TOPLINE
The Manhattan district attorney’s office, which has been investigating criminal conduct within the Trump Organization, leading to a protracted court fight to obtain the President’s tax records, subpoenaed Deutsche Bank last year, a sign that the criminal investigation into Trump’s business practices is more expansive than previously thought, according to the New York Times.
KEY FACTS
In a court filing this week, the D.A.’s office said it was investigating “extensive and protracted criminal conduct at the Trump Organization” including the possibility of bank and insurance fraud.
The subpoena was issued last year by prosecutors looking for financial records that Trump himself and his company provided the bank during the course of their decades-long relationship.
Deutsche Bank has been a frequent target of regulators who want to take aim at Trump’s finances—it’s lent him more than $2 billion over the last 20 years—but Manhattan D.A. Cyrus Vance’s subpoena appears to be the first criminal inquiry into the president’s business with the German bank.
Deutsche Bank supplied Vance’s office with detailed records and financial statements relating to Trump’s loan applications over the course of several months last year.
The criminal investigation originally seemed to be focused on Trump’s personal and corporate tax returns in an effort to find alleged hush-money payments made to two women who claimed to have had affairs with Trump.
KEY BACKGROUND
The battle for the President’s tax returns began shortly after the President’s former lawyer Michael Cohen pleaded guilty in 2018 to breaking federal campaign finance laws by arranging hush-money payments to two women at the behest of then candidate Trump during the 2016 campaign. Since then, prosecutors have subpoenaed Trumps accounting firm, Mazars USA, for eight years of tax documents, and Congressional Democrats have subpoenaed Mazars USA, Deutsche Bank, Capital One and the Treasury Department to get access to the President’s tax documents. Each time the President has challenged the subpoenas in federal court. In July, the Supreme Court ruled that President Trump didn’t have the right to block the release of his financial records, a major win for the district attorney’s office.
further reading
Trump’s Bank Was Subpoenaed by N.Y. Prosecutors in Criminal Inquiry (New York Times)
D.A. Accuses Trump of Delay ‘Strategy’ in Fight Over Tax Returns (New York Times)
