Robert Reich posted on Facebook Feb. 19, 2017

A week before Michael Flynn resigned as national security adviser, a sealed proposal was hand-delivered to his office, outlining a way for President Trump to lift sanctions against Russia. It came from Michael D. Cohen, Felix H. Sater, and Andrii V. Artemenko.

Who are these men, why do they have such direct access to Trump’s White House, and why are they so interested in lifting Russian sanctions?

1. Cohen is Trump’s personal lawyer and business associate who helped Trump scout deals in Russia, including a Trump-branded tower in the Russian republic of Georgia and a short-lived mixed martial arts venture starring a Russian fighter. Cohen is one of several Trump associates now under scrutiny by the F.B.I. for possible links with Russian operatives to interfere in the 2016 election.

2. Sater is a Russian-American, and longtime business associate and senior advisor of Trump’s with connections in Russia. He served as an executive at Bayrock Group, two floors below the Trump Organization in Trump Tower. He says he had been working on a plan for a Trump Tower in Moscow with a Russian real estate developer as recently as the fall of 2015. Decades ago he pleaded guilty to a role in a stock manipulation scheme that involved the Mafia.

3. Artemenko is part of the pro-Putin faction in Ukraine shaped in part by Trump’s former campaign manager Paul D. Manafort. Artemenko traveled to Cleveland last summer for the Republican National Convention to meet with members of Trump’s campaign.

Remember these names. As the noose tightens, they are likely to figure prominently.

What do you think?