President Donald Trump is not having a good week, at least by his standards. After his team unveiled lawsuits demanding that House Democratic subpoenas for his financial records be thrown out, in rapid succession this week, not one but two federal judges have ruled that the subpoenas are on solid legal standing and Democrats are free to proceed. The second was New York City’s Judge Edgardo Ramos, who ruled this Wednesday that subpoenas targeting Deutsche Bank and Capital One could remain in force.
Investigators across multiple committees are looking into possible illegal activity chronicled among Trump’s financial records. In April, the House Intelligence and Financial Services Committees jointly subpoenaed Deutsche Bank and others with an eye for the institutions possibly being used for money laundering, including but not limited to some involving the president.
Meanwhile, CNBC notes that Capital One is “in possession of financial records related to the Trump Organization’s hotels,” and numerous concerned interests have trained their sights on possible fraud among those dealings in addition to the other issues. Former longtime Trump “fixer” Michael Cohen, for instance, told Congress that the president had repeatedly adjusted his asset valuations to maximize personal financial benefit, which could have entailed bank, insurance, and even tax fraud. In that light, the House Oversight Committee subpoenaed years of Trump’s personal financial information from his longtime accountant Mazars USA — and a judge recently ruled that case could proceed as well in the face of a lawsuit from the Trump team.
There’d been no indication that the Trump-associated financial institutions in question planned to actually challenge the subpoenas themselves. Deutsche Bank has already been transferring documents to New York Attorney General Letitia Wright’s office to comply with another subpoena for a similar investigation and had begun working with Congress before the Trump team tried to block them, although the bank has also been revealed to have “buried reports of potentially illegal financial activity” carried out by Trump via top staffers refusing to report such activity to the Treasury Department despite the transactions getting flagged for review.
The bank has been one of the only in the world willing to loan to Trump at times considering his rocky at best financial background pockmarked by multiple bankruptcies. Even outside of Trump’s personal case, they’ve simultaneously continued to face international legal scrutiny over incidents of staffers assisting in money laundering operations like an effort to move billions of dollars worth of financial assets out of Russia. Besides their connection to Trump, a former employee also revealed that top executives squashed flags on suspicious transactions between Russian individuals and Kushner Companies during the 2016 election season. Jared Kushner, of course, is the president’s son-in-law and works in the White House as an adviser covering multiple areas, although none with much to show for it.
Trump has pledged to fight all subpoenas from House Democrats, but his plans have been majorly thwarted this week. They’re still after other key financial information from the president. Following the team refusing to comply with demands for his tax returns, that case is likely to also soon go to court.
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