Rolling Stone: Why Robert Mueller May Be Interested in Trump's Deutsche Bank Records

[TomCADem]

The Mueller subpoena of Deutsche Bank, which happens to be up in its eyeballs in Russian money laundering problems, shows that Mueller investigation is starting to get real, which is why Trump's allies have started clamoring to fire Mueller.



http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/why-robert-mueller-may-be-interested-in-trumps-deutsche-bank-records-w513399

If anyone was going to be the Forrest Gump of the Russia investigation, we're lucky it was Guardian reporter Luke Harding. Harding has spent years reporting on Russia, a career that's meant he's happened to be in certain important places at certain critical times, during which he's happened to interview central figures in the still-unfolding political drama gripping the United States.

For instance, weeks before news broke of a salacious dossier detailing alleged leverage Russia may hold over then President-elect Donald Trump, Harding and a colleague were in a London pub meeting with an ex-British intelligence officer named Christopher Steele about a story they were working on. And a few years earlier, Harding happened to be on assignment in Ukraine, where he happened to interview an American political consultant named Paul Manafort about the work he was doing for Russia's preferred presidential candidate. Then there was the day he spent driving around with Aras Agalarov – the Russian oligarch who connected Donald Trump Jr. with a Russian lawyer promising dirt on Hillary Clinton.

Now Harding has incorporated those stories, along with other relevant experiences – such as the time the FSB broke into his home in Moscow, presumably to bug it, and left a book on sex and relationships on his bedside table – into a book, Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money and How Russian Helped Donald Trump Win. Among its most interesting chapters is one relating to Tuesday's news that Special Counsel Robert Mueller has subpoenaed Trump's records with Deutsche Bank.

In Collusion, Harding details Trump's attempts in 2008 to default on some $330 million he owed Deutsche Bank for its help financing the construction of the Trump International Hotel and Tower in Chicago. The bank sued to force Trump to pay a portion of the debt: $40 million plus legal fees and interest. This was the middle of the financial crisis, a fact Trump tried to leverage in court, arguing he should not have to repay money he owed Deutsche Bank because it was "one of the banks primarily responsible for the economic dysfunction we are currently facing." In fact, Trump went on, because of the bank's role in creating this "once-in-a-century credit tsunami," Deutsche Bank owed him money, to the tune of $3 billion in damages.

[TomCADem]

1. Reuters: The 'mirror' trades that caught Deutsche in Russian web

Of course, the State of New York and the UK had fined Deutsche bank about $630 million in relation to these Russian money laundering schemes, but this would be a pittance compared to what the DOJ and Preet Bahara were going after as part of their investigation, but...

https://www.reuters.com/article/deutsche-mirrortrade-probe-scheme/the-mirror-trades-that-caught-deutsche-in-russian-web-idUSL5N1FL50R

FRANKFURT, Jan 31 (Reuters) - When regulators looked into the “mirror” trades at Deutsche Bank, they didn’t like what they saw. A client would ask Deutsche Bank in Moscow to buy Russian blue-chip stocks using roubles, for example, then shortly after another would tell Deutsche Bank in London to sell the same amount of shares at the same price for dollars.

There was a steady flow of small trades, typically $2-3 million each, totalling about $10 billion of deals over about four years, according to regulators. The parties often lost money on the deals due to fees and commissions.

In fact, the two clients involved “were actually closely related”, said the New York State Department of Financial Services, such as through common ownership.

The regulators established that the deals covertly moved money from Russia to elsewhere in the world in a manner that could have been used for money laundering.

[TomCADem]

2. CNN: Justice investigation into Russian laundering through Deutsche Bank gone quiet

But following Trump's firing of Preet Bahara, the U.S. investigation of Deutsche Bank went quiet until ...

http://edition.cnn.com/2017/11/15/politics/justice-department-investigation-russian-laundering-deutsche-bank/index.html

Washington (CNN)A Justice Department investigation into Deutsche Bank's role in a $10 billion Russian money laundering scheme has gone dormant months after the bank settled with regulators, according to people with direct knowledge of the investigation.

