Deutsche Bank begins process of providing Trump financial records to New York's attorney general

Authored by edition.cnn.com and submitted by peestoredinballs
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(CNN) Deutsche Bank has begun the process of providing financial records to New York state's attorney general in response to a subpoena for documents related to loans made to President Donald Trump and his business, according to a person familiar with the production.

Last month, the office of New York Attorney General Letitia James issued subpoenas for records tied to funding for several Trump Organization projects.

The state's top legal officer opened a civil probe after Trump's former lawyer Michael Cohen testified to Congress in a public hearing that Trump had inflated his assets. Cohen at that time presented copies of financial statements he said had been provided to Deutsche Bank.

The New York attorney general's office declined to comment.

The bank is in the process of turning over documents, including emails and loan documents, related to Trump International Hotel in Washington, DC; the Trump National Doral Miami; the Trump International Hotel and Tower in Chicago; and the unsuccessful effort to buy the NFL's Buffalo Bills.

slakmehl on April 24th, 2019 at 20:48 UTC »

Trump's finances are the biggest area of mystery left by Mueller. He regarded them as outside his mandate, so there isn't a word about them. No tax returns, no banks, no loans. Nothing.

This probe by the NY AG was motivated by Cohen's testimony, and documentation he provided of Trump's claimed finances in 2011-2013 (Exhibits 1A and 1B here). This was the period Trump began making large all-cash purchases of golf courses.

Deutsche Bank was, for many years, the last western bank willing to lend to Trump. No one knows why they were willing to accept the considerable risk Trump entailed, but given Deutsche's prolific history of Russian money laundering, there will be a focus on whether those loans were being backstopped through other sources.

Of particular interest is Deutsche's behavior immediately before the 2016 election, encapsulated by these two stories:

Story #1 From the Wall Street Journal: "Deutsche Bank in Late 2016 Raced to Shed Loan It Made to Russian Bank VTB"

This was a $600 million loan to VTB, the US-sanctioned bank that was the originally proposed financing for Trump Tower Moscow. Deutsche Bank is denying any knowledge of this loan being used to benefit Donald Trump, but the WSJ notes:

VTB raced to unload the loan when Russia's interference in the election was revealed.

WSJ could not determine where the money went, and the loan had no documented purpose on Deutsche Bank's internal records.

The loan was structured to allow VTB "to use the funding as it wished".

Story #2 From the New York Times: "Trump Sought a Loan During the 2016 Campaign. Deutsche Bank Said No."

We still don't know where Trump ultimately got the money after Deutsche turned him down, but a clue may be the property that motivated the loan:

Trump was burning cash that was both funding his campaign and expanding his business group's collection of properties, the Times reported. Citing two unnamed sources, the Trump Organization specifically sought a loan against a Miami property to fund work on a Scotland golf course called Turnberry.

The NY AG is specifically seeking records on the Miami Doral resort, but the Turnberry property is more significant. It is the most mystifying purchase Trump made during an inexplicable spending spree from 2006 to 2014. We don't know where Trump got the cash for these purchases or why the "King of Debt" would be making such massive purchases relative to his balance sheet when interest rates were so low.

Adam Davidson summarizes the particularly insane spending on Scottish golf clubs, most notably Turnberry.

Using what appears to be more than half of the company’s available cash to purchase Trump Turnberry makes no obvious sense for any business person, but especially for Donald Trump. It is a bizarre, confounding move that raises questions about the central nature of his business during the years in which he prepared for and then executed his Presidential campaign.

Scottish golf clubs are not attractive investments. They have been consistently losing value for years, and are often (like Turnberry) money pits because of the required renovation. This was, in fact, the purpose of the loan Trump was seeking, leveraged against his Miami Doral course.

It's also a bizarre investment strategy to put all of your money in one specific asset class. So why did he make $200 million purchases of scottish golf courses? And where did he get the cash? We still don't know, but Scotland has notoriously weak laws against money laundering, and is a popular haven for Russian money laundering in particular. Amazingly, Eric Trump himself reportedly confirmed to Golf Writer James Dodson in 2014 that all of the money they were spending on golf courses was coming from Russia:

"And this is what he said. He said, 'Well, we don’t rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia.' I said, 'Really?' And he said, 'Oh, yeah. We’ve got some guys that really, really love golf, and they’re really invested in our programs. We just go there all the time.’"

Finally, we just found out last week that Deutsche Bank is facing legal action over $20 billion in Russian money laundering for precisely the time period (2010-2014), when Trump Org was making the largest and most suspicious of these purchases.

Solidarieta on April 24th, 2019 at 19:48 UTC »

Since this is a state matter, Trump can't block it, right?

peestoredinballs on April 24th, 2019 at 19:46 UTC »

I always forget about the fucking football team...

The bank is in the process of turning over documents, including emails and loan documents, related to Trump International Hotel in Washington, DC; the Trump National Doral Miami; the Trump International Hotel and Tower in Chicago; and the unsuccessful effort to buy the NFL's Buffalo Bills.