A journalist friend tells me that some early “newspapers”– more accurately described as pamphlets compiled from recently circulated broadsides–used to have a tag line beneath their mastheads. It read “Interesting, if true.”
Lawrence O’Donnell recently supplied us with a humdinger of “interesting if true” news.
According to Raw Story–and subsequently, several other news outlets, including Salon–Deutsche Bank may have the evidence the Mueller investigation was unable to find.
Fast-tracked impeachment hearings will occur this fall if the bombshell report is true that President Donald Trump had loans with Deutsche Bank co-signed by Russian oligarchs close to Vladimir Putin.
“The source close to Deutsche Bank says that the co-signers of Donald Trump’s Deutsche Bank loans are Russian billionaires close to Vladimir Putin,” MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell reported Tuesday.
If true, this would explain why Trump was so agitated (I know, he’s always agitated, but this was notable even for him) when Congress issued a subpoena to the bank for records of their loans to Trump and the Trump organization. It would explain the lawsuit he filed in an effort to quash that subpoena.
It would also explain his slavish attention to Putin’s interests, most recently highlighted by his behavior at the recent G7 meeting. According to several reports, Trump cornered the other heads of state and aggressively lobbied for Russia’s re-admittance to the group.
Finally, it would explain why Deutsche Bank continued to make loans to Trump after American banks would no longer do so. After several of Trump’s business disasters and bankruptcies left lenders with enormous unpaid obligations, American bankers cut Trump off. That cutoff is not speculation, and Don Junior has been widely quoted for a speech in which he bragged that the Trump Organization no longer needed homegrown lenders, because Russia was supplying all the cash they needed.
Salon quoted journalist and tax expert David Cay Johnston, who has covered Trump for years.
“Deutsche Bank, in making these loans, had to have someone in the background that was guaranteeing these loans. It would be surprising if they’re actually co-signers,” Cay Johnston said in response to the news. “That would be absolutely astonishing, and I would think mandate his removal from office.”
The only thing Deutsche Bank has confirmed (to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals) is that the bank has possession of the tax returns of at least one member of President Donald Trump’s family.
A lawyer for Trump has now threatened to sue O’Donnell for “false and defamatory” statements. It would be extremely difficult to win such a suit, since O’Donnell himself cautioned that his bombshell report was based upon information provided by a single source–a person who works with Deutsche Bank–and that he had been unable to verify it. (He may have breached journalistic ethics by reporting an unverified accusation–spreading gossip, essentially– but proving intentional defamation would be extremely difficult given his transparency about the source and his inability to confirm that source’s account.)
That said, the information seems so accurate, because it’s so incredibly plausible. Russian oligarch guarantors or co-signers would explain a number of otherwise inexplicable things…
It’s VERY interesting…if true.
Yes, VERY interesting if true. However, my reduced confidence in the system of checks & balances in Government today makes me extremely skeptical that, even if true, any real repercussions would result from verification of this information. Although the information (if true) would certainly support impeachment and removal of #45.
I have always wondered why Mueller gave Allen Weisselberg, the bookkeeper of the Trump organization, full immunity. He must have found something, but for some reason didn’t or couldn’t follow up. And then no mention of it in the final report.
If true, it won’t matter. If none of the other corrupt, unethical or illegal acts by this administration have caused Trump to be removed from office, and this won’t either. His followers/worshipers don’t care. They simply don’t. As long as he has his base (and Republicans in Congress are afraid of that base), he will not be impeached.
“Does The Deutsch Bank Have The Goods On Trump?” The question would better be put as does the Deutsch Bank have “goods” which can LEGALLY be used without limitations such as restricted Robert Mueller regarding his investigation and final report? Mr. Mueller’s limitations were not as restrictive as those put on the House Judiciary Committee investigation of Kavannaugh who now sits on SCOTUS waiting for Ruth Bader Ginsberg to die and another Trump helpmate be appointed.
