” is credited as an executive producer.
The businessman appears near the end of the film’s trailer, which premiered on YouTube on Sept. 24.
“Everyone wants to create a huge conspiracy,” Sater says in the trailer. “Give me a break.”
The film will premiere in two parts on pay cable channel HBO, with the first half airing on Sept. 23 and the second on Sept. 24.
Sater, who was born in the then-Soviet Union and whose family emigrated to the United States as refugees when he was 7, sold his Sands Point home in February of 2019 in order to relocate to waterfront property, said local real estate agent Kathy Levinson. He had purchased the home in 2004 and moved from another property within Port Washington.
