are going to clear up, put on a happy face…it’s hard these days…especially since trump and Moscow Mitch are making good on their “promise” to ram through the confirmation process for trump’s pick…Amy Coney Barrett…the Court will skew to the right big time…after Moscow Mitch refused to even give Marrick Garland a hearing…Moscow Mitch “stole” the Supreme Court Seat…along with pushing through nearly a quarter of conservative judges on the federal courts with lifetime appointments…many thought unfit or unqualified for an appointment…but Moscow Mitch was able to push through Neil Gorsuch – he ruled a corporation is a person…then pressure was brought to bear on Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy to retire and that led the way for the controversial Brett Kavanaugh…Any Barrett was on that Federalist List but trump nominated Kavanaugh instead…I guess he had predilections for a fellow sexual assaulter…but that’s another story…there’s a lot of mystery and conjecture about Anthony Kennedy and his stepping down…his son Justin Kennedy was Deutsche Bank’s lender to trump when no other bank would loan trump money because of his stiffing the other banks with his bankruptcies…and then taking the tax deductions of bankruptcy in order to not pay any taxes for years…something fishy in Denmark…and in the matter of trump tax fraud and insurance fraud…that is coming to a head right now in the New York Attorney General’s office …Eric trump is ordered to obey a subpoena to produce documents and make an appearance…Eric says he will appear, but he may renege…that’s a “wait and see”…from the Guardian article of seven months ago, by Julian Borger: “Book reveals Trump effort to persuade Justice Kennedy to step aside for Kavanaugh: New book Dark Towers tells of how family coordinated charm offensive to convince ageing supreme court justice to retire.
The Trump family carried out a “coordinated White House charm offensive” to persuade Anthony Kennedy, a swing vote on the supreme court, to retire and clear the way for Brett Kavanaugh, according to a forthcoming book.
In Dark Towers: Deutsche Bank, Donald Trump and an Epic Trail of Destruction, David Enrich, the finance editor of the New York Times, describes how the German bank became the last major financial institution willing to lend to Donald Trump’s repeatedly defaulting business empire.
Long before Trump ran for the White House, Justice Kennedy’s son, Justin, worked as an investment banker at Deutsche. Enrich describes how he developed a relationship with Trump, his daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner, helping to finance real-estate deals no other bank would touch because of Trump’s record of failing to pay his debts to lenders, contractors and business partners.
“Even Trump’s friends would go to considerable lengths to avoid lending him money,” Enrich writes, adding that virtually the only person who would loan money to Trump was his father, Fred, who is widely known to have repeatedly bailed out his son.
Justin Kennedy was part of the US branch of Deutsche Bank from 1998 to 2009. Drawn to Trump’s risk-taking and glamour, he became a Trump confidant, sitting with the real estate impresario at the US Open tennis or in Manhattan nightclubs, and chaperoning huge loans to finance Trump’s real estate spending sprees.
Kennedy, who ran the bank’s commercial real-estate team, continued to lend to Trump even though Deutsche clients had suffered severe losses when Trump’s casino business collapsed and he declared bankruptcy.
After Kennedy set up his own finance and property firm in Florida, Enrich writes, he continued to help other members of the Trump family – Ivanka, Kushner and Donald Trump Jr – arrange financing for projects in New York. The New York Observer, which was owned by Kushner, put Kennedy on a list of the 100 most powerful people in New York real estate.
Once Trump was in office, he went out of his way to congratulate Justice Kennedy on his son, calling him a “special guy” and saying how much his own children loved him.
“Trump’s flattery,” Enrich writes, “was part of a coordinated White House charm offensive designed to persuade the ageing justice – for years, the court’s pivotal swing vote – that it was safe to retire, even with an unpredictable man in the Oval Office.”
Dark Towers describes how Ivanka Trump befriended the judge, sitting next to him at an inaugural lunch, regaling him with accounts of her close friendship with his son, then visiting the elder Kennedy at the supreme court, bringing her five year-old daughter to hear a case about arbitration agreements.
When Anthony Kennedy announced his retirement in June 2018, it gave Trump an opportunity to tip the court right with his nomination of Kavanaugh, in turn solidifying support among conservatives otherwise sceptical about Trump’s character.
Enrich writes that having helped to stabilise Trump’s business, Deutsche Bank now “indirectly” helped to stabilise his “floundering presidency”.
Trump’s relationship with Deutsche Bank was much discussed during special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian election interference and links between Trump and Moscow.
Enrich points to the separate relationships Deutsche Bank and Trump had with a Kremlin-linked Russian bank, VTB, suggesting: “Perhaps this was more than a coincidence.”
But he provides no direct evidence to support suspicions that funds supplied by Deutsche Bank to Trump over two decades came from Russian sources, and also notes that Deutsche executives deny any such direct financial relationship.
Rather, Enrich portrays the bank’s investments in Russia and in Trump as both being symptoms of a reckless investment culture and a pursuit of prestige, with insufficient checks from senior management and an outdated and fragmented computer data system.
Trump’s supporters inside the bank have also argued he had a relatively low overall debt burden, and that his real estate purchases were fundamentally sound investments.
Justin Kennedy did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
In a statement, Deutsche Bank said: “While elements of the narrative seem to be exaggerated to fit into a storyline, we have long acknowledged and sought to learn from our historical shortcomings.”…and lest we forget…from NBC News article by Allan Smith: “Deutsche Bank employees reportedly flagged suspicious transactions involving Trump and Kushner: Tammy McFadden, a former Deutsche Bank employee, said she reviewed transactions that involved Kushner’s company and Russians in the summer of 2016.
