Kushner’s Firm Tied to “Suspicious Transactions” at Deutsche Bank

Special counsel Robert Mueller is reportedly pushing to question Der Trumpenführer in person "soon" according to the Washington Post:

Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III is seeking to question President Trump in the coming weeks about his decisions to oust national security adviser Michael Flynn and FBI Director James B. Comey, according to two people familiar with his plans.

Mueller’s interest in the events that led Trump to push out Flynn and Comey indicates that his investigation is aggressively scrutinizing possible efforts by the president or others to hamper the special counsel’s probe.

Mueller now appears to be turning his attention to Trump and key witnesses in his inner circle, raising the pressure on the White House as the administration enters its second year.

Frankly, this cannot take place soon enough since I suspect that Trump will (i) lie under oath and set himself up for perjury charges, or (ii) go off and create even larger problems for himself and his circle of sycophants.   Meanwhile, Mother Jones is reporting that Jaed "Prince Jared" Kushner may have possible money laundering troubles bubbling up via Deutsche Bank which has flagged "suspicious transactions" information about which will likely end up in Mueller's hands.  Here are article excerpts:

A German business magazine is reporting that Deutsche Bank, the German financial giant which is a major lender to both President Donald Trump and his son-in-law Jared Kushner, identified “suspicious transactions” related to Kushner family accounts, and has reported them to German banking regulators. The bank is reportedly willing to provide the information to special prosecutor Robert Mueller’s team of investigators.  Manager Magazin, a respected German business magazine, reported in its latest print edition, which hit German newsstands on Friday, that Paul Achleitner, chairman of Deutsche Bank’s board, had the bank conduct an internal investigation and the results were troubling. Those results have been turned over to the Federal Financial Supervisory Authority—Germany’s bank regulatory agency, which is commonly known as BaFin.
 “Their finding: There are indications that Donald Trump’s son-in-law or persons or companies close to him could have channeled suspicious monies through Deutsche Bank as part of their business dealings.”

The magazine did not provide additional details about the “suspicious monies”, but Manager Magazin reports that Deutsche Bank’s leadership is worried about the public relations hit the bank might take when—not if—the results of the investigation are turned over to Mueller. “But what BaFin will do about [the bank’s findings] is not the bank’s greatest concern,” the article states. “Rather, it’s the noise that US special counsel Robert Mueller (73) will make in his pursuit of Trump. For he will likely obtain this information—a giant risk to [the bank’s] reputation.”

The article also claims that the investigation into Kushner and his family business is not over, and that internal technical issues are complicating the search, adding that “Achleitner simply doesn’t have a view of the whole picture.” Deutsche Bank did not respond to a request for comment, nor did Abbe Lowell, Kushner’s personal attorney. 

The Trumps and Kushners relationship to Deutsche Bank is a particularly large conflict of interest, given the bank’s history of clashing with regulators—it has made several multi-billion dollar settlements with regulators in the US and Europe for its role in the LIBOR-rigging scandal and the 2008 mortgage crisis. It continues to be under investigation for its role in a possible money-laundering scheme that helped Russians evade sanctions and move money out of that country.  Update: Jan. 23, 2017: A spokesperson for the Kushner Companies provided this statement to Mother Jones: “Kushner Companies has done nothing wrong with its relationship with Deutsche Bank. The Office of Special Counsel has not contacted us. There is no money laundering. There is no Russian connection. There are no improper loans. There are no misrepresentations. Everything has been handled in a normal, professional and commercial manner. Our transactions with Deutsche Bank were bid out on a competitive market rate basis. Any story claiming that we have done anything wrong in our dealings with Deutsche Bank is made-up and completely baseless. Importantly, not one news agency even called us before running these crazy allegations.” Manager Magazin has not retracted their original story.  

