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

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.

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.

...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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

...laying this all out last night.

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

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?