Donald Trump Red Line Failing Despite Urgency To Keep Finances Opaque | Rachel Maddow | MSNBC
"Donald Trump Scrambles To Block Democrats From His Finances | The Beat With Ari Melber | MSNBC"
MSNBC Published on May 7, 2019
Rachel Maddow shares details from a new blockbuster report from the New York Times about what Donald Trump's taxes show about the bleak state of his business affairs from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s, and notes that Trump's best efforts to keep his finances secret are not likely to block every possible avenue of their release.
Guess who Trump picked as his I.R.S. Commissioner. Yep.
Second-in-charge at the IRS is the chief counsel. Trump was thinking ahead when he pushed his second hand-picked I.R.S. guy through too.
Trump Asked That Confirmation of I.R.S. Counsel Be a Priority White House aides insisted for months that the confirmation of the nominee, Michael J. Desmond, a tax lawyer from Santa Barbara, Calif., was a top priority after passage of the tax bill in 2017. Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg By Maggie Haberman and Nicholas Fandos April 4, 2019 President Trump earlier this year asked Senator Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, to prioritize a confirmation vote for his nominee to be the chief counsel of the Internal Revenue Service, indicating that it was a higher priority than voting on the nomination of William P. Barr as attorney general, a person familiar with the conversation said. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/04/us/politics/trump-michael-desmond-irs.html
Trump Engaged in Suspect Tax Schemes as He Reaped Riches From His Father The president has long sold himself as a self-made billionaire, but a Times investigation found that he received at least $413 million in today’s dollars from his father’s real estate empire, much of it through tax dodges in the 1990s. By DAVID BARSTOW, SUSANNE CRAIG and RUSS BUETTNER Oct. 2, 2018 https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/10/02/us/politics/donald-trump-tax-schemes-fred-trump.html
Related:
IRS blows deadline to hand over Trump tax returns [...] Frustration is building within the House Democratic caucus. On Monday, Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) said House Democrats should consider impeaching Rettig. Though Neal's requests for the returns have gone directly to the IRS commissioner, Mnuchin has taken the lead on the issue, which Democrats say is a violation of normal procedure. https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=148591520
Congress deadline looms for release of Trump tax returns [...] Representative Richard Neal, Democratic chairman of the House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee, requested six years of Trump’s individual and business returns on April 3 and has set a final deadline of 5 p.m. EDT (2100 GMT) on Tuesday, informing IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig in a letter that failure to comply would be viewed as a denial. https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=148376699
Now we know why GS doesn't miss Mnuchin. [...] Mnuchin’s letter appeared to closely track the legal issues raised by Trump’s lawyers in a letter last week in response to the demand made by Ways and Committee Chairman Richard E. Neal (D-Mass.). Even though Neal addressed his letter to Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Charles Rettig, Mnuchin said he would personally oversee the review. The IRS is part of Treasury. https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=148155304
Christopher C. Cuomo Retweeted Cuomo Prime Time @CuomoPrimeTime ·36m Democratic Rep. Lloyd Doggett says 10 years of President Trump's tax information raises the question: "How does someone who is such a big loser eventually get bailed out by a foreign bank? What other kind of money from abroad was floating in to keep him afloat?" https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=148676583
Deutsche Bank Faces Criminal Investigation for Potential Money-Laundering Lapses
"Donald Trump Scrambles To Block Democrats From His Finances | The Beat With Ari Melber | MSNBC"
The headquarters of Deutsche Bank in Frankfurt. F.B.I. agents have recently contacted the lawyer for a former bank employee who raised concerns about transactions made by Jared Kushner’s family’s company. Felix Schmitt for The New York Times
By David Enrich, Ben Protess and William K. Rashbaum
June 19, 2019
Federal authorities are investigating whether Deutsche Bank complied with laws meant to stop money laundering and other crimes, the latest government examination of potential misconduct at one of the world’s largest and most troubled banks, according to seven people familiar with the inquiry.
The investigation includes a review of Deutsche Bank’s handling of so-called suspicious activity reports that its employees prepared about possibly problematic transactions, including some linked to President Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, according to people close to the bank and others familiar with the matter.
The criminal investigation into Deutsche Bank is one element of several separate but overlapping government examinations into how illicit funds flow through the American financial system, said five of the people, who were not authorized to speak publicly about the inquiries. Several other banks are also being investigated.
The F.B.I. recently contacted the lawyer for a Deutsche Bank whistle-blower, Tammy McFadden, who publicly criticized the company’s anti-money-laundering systems, according to the lawyer, Brian McCafferty.
Ms. McFadden, a former anti-money-laundering compliance officer at the bank, told The New York Times .. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/19/business/deutsche-bank-trump-kushner.html?module=inline .. last month that she had flagged transactions involving Mr. Kushner’s family company in 2016, but that bank managers decided not to file the suspicious activity report she prepared. Some of her colleagues had similar experiences in 2017 involving transactions in the accounts of Mr. Trump’s legal entities, although it was not clear whether the F.B.I. was examining the bank’s handling of those transactions.
The same federal agent who contacted Ms. McFadden’s lawyer also participated in interviews of the son of a deceased Deutsche Bank executive, William S. Broeksmit. Agents told the son, Val Broeksmit, that the Deutsche Bank investigation began with an inquiry into the bank’s work for Russian money launderers and had expanded to cover a broader array of potential misconduct at the bank and at other financial institutions. One element is the banks’ possible roles in a vast money-laundering scandal .. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/06/business/swedbank-danske-bank-scandal.html?module=inline .. at the Danish lender Danske Bank, according to people briefed on the investigation.