Somehow; what we view day in and day out with Trump’s self-incriminating rants and threats, his printed words in Tweet after Tweet, his arbitrary and inhumane demands and the uncovered cover-ups of his past illegal activities is not enough to remove him from office due to no one in the Republican party upholding their Oath of Office to uphold the Constitution. Trump leads the parade; the fact that they are all “…bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution;…” as required in Article II, Section 1, Clause 8 AND Article VI, Clause 3, and all choose to ignore their required Oath or Affirmation appears to force this country to seek outside our own government for evidence to legally take action against a raging, White Nationalist fool.
Trump wants to buy Greenland, which has never been for sale, and he wants to hold the 2020 G7 conference in his privately owned Doral Hotel shortly before the 2020 presidential election. WHO ARE THE CO-SIGNERS ON TRUMP’S LOANS TO BUILD DORAL? Can there be a connection between this and Trump’s demands to return Russia to recreate the G8 Conference?
“Russian oligarch guarantors or co-signers would explain a number of otherwise inexplicable things…
It’s VERY interesting…if true.”
The Plot thickens.
Andy Austin – you may be correct.
Trump actually said that he could shoot someone on 5th Avenue and still be elected President.
His followers would just claim it is Fake News and the rest of us need to stop attacking him and his character because he has done so many wonderful things for us and our country.
Ugh
Mueller didn’t follow up on this because it was not within the purview of his investigation. It was referred out to SDNY and they gave immunity to Weisselberg. They are still subject to DOJ rules about indicting sitting Presidents, but they may have everything needed already. That said, even if they do impeach him, the Senate will most certainly acquit him.
Meanwhile, an even more horrific story has been reported. That is the ending of the compassionate care deferral. USCIS had notified families with children getting necessary medical care that they have 33 days to leave the country, thereby sentencing their children to death. This is a depth of depravity that should require an new, even lower, level of hell, and it’s being done in OUR names by OUR government.
If you think the Senate, under MoscowMItch, will hold an impeachment trial you’ve not been paying attention. McConnells goal is to do anything to ensure trump remains in office, even if that means sitting on a house impeachment.
What does it say about our country that there is a mentally ill criminal in charge from the White House for over two years, and Congress is “debating” whether to impeach him or not.
Donald Trump has colluded with Russia to win the election (such as it was), he has encouraged criminal behavior from his supporters, he has insulted our allies, he has disparaged our institutions and laws, he has violated international law by kidnapping children, he is responsible for the deaths of many of those children, he has dismantled laws and regulations that were put into placed to protect the citizens, and he has lied about every bit of it and has been caught in those lies.
That we have put up with this says more about us than we know, and history will not be kind … nor forgiving.
Well said, friends. One thing not mentioned regarding Moscow Mitch’s reluctance to stand up to Trump: Oleg Darapaska (sic) has just promised to build one of his aluminum plants in Kentucky. Gee, I wonder how that works out? McConnell is at least as corrupt as anyone in Washington.
Oh, but we have those conservative judges…..
Bedbug Guy, Moscow Mitch, Blowup Boris. What a list making the news regularly.
There is an excellent article concerning President Agent Orange’s tax returns at https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/8/26/20833600/donald-trump-tax-returns-richard-neal-new-york
From the article:
Democrats haven’t even asked for the president’s state tax returns from New York, which in July passed a law that would allow three congressional tax committees to request them.
On the matter of the state tax returns, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed a bill that would let Ways and Means and two other congressional tax committees request someone’s state tax returns from the New York State Commissioner of the Department of Taxation and Finance. Trump subsequently filed a lawsuit to block New York from releasing his tax returns. But here’s the thing: House Democrats never asked for them in the first place. The Committee Chair of House Ways and Means is Richard Neal (D-MA).
Neal has been criticized for moving slowly on trying to get Trump’s federal tax returns, and there’s been some head-scratching around his decision not to pursue the state ones at all.
Neal has also attracted a primary challenger for his 2020 reelection, 30-year-old Holyoke, Massachusetts, Mayor Alex Morse. “[Neal is] the one person that has the authority in Washington to get Trump’s state tax returns from New York, and he’s the one person standing in the way,” Morse recently told me ( Emily Stewart).
The White House has stonewalled many efforts to request documents and interviews, and Democrats have been slower than anticipated to launch probes in the first place.