Anti-money laundering specialists at Deutsche Bank flagged multiple transactions involving Donald Trump and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, from 2016 and 2017. Those specialists recommended the activity be reported to the federal government’s financial crimes unit, The New York Times reported Sunday.
But top executives at the global financial giant rejected that advice, current and former employees told The Times.
The transactions that came under review “set off alerts in a computer system designed to detect illicit activity,” five current and former Deutsche Bank employees told The Times. Those transactions were then reviewed by the bank’s compliance staff, who prepared suspicious activity reports that they felt should be sent to the U.S. Treasury Department.
Those reports were never filed, The Times reported, adding that the nature of the transactions was unclear, though at least some of them involved foreign entities or individuals, which raised red flags with bank employees. The Times noted that those red flags “did not necessarily mean the transactions were improper.”
Over the past few years, Deutsche Bank has been punished by both U.S. and European authorities for its role in money laundering schemes, paying hundreds of millions in fines as a result. The bank has a substantial relationship with Trump, as it was the only major financial institution to continue lending to Trump after he went through a financial downturn in the 1990s. Deutsche Bank lent Trump and his businesses more than $2.5 billion and, when he became president, the bank held more than $300 million in Trump’s debt.
“We have increased our anti-financial crime staff and enhanced our controls in recent years and take compliance with the (anti-money laundering) laws very seriously,” Kerrie McHugh, a Deutsche Bank spokeswoman, said in a statement. “An effective (anti-money laundering) program requires sophisticated transaction screening technology as well as a trained group of individuals who can analyze the alerts generated by that technology both thoroughly and efficiently.”
“At no time was an investigator prevented from escalating activity identified as potentially suspicious,” she said. “Furthermore, the suggestion that anyone was reassigned or fired in an effort to quash concerns relating to any client is categorically false.”
Tammy McFadden, a former anti-money laundering specialist at Deutsche Bank who reviewed some of the transactions, told The Times that she was moved to a different department at the bank after she raised the concerns before she was fired last year.
“You present them with everything, and you give them a recommendation, and nothing happens,” McFadden told The Times. “It’s the D.B. way. They are prone to discounting everything.”
In 2016, McFadden reviewed a series of transactions involving Kushner’s real estate company, Kushner Companies, that were flagged by the bank’s software system. McFadden told The Times that she found that money had moved from the real estate company to Russians and felt the transactions needed to be reported to the Treasury Department — particularly as Deutsche Bank had come under intense scrutiny for its involvement in Russian money laundering schemes.
But bank managers in New York felt McFadden’s concerns were unwarranted and did not send a report to the federal government, employees told The Times.
Then, after Trump became president, an internal anti-financial crime team reviewed the president’s transactions and “produced multiple suspicious activity reports involving different entities that Mr. Trump owned or controlled,” three former bank employees who saw the reports told The Times.
The reports involved Trump’s LLC’s and the now-defunct Trump Foundation. But, as The Times reported, the bank chose not to file those reports as well.
Trump responded to the story in a lengthy series of Monday tweets. The president accused news outlets of “writing phony stories about how I didn’t use many banks because they didn’t want to do business with me.”
“WRONG!” Trump continued. “It is because I didn’t need money. Very old fashioned, but true. When you don’t need or want money, you don’t need or want banks. Banks have always been available to me, they want to make money.”
Trump added, “Now the new big story is that Trump made a lot of money and buys everything for cash, he doesn’t need banks.”
“But where did he get all of that cash?” Trump wrote. “Could it be Russia? No, I built a great business and don’t need banks, but if I did they would be there…and Deutsche Bank…..was very good and highly professional to deal with — and if for any reason I didn’t like them, I would have gone elsewhere….there was always plenty of money around and banks to choose from. They would be very happy to take my money. Fake News!”
Congress and the New York attorney general are investigating Trump’s relationship with the bank and have subpoenaed the financial institution for records related to the president, his family, and their businesses. Deutsche Bank has begun turning over documents to the New York attorney general, while Trump and his family last month sued Deutsche Bank to block it from producing records to House Democrats.
A spokesperson for the Trump Organization told NBC News, “We have no knowledge of any ‘flagged’ transactions with Deutsche Bank,” adding that the company has “no operating accounts with Deutsche Bank.”
Emily Wolf, general counsel for Kushner Companies, said, “Any allegations regarding Deutsche Bank’s relationship with Kushner Companies which involved money laundering is completely made up and totally false.”
House Democrats quickly highlighted the report.
“As more and more damning evidence against @realDonaldTrump comes into public view, it becomes clear why he is hiding information from the American people and blowing off Congress,” Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., tweeted. “If Congress cannot gather evidence, we need to seriously consider an impeachment inquiry.”
“This report makes Congress’s investigations of Trump’s shadowy finances more pressing,” Rep. Bill Pascrell, D-N.J., tweeted. “The bank has even more questions to answer and Congress needs to hear from this whistleblower.”…( This article was from May 19, 2019 )…
apparently the NY Attorney General investigation is coming to a head…as well as the Southern District’s investigations….trump’s “fake” tax and insurance fraud…flush the TURD November Third…we’ll have to see what happens if the hypocritical Republicans ram this confirmation through…it’s imperative…flush the TURD November Third…
then maybe grey skies will clear up…like today for a little bit of the time…just enough for me to take a 1.7 mile walk around the neighborhood and around the train station under cover if it decided to rain again…found a penny…
Art Salazar 