The broader scope of the investigations and many details of precisely what is under scrutiny are unclear, and it is not known whether the inquiries will result in criminal charges. In addition to the F.B.I., the Justice Department’s Money Laundering and Asset Recovery Section in Washington and the United States attorney’s offices in Manhattan and Brooklyn are conducting the investigations. Representatives for the agencies declined to comment.
Deutsche Bank has said that it is cooperating with government investigations and that it has been taking steps to improve its anti-money-laundering systems.
Tammy McFadden said Deutsche Bank managers had declined to send the government a suspicious activity report she wrote. Willie J. Allen Jr. for The New York Times
Even so, the governmental scrutiny — from regulators, members of Congress and now the Justice Department and F.B.I. — has been a drag on the bank’s stock price, which is hovering near historic lows because of investors’ doubts about its future.
The congressional investigations are focused on Deutsche Bank’s close relationship with Mr. Trump and his family .. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/18/business/trump-deutsche-bank.html?module=inline . Over the past two decades, it was the only mainstream financial institution consistently willing to do business with Mr. Trump, who had a history of defaulting on loans. The bank lent him a total of more than $2 billion, about $350 million of which was outstanding when he was sworn in as president.
Two House committees have subpoenaed Deutsche Bank for records related to Mr. Trump and his family, including records connected to the bank’s handling of potentially suspicious transactions. The president has sued to block Deutsche Bank and Capital One, where he also holds money, from complying with the subpoenas. A federal judge rejected .. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/22/business/deutsche-bank-trump-subpoena.html?module=inline .. Mr. Trump’s request for an injunction, and the president has appealed that ruling.
The Justice Department has been investigating Deutsche Bank since 2015, when agents were examining its role in laundering billions of dollars for wealthy Russians through a scheme known as mirror trading. Customers would use the bank to convert Russian rubles into dollars and euros via a complicated series of stock trades in Europe and the United States.
In early 2017, federal and state regulators in the United States and British authorities imposed hundreds of millions of dollars in civil penalties on Deutsche Bank for that misconduct, but prosecutors never brought a criminal case against the bank. That led some senior Deutsche Bank executives to believe they were in the clear, according to people familiar with their thinking.
By last fall, though, federal agents were investigating a wider range of anti-money-laundering lapses and other possible misconduct at the bank.
F.B.I. agents met this year with Val Broeksmit, whose father was a senior Deutsche Bank executive who committed suicide in January 2014. Mr. Broeksmit said he had provided the agents with internal bank documents and other materials that he had retrieved from his father’s personal email accounts.
Until his death, William Broeksmit sat on the oversight board of a large Deutsche Bank subsidiary in the United States, Deutsche Bank Trust Company Americas, which regulators have criticized for having weak anti-money-laundering systems.
Many of the bank’s anti-money-laundering operations are based in Jacksonville, Fla., where Ms. McFadden was one of hundreds of employees vetting transactions that computer systems flagged as potentially suspicious.
Ms. McFadden worked in Deutsche Bank’s offices in Jacksonville, Fla. Current employees there have discussed the possibility of the building’s being raided by federal agents. Willie Jr. Allen for The New York Times
Ms. McFadden told The Times that she had warned in summer 2016 about transactions by the Kushner Companies involving money being sent to Russian individuals. Other Deutsche Bank employees prepared reports in 2017 flagging transactions involving legal entities associated with Mr. Trump, including his now-defunct charitable foundation, according to current and former bank employees. In both instances, the suspicious activity reports were never filed with the Treasury Department.
Deutsche Bank officials have said that the reports were handled appropriately and that it is not uncommon for managers to overrule employees and opt not to file suspicious activity reports with the government.
There is no indication that Kushner Companies is under investigation. The company said any allegations regarding its relationship with Deutsche Bank that involved money laundering were false. A Trump Organization spokeswoman said that she had no knowledge of any Deutsche Bank transactions being flagged.
Banks argue that when they err on the side of reporting potential problems, they end up flooding the government with false leads.
Former Deutsche Bank employees, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told The Times that the company had pushed them to rush their reviews of transactions and that managers sometimes created obstacles that discouraged them from filing suspicious activity reports.
Deutsche Bank has scrambled to toughen its anti-money-laundering procedures.
To address complaints about inadequate staffing, it brought in contractors to supplement its Jacksonville work force, although some employees said that the contractors were inexperienced and lacked the appropriate training.
Deutsche Bank also recently sent letters to hundreds of companies, warning that they could be cut off from the bank’s services if they did not swiftly provide up-to-date information about the sources of their money and the names of their business partners, according to bank employees who saw the letters. Deutsche Bank officials said the letters, first reported by the Financial Times, were part of their efforts to comply with “know your customer” rules, a crucial component of any bank’s anti-money-laundering efforts.
In Jacksonville, Deutsche Bank’s anti-financial-crime staff works in a white, three-story building surrounded by palm trees. The F.B.I. has a field office just down the road, clearly visible from the bank’s campus.
Bank employees recently have taken to joking that when the F.B.I. raids their offices, they will be able to see the agents coming.
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