=======================================
If you recall the Republicans led an unrelenting assault on Obama concerning his birth certificate. There were also the all day hearing on Benghazi with Hillary Clinton. The Democrats by contrast lose their spines when faced with President Agent Orange’s legal stonewalling and intransigence.
MSNBC retracted the story yesterday and Lawrence gave an on air apology. We’ll see.
Let’s see, Russian oligarchs may have been backing Deutsche Bank loans to the short-fingered vulgarian, and Deutsche Bank was busted back in 2015 or so for laundering Russian mob money. (And Wilbur Ross was vice chair of Bank of Cyprus when it was pulled in to the DB money laundering scheme. Now he’s our Secretary of Commerce. Gosh, what to make of all that?) Maybe it’s time to look a little more closely at those cash real estate deals.
Whenever someone tells me that the vulgarian is a business genius because the Trump Organization holds interests in around 500 companies, I just point out that we call that “the rinse cycle”.
Следуй за деньгами, indeed. If I were a forensic accountant, I’d volunteer my time.
Thank you Sheila,
Given how reckless Donald Trump is, in his long history of bending everything to his whims and getting away with it even when he was facing potential criminal penalties, this bank could be a potential gold mine in terms of incriminating information. The question is, however, not what he may face as a result of an investigation into his dealings with that bank of what he will do to wiggle out of it in plain sight since he’s wiggled out of just about everything else.
Somehow, someway, truth, justice and the American way has to get past what Andy Austin so succinctly keyed. Trump this goes on his merry way wrecking everything and everyone he touches while those that should be standing up for the truth and for the country remain moot to protect their own personal political backsides. Thus, the nauseating spectacle that we see every day that is akin to running a blow a ground are on the rocks on purpose continues unabated with everything that is linked to a growing worse by the day.
It’s getting harder to imagine, given the ineptitude demonstrated by the Democrats in Congress and the sycophancy of the utter fools sitting on the other side of the Aisle, that this freight train from hell will be derailed any time soon. We currently have a madman, someone’s so inept and unqualified to hold the office he currently has doing everything he can possibly do via is feeble mind to wreck this country in everything it stands for and throw the leadership of the global world order into the hands of the Russians and the Chinese, with a latter conceivably posing a greater threat to the whole world given their expansionist aims that trump (pun intended) when even Vladimir Putin has in mind.
Right now we’re about as twisted up as a pretzel and while we’re fighting each other and thinking of all these forlorn pipe dreams of getting this fool out of office we are on the verge of being and also ran the scheme of things regarding the outside world. The wrecking crew led by this fool is determined to do the wrecking top they are bent on doing and we still sit aghast at what they’re doing each and every day and still fumbling around trying to find a way to stop it.
Trump has used, is using and will use the courts to slow the effects of subpoenas into his financial shenanigans over the years, but the good news is that even slow judiciary review doesn’t last forever. 6003 of the IRC could not be clearer (that the Ways and Means Chair can have a president’s tax returns upon request) but is being contested in court. The Chair (Neal) has not availed his committee to take up the State of New York’s offer to produce Trump’s state tax returns (which are said to contain some of his federal returns’ information) for some reason, a decision which I choose to believe is strategic, and the reason perhaps a good one. Trump will ultimately lose the 6003 matter but stalling through the election may be his goal rather than winning the lawsuit.
As for the co-sign exercises by Russian oligarchs, Lawrence’s apology had to do with MSNBC’s internal rules, which he breached. That doesn’t mean that the substance of what he reported is false, and I think Deutsche Bank’s records on Trump loans now under subpoena will indeed be a Trump killer if and when the subpoena successfully exits through final appeal. As for threats of suit by Trump against Lawrence and MSNBC, bring it on, because the discovery process should yield some interesting information on this crook’s multiple tax and bank frauds etc. His kids are trying to frame the issue out front as defamatory to their businesses to shield Trump’s financial doings from discovery, but that won’t work, especially with his closely held corporations not subject to SEC rules where much of such information would have already been a matter of public record. The corporations are Trump.
