Deutsche Duet

Financial Shenanigans:  Late yesterday, the NY Times published a story revealing details regarding the depth and longevity of Trump’s unusually close ties to Deutsche Bank. The relationship is all that more remarkable when you consider that Trump’s reputation and history of “misconduct” and defaults was so troubling that most other banks, including, after one particularly bruising transaction, the institutional side of Deutsche Bank, wouldn’t lend him money. Of course the story also has a Jared Kushner angle; apparently after Trump’s relationship with the institutional side of Deutsche deteriorated the son- in-law introduced Trump to his private banker, Rosemary Vrablic, who arranged for the bank to continue lending Trump relatively large sums despite his troubled past with the institution.   The article contains a few revealing gems and bolsters the assertions that one time fixer/lawyer Michael Cohen made during his recent testimony to the House Oversight Committee about Trump’s habit of overstating the value of his real estate portfolio to secure the funds he needed for the refinancing of  loans and for the acquisition of new properties, including his unsuccessful bid for the Buffalo Bills football team.  In one case Trump told Deutsche Bank that his net worth was about $3 billion, but when bank employees reviewed his finances, they concluded he was worth only a mere $788 million.  It’s more than likely that Trump’s misrepresentations constituted bank fraud.  Among the nuggets included in the article is a mention that since his son ran Deutsche Bank’s commercial mortgage group, former Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy frequently stopped in to the bank to say hello.  That family tie bolsters the validity of suggestions that Trump used his influence with Kennedy’s son to influence the Justice’s decision to step down when he did, paving the way for newest Justice Kavanaugh’s elevation to the Supreme Court. The article also details how Trump pushed the bank’s fixed income salesforce  to sell some bonds for Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts to institutional investors who despite their eagerness to meet Trump on the marketing road show had little interest in actually purchasing his bonds. Trump managed to spur the salesforce on by promising them an expense paid trip to Mar a Lago.  After the bond sale was completed, Trump said that he wasn’t really serious about that promise, but when pressed he did host the crowd.  The bonds didn’t fare as well as the salesforce, they defaulted a year later.  As to Deutsche Bank, the article reports that management knew they were dealing with a flawed client, but continued the relationship through several changeovers in leadership because of a belief that having such a “prominent” client would help secure other higher quality business.  It’s not clear how that business part worked out but the relationship has finally garnered some “attention,” the Trumps and Deutsche are now the subject of prosecutorial scrutiny and another Trump related investigation.     

Investigatory News: A number of pundits have suggested that Trump’s most recent bout of frantic tweeting reflects his concern about the imminent release of the Mueller report and/or fears that an indictment of Don Jr may be forthcoming soon, possibly true, but then again waiting for Mueller’s report is starting to feel a lot like waiting for Godot.  That said, a number of other things that Trump would rather we not hear about have hit or are about to hit the news.  Yesterday,  ProPublica reported that Federal authorities conducted an “aggressive” raid of the office of Republican fundraiser Elliott Broidy last summer, seeking records related to his dealings with foreign officials and Trump administration associates.  Broidy was the national deputy finance chair of the Republican National Committee until he resigned in April 2018, when it was revealed he had worked with Michael Cohen to secretly pay off a former Playboy model in exchange for her silence about their affair and her discontinued pregnancy.  The search warrant shows that among other things federal authorities are interested in Broidy’s alleged work for the Malaysian financier Jho Low, who is at the center of the “1MDB” international bribery and money laundering scandal.  In November, the Justice Department alleged that Broidy was paid by Low to lobby Trump administration officials to “ease off” on US investigations into Low. The White House was given a heads up about the ProPublica story so Trump knew it was coming before he began tweeting last weekend.  Additionally, later today, a redacted copy of the search warrant that authorized the FBI raid on the homes and office of Michael Cohen will be released. It is possible the search warrant will disclose how investigators became aware of the hush payments that Cohen made on behalf of Trump, “what crimes or information investigators had established early in their probe, and what items they sought to search and gather when they executed the warrant last April.”  The warrant is being released by order of a Southern District Court of New York judge involved in the Cohen case in response to a request by several news outlets.  The Judge ordered the release after concluding that  “the public interest in the underlying subject matter of the materials, which implicates the integrity of the 2016 presidential election, is substantial.” Just another one of those things that could be causing Trump’s increasingly frenetic tweeting.

2020:  Over the weekend when asked about his fundraising, Beto O’Rourke said that he could but wasn’t ready to disclose how much money he had raised in the twenty-four hour period following his announcement that he was running for the presidency. Some took that as an indication that O’Rourke hadn’t raised much money.  To put it bluntly they were bigly wrong.  Beto’s take was $6.1 million, an amount that exceeded the $5.9 million that the impressive Berniac machine took it following Bernie Sanders’ announcement.  Though Beto continues to be the subject of much criticism for being  too white, too moderate, a guy and/or too vague about his positions, he certainly has a dedicated following and as Jeb Bush certainly knows, though fund raising success isn’t necessarily a good predictor of campaign success, it certainly doesn’t hurt. As to two of the other presidential wannabees, NY Senator Kirsten Gillibrand has been out talking about her transition from a moderate, A-rated by the NRA, upstate NY Congresswoman to the progressive Senator that she has become, arguing that her upstate roots will help her appeal to a wide voter base and Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren called for ending the Electoral College, something that Democrats who have a habit of winning the popular vote but losing presidential elections would love to see, but Republicans who keep on winning presidential elections while losing the popular vote are unlikely to go for.