Deutsche Bank gave Donald Trump financial records
to New York prosecutors - report
Manhattan district attorney’s office seeking eight
years of the president’s personal and corporate tax records
Guardian
staff and agency
Thu 6 Aug
2020 07.39 BSTFirst published on Thu 6 Aug 2020 02.27 BST
New York
prosecutors investigating Donald Trump’s finances previously issued a subpoena
to Deutsche Bank, one of the foremost lenders to the president’s business, as
part of their inquiry – and the bank complied, according to the New York Times.
The office
of the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus Vance, is seeking eight years of the
president’s personal and corporate tax records, but has disclosed little about
what prompted the prosecutor and his team to request the records beyond payoffs
to women to silence them about alleged affairs with Trump in the past.
Lawyers for
Vance told a judge in New York on Monday that he was justified in demanding the
records from Trump, citing public reports of “extensive and protracted criminal
conduct at the Trump Organization”.
A report
emerged Wednesday that Vance’s office subpoenaed the German lender last year in
what the New York Times said was a sign that their criminal investigation into
Trump’s business practices is more wide-ranging than previously known.
The report
noted that this appeared to be the first instance of a criminal inquiry
involving Trump and his dealings with Deutsche Bank.
The German
bank, which has been a longstanding source of financing to Trump’s real estate
empire, obeyed the subpoena and handed over records supplied by Trump to the
bank during the course of applying for loans, the report said, citing unnamed
sources with knowledge of the investigation.
Trump’s
lawyers last month said the grand jury subpoena for the president’s tax returns
was issued in bad faith and amounted to harassment.
In a court
filing on Monday, though, attorneys for Vance said Trump’s arguments that the
subpoena was too broad stemmed from “the false premise” that the investigation
was limited to so-called “hush-money” payments.
They said
public reporting demonstrates that at the time the subpoena was issued “there
were public allegations of possible criminal activity at plaintiff’s New York
county-based Trump Organization dating back over a decade”.
They added:
“These reports describe transactions involving individual and corporate actors
based in New York county, but whose conduct at times extended beyond New York’s
borders. This possible criminal activity occurred within the applicable
statutes of limitations, particularly if the transactions involved a continuing
pattern of conduct.”
Vance
sought the tax records in part for an investigation of how Michael Cohen,
Trump’s former fixer and now convicted felon, arranged to keep the adult film
producer and actor Stormy Daniels and the model Karen McDougal from airing
claims of extramarital affairs with Trump during the 2016 presidential race.
Trump has denied the affairs.
On
Wednesday, the New York Times further reported that the subpoena to Deutsche
Bank sought any materials that might point to possible fraud and that
Deutsche’s cooperation contrasted with numerous other attempts to access
Trump’s financial records over the years that have been blocked by successful
legal challenges.
Other
investigators have requested records from Deutsche Bank, which was one of the
few banks willing to lend to Trump after a series of corporate bankruptcies
starting in the early 1990s.
Two
congressional committees, both controlled by Democrats, subpoenaed the bank for
documents related to Trump, who sued to block their release.
The New
York attorney general, Letitia James, a Democrat, also subpoenaed the bank for
records related to Trump last year following Cohen’s testimony.
Trump has
said the investigations are all politically motivated. Earlier this week, he
called Vance’s investigation “a continuation of the witch hunt”.
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