Trump is making his lawyers rich (unless, like many other creditors in his wake, he stiffs them, too), but lawyers are lawyers and not magicians and unless trial through appellate courts are willing to ignore the doctrine of stare decisis, he has several losers now in the legal trough, so though I know we are anxious to see all of the documentary evidence subpoenaed by House committees to be within their respective grasps, I counsel patience, but whether Trump’s slowdown shows signs of working or not, I counsel an unrelenting effort to win the next election.
Wonderful piece, as usual, Sheila. A couple of points: for some unknown reason, Mueller did not delve into the finances of the Trump organization. If he had, maybe this nightmare would have ended a long time ago. Mueller and his team were under constant fire from Trump and his minions. Clearly, he did not do a thorough job, but I think he believed that he got enough evidence to cause law enforcement and/or Congress to act. Being a patriot himself, he probably thought that the interests of justice would prevail over politics.
Second, even after his pro-Putin overtures were rebuffed by the other G-7 representatives, Trump announced that he would host next year’s G-7 at his Doral, FL property AND that he was inviting Putin to attend. He also said that Putin might not come because his precious, tender feelings might have been hurt because Obama got Putin kicked out of the G-8 because he “outsmarted” Obama, and “he’s a proud man”
There’s another thing, too. Trump purchased a FL property, never lived in it, never did any repairs, decorating, additions, updating or anything else, and sold it to a Russian oligarch shortly thereafter, pocketing a windfall of $40 million. That shady deal was questioned long before Mueller’s report was issued. There also have been reports about Trump’s plane and a Russian private plane both being seen often at a FL small airport at the same time. This was before he cheated to “win the victory”. We all know that Putin was the former head of the KGB.
If Trump locates the G7 summit at the Doral and invites Putin and a few Russian money launderer groupies, I hope they all get bed bug bites and the illegal immigrants who work there all get permament citizenship in exchange for keeping their lips sealed about that property. Poetic justice.
I understand that the bank was sitting on top of a pile of Russian oligarch illegal money which it really wanted to launder. Trump had borrowed a bunch and had welshed on the deal (Surprise! Surprise!). He sued the bank, blaming them for his failure to pay (a mental stretch), but then the bank was really excited to lend him a bunch more. That was really a stretch until we discover that the oligarch who gave the bank the hot money has probably co-signed the loan, which means if Trump fails to pay, the bank pays it off with the hot money. Meanwhile, the Russians have lots of money invested in compromat, Trump is in the hole for it, the American public loses and the bank can’t lose. Makes sense to me.
Why do we continue to have comments on a story that’s been retracted and an apology given?
John Neal: The report was not “retracted.” O’Donnell admitted that airing it on the basis of only one source violated MSNBC rules, and he apologized for that violation. Bottom line: it may or may not be true, as O’Donnell stated at the time. But it hasn’t been “retracted” in the sense that it has been found to be false.
“Tonight we are retracting the story,” he told viewers. (O’Donnell) Source MSNBC. I also have it recorded.
Respectfully, I suppose it could be true but I don’t think this rises to your normal high standards of fact based discussions.
Here’s an idea: Some hotels and office towers omit identifying a 13th floor in their buildings because of the bad luck associated with that number. What if we, as a nation, omit the current number, refer to 44 and 46 and 47 and onward, never again referring to DJT or his pathetic number? Once he and his sicko flock are gone, may we never think of them again…just as soon as we clean up their mess and try to repair the damage they caused. It won’t be quick or easy.
Betty, I’m innocent, my ballot was straight Democrat ticket. Mrs Clinton won by a healthy margin. We would have had good government from Day One by a cadre of devoted and experienced professionals. Instead we are enslaved by stock market data and by the mob of opportunist ass-kissers who have briefly clotted the payrolls, reached the headlines, tainted others and the systems, and are now (and will continue to be) Gone With The Wind.
Now what are we going to do about the archaic Electoral College?
Trump should send his resignation by tweet from whatever country will give him safe haven and will protect him from forced return to the USA to face the music in court.
VOTE wisely – Anyone EXCEPT Trump, even GOP if you must. Don’t be HOODWINKED again.