Russia and the Trumps: It Was Always About the Money

Other than trying to satisfy his own insatiable ego and narcissism, Donald Trump has only one god: money and acquiring more money.   Like far to many, Trump needs things and money to instill a sense of self-worth.  Whatever he got, he needed - and still needs - more.  In light of his numerous business bankruptcies and literally thousands of lawsuits against his entities, American banks ultimately learned that he was a bad risk and the money spigot so crucial to supporting his purported real estate empire was turned off.  That left him seeking loans from the Bank of China and from Germany's Deutsche Bank the latter of which is facing subpoenas and questioning from special prosecutor Robert Mueller as The Guardian reports:  

Executives inside Deutsche Bank, Donald Trump’s personal bankers, are expecting that the bank will soon be receiving subpoenas or other requests for information from Robert Mueller, the special counsel who is investigating possible collusion between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign.

A person close to the matter who spoke to the Guardian on the condition of anonymity said that Mueller’s team and the bank have already established informal contact in connection to the federal investigation.

Deutsche’s relationship with Trump and questions about hundreds of millions in loans have dogged the German bank and the White House for months. They have also been the subject of intense scrutiny among some Democrats on Capitol Hill, who have demanded the bank turn over detailed information about the president’s accounts.

Any move by Mueller’s team to pursue Trump’s personal financial record comes as the bank continues to negotiate a settlement with the Department of Justice over its so-called mirror trading scheme, in which the bank’s former Moscow branch is alleged to have allowed $10bn to flow out of Russia. 

According to an analysis by Bloomberg, Trump now owes Deutsche, his biggest creditor, around $300m. He has four large mortgages, all issued by Deutsche’s private bank. The loans are guaranteed against the president’s properties: a new deluxe hotel in Washington DC’s old post office building, just around the corner from the White House; his Chicago tower hotel; and the Trump National DoralMiami resort.

Tellingly, Deutsche Bank ceased making new loans to Trump quite some time ago.  This left Trump ultimately with one source of funding: Russia and Russian oligarchs eager to move money out of Russia, much of it in need of laundering.  A column in Esquire looks at how the quest for Russian money has now perhaps begun to unravel for Trumpenführer.  Here are highlights:

It was always about the money. The reason we never saw the tax returns was because of what they would show about the money. The reason we can't get a straight answer about the family's dealings with the Russians is the money. Preet Bharara got fired because of the money and how the money had been allegedly laundered. James Comey got fired because of the money. Without the money, specifically the money from Russia, the Trump empire likely would have collapsed under a hail of writs and the paterfamilias would have been rendered invisible, even in the mirrors of Mar-a-Lago.

It always was about the money. The meeting on June 6, 2016 ultimately was about the money, as we learned today from CNN. The network reported that it had identified the eighth participant in that now-famous Trump Tower confab. Contrary to the previous load of hooey dispensed by Junior and the first family, this dude was not a translator.  . . . Here's Ray from The New York Times:

In a nine-month inquiry that subpoenaed bank records, the investigators found that an unknown number of Russians and other East Europeans moved more than $1.4 billion through accounts at Citibank of New York and the Commercial Bank of San Francisco. The accounts had been opened by Irakly Kaveladze,  . . . . More than $800 million was wired from abroad to 136 accounts that Mr. Kaveladze opened at Citibank for Russian clients, and most of that was then sent to overseas accounts . . .

It's not hard to believe that Junior wanted this guy's name kept out of the stories, especially now that, as the guy's attorney says, Robert Mueller has come knock, knock, knocking at the door.

The fact is that the president* was never as rich as he said he was, a circumstance that was of outsized importance to nobody except his own narcissistic self. (I don't think it would have changed a single vote if it had been revealed that he wasn't as rich as he was saying he was.) He did, however, always have an outsized sense of himself in the world. He had to keep acquiring to stay true to his self-image. I believe the collision between these two factors left him with no options but to obtain loans except overseas, and the Russian money was easy money. Then he got elected president and it all unraveled.

If obstruction of justice doesn't take Trump - and his children and son-in-law - down, money laundering and other financial crimes likely will do so.  Just imagine Ivanka in bright orange prison garb.