Don't forget Deutsche Bank

Seth Abramson‏Verified account
@SethAbramson
When history looks back on today, it will note not the Jill Stein story, or Don Jr. trumpeting "Deep State" conspiracy theories, or even a destructive tax bill that will either discredit the GOP or be ditched when the Dems take over—or both—but this story:

(And not the Ivanka Trump inappropriately dressed at the 2016 US Open story, either, I might add.)

Representative Maxine Waters, the California Democrat who is the ranking member on the House Committee on Financial Services, has been pushing since March to connect dots that could link Donald Trump, his associates, Germany’s Deutsche Bank, and Russian oligarchs. Now, it appears, she’s getting some help from Robert Mueller, the Russiagate special counsel, whose office has issued a subpoena to Deutsche Bank over accounts linked to various associates of the president.

The twin efforts could determine whether or not various members of Trump’s inner circle benefited from the flow of money-laundered funds from Russian oligarchs, through Germany and Cyprus, to Trump-linked businesses and people in Trump’s inner circle, including Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law.

[...]

Since March, Waters has been relentless is demanding that both DOJ and the Republican-controlled committee investigate ties between Deutsche Bank and Trump.

[...]

To understand why this might be important, consider two facts: First, Deutsche Bank was caught red-handed in a money-laundering scheme that involved $10 billion in dirty money from Russian oligarchs, and in 2017 it was forced to pay fines totaling $671 million to New York’s Department of Financial Services, Britain’s Financial Conduct Authority, and the US Federal Reserve. Second, since the 1990s the German financial colossus has been Donald Trump’s personal, go-to piggybank, which has supplied Trump and his companies with a staggering $3.5 billion in loans and loan-guarantee agreements since 1998.

[...]

Did Trump, Kushner, and their partners—along with others in Trump World, including Paul Manafort, Gen. Michael Flynn, and Wilbur Ross, the billionaire who serves as Trump’s commerce secretary—benefit from illegal Russian money that flowed through Deutsche Bank? If so, does President Trump have a hidden obligation to Russia or to Russian oligarchs? And why did the official US investigation of Deutsche Bank’s illegal transactions, conducted under the auspices of Jeff Sessions’s Justice Department, go “dormant” earlier this year?

  The Nation

Because Jeff Sessions is in trouble, too?

[T]he bank loaned Donald Trump $300 million—money that the president still owes the bank—to get him out of a sticky debt situation. And, second, Jared Kushner secured a $285 million loan from Deutsche Bank on the eve of last year’s election, in a transaction that, The Nation reported in August, involved a cast of characters tied to the infamous June 6, 2016, Trump Tower.

[...]

[E]xasperated, and concerned over reports that the Justice Department had let the Deutsche Bank inquiry go cold, in a December 1 letter Waters wrote to Rod Rosenstein, the deputy US attorney general, asking Rosenstein why DOJ had not moved forward with the investigation. “Not only is the President a client of Deutsche Bank, but so too are his daughter, Ivanka Trump, his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and Kushner’s mother, Seryl Kushner."

[...]

(1) Is the investigation into Deutsche Bank’s role in a $10 billion Russian mirror trading scheme still ongoing? If not, what is its present status? (2) What has Attorney General Sessions’ involvement been with the investigation since his appointment? (3) Has President Trump, or his immediate family or any other campaign or White House official inquired about or sought to influence the investigation of Deutsche Bank in any way, including any other potential investigations into the Bank? (4) Is the Department committed to determining who participated in and who may have benefited from the Deutsche Bank Russian mirror trading scheme? (5) Should there be any nexus between Deutsche Bank, the Russian mirror trading scheme and the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 Presidential election, will the information be provided to Special Counsel Robert Mueller?

I'm sure it will.

So far—and contrary to some initial reports, which claimed that Mueller’s Deutsche Bank subpoenas were aimed at Trump directly—the subpoena from Mueller apparently involves only people in Trump’s orbit, but not the president himself. That could change, however, as Mueller’s inquiry moves forward.