DOJ's money laundering division along with the US attorney's office for the Southern District of New York have been investigating the German lender over allegations it missed red flags that allowed Russians to launder billions of dollars out of Moscow using an elaborate trading scheme.

* * *
It is not clear why the DOJ investigation appears to have slowed, but it comes as senior positions within DOJ have not been filled with permanent appointees and as top agency officials have signaled they are rethinking department policy toward corporate prosecutions.

Under the Obama administration, financial institutions paid hundreds of billions of dollars in fines in the decade since the 2008 financial crisis. The DOJ had reversed decades of tradition by requiring banks to plead guilty to criminal charges ranging from market manipulation to sanctions violations.

[TomCADem]

3. BBC: Trump-Russia probe: Mueller 'demands Deutsche Bank data'

...reports from a German news agency reported Mueller's subpoena.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42240588

US special counsel Robert Mueller has ordered Germany's Deutsche Bank to provide records of accounts held by Donald Trump, according to reports.

Mr Mueller issued a subpoena to the bank several weeks ago demanding the transaction data, Reuters news agency and a German newspaper say.

He is investigating alleged collusion between the Trump presidential campaign and Russia.

* * *
US investigators are said to be demanding information on dealings linked to Mr Trump as part of an investigation into alleged Russian influence in the US presidential election, according to Handelsblatt and Reuters.

[TomCADem]

5. Mother Jones: Robert Mueller May Be Treading On Thin Ice

Given the above, and Trump's own statements, Trump may just decide to take the heat that goes with firing Mueller, rather than risk Mueller discovering and disclosing the truth.

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2017/12/robert-mueller-may-be-treading-on-thin-ice/#

National Review’s Rich Lowry writes today that “if Jared or Don Jr. made the same mistake as Michael Flynn and didn’t tell the truth to FBI agents,” Trump would most likely pardon them. Then he says this:

But if Mueller starts going after Trump’s finances, it’s hard to see any solution from Trump’s perspective other than firing Mueller — and that would be an enormously consequential act that would probably rock his presidency to its foundations. The latest news, by the way, is that Mueller has subpoenaed Deutsche bank records.

I don’t want to read too much into what might just be careless wording, but I’m struck by the lack of the word if. Lowry doesn’t say “if Trump has engaged in illegal financial actions,” he merely assumes that if Mueller starts investigating Trump’s finances, the jig is up.

As it happens, I’d make the same assumption. I doubt very much that Trump could stand up to even some modest digging into his finances. But is that assumption now more or less universal, even among conservatives?

[Achilleaze]

7. I'd bet a crate of Dippin Dots that

Mueller has a plan for the likelihood of another outright fascist dictatorial move by the KGOP republicans and the deeply indebted failed businessman & deceitful golf wanker, Comrade Casino their republican Draft-Dodger-in-Chief. Mueller knows the republicans have sold their souls, and no longer have so much as an iota of honor.

[Jersey Devil]

4. Was Deutche Bank fronting money to Trump for Russia?

One of the things Mueller is checking is whether any of the loans it made to Trump (or Kushner) was bought by a Russian oligarch owned bank, laundering gifts (loans that Trump did not repay) to Trump.

[Cicada]

6. Deutschbank New York employees stunned by loans from German division

The division which lent to Trump was known for using third party guarantors to justify loans with insuffient collateral. I would like to know about possible guarantors. The Rolling Stone article discusses this.

[TomCADem]

8. Rachel Maddie Had a Great Segment...

...laying this all out last night.

[Jersey Devil]

9. yes, saw it, was great

She is sharp as a tack and has been on the money trail for a long time.

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

10. He thought they should pay him?

Well, can we all sue him for damages, as he's primarily responsible for the multifaceted national dysfunction we are currently facing because of his role in creating this once-in-a-century BS tsunami?