Rinse and Repeat

The New York Times broke the story yesterday (free link here) about how Deutsche Bank auditors flagged suspicious activities that looked like money laundering in both 2016 and 2017 by both Donald Trump and Jared Kushner and their businesses. Such concerns were ignored by upper management, however, and one of the employees raising the alarm was even fired because of this.

Some of the suspicious activity involved Trump's charitable trust, which has since been declared fraudulent and forcibly closed by New York state regulators in a matter that's still ongoing.

Deutsche Bank, of course, later admitted to widespread money laundering for Russian organized crime figures and paid a record $10 billion fine as a result.

This latest revelation raises the question, of course, about whether any of the suspicious Trump or Kushner transactions involved organized crime funding as well.

This story, of course, is not the first time Trump has been linked to possible money laundering for organized crime and terrorist figures. I've documented some of those in previous entries on this blog, which can be found here.

This could explain why Trump has gone to extraordinary lengths to block release of any financial information or materials to congressional investigators. If a direct funding connection exists to a sitting President from Russian organized crime figures who were laundering cash, that would be more than enormously embarrassing and could end his presidency.

One of the tests in that matter will be resolved this week when a court rules whether Trump's financial documents must be released to House investigators. Do stay tuned.