Donald Trump's bank records are handed over to Robert Mueller https://t.co/ZDKw1ESH95
— The Guardian (@guardian) December 5, 2017
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Paul Waldman, in the Washington Post:
… This may turn out to be no big deal — perhaps Mueller will find that all Trump’s transactions with Deutsche Bank were aboveboard and free of any funny business, and also that nothing he discovers there will lead to evidence of any other misconduct on Trump’s part… But the fact that Mueller is looking at Deutsche Bank means his probe is reaching the very heart of Trump’s financial life.
Why is Deutsche Bank so important? After a string of bankruptcies and broken promises, pretty much every other major bank stopped lending Trump money some years ago. The one exception was Deutsche Bank, to which Trump owed $364 million as of the end of last year. By sheer coincidence, Deutsche Bank recently had to pay $670 million in fines for its role in a Russian money laundering plot (though as Bloomberg reports, the bank’s internal investigation found no link between Trump and that scheme).
At this point, we don’t know exactly what Mueller is looking for in the Deutsche Bank records. Law professor Ryan Goodman suggests that Mueller could be trying to determine if Trump’s loans from the bank were guaranteed by Russian interests, which could mean he was indebted to them in ways that could compromise him.
What we do know is that the Russia investigation has led Mueller to Trump’s personal finances, which provide a target-rich environment if you suspect financial malfeasance…
… In that tweet about Flynn, Trump closes by saying, “There was nothing to hide!” That has indeed been a consistent line from Trump himself, the White House and the president’s defenders: nobody did anything wrong, all the contacts with Russians were just routine, and there’s nothing to hide.
But if that’s the case, why do so many Trump associates keep getting caught lying about Russia?…
Wednesday Morning Russiagate Open Thread: “Follow the Money”Post + Comments (203)