Trump Goes off on NY Times Report on Deutsche Bank Money Laundering Concerns: ‘I Didn’t Need Money’

President Donald Trump pushed back hard on a damning weekend New York Times report that claimed that officials at Deutsche Bank had alerted executives about what they called suspicious activities consistent with money-laundering associated with Trump and Jared Kushner banking accounts.

Trump pushed back in a five-part tweet storm that opened with the familiar insult of the “Failing New York Times” writing “phony stories.” He then claimed that the reason he didn’t use many banks was not that they wouldn’t do business with him (which has been widely reported) but that he “didn’t need money.”

The NY Times report opens:

Anti-money-laundering specialists at Deutsche Bank recommended in 2016 and 2017 that multiple transactions involving legal entities controlled by Donald J. Trump and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, be reported to a federal financial-crimes watchdog.

The transactions, some of which involved Mr. Trump’s now-defunct foundation, set off alerts in a computer system designed to detect illicit activity, according to five current and former bank employees. Compliance staff members who then reviewed the transactions prepared so-called suspicious activity reports that they believed should be sent to a unit of the Treasury Department that polices financial crimes.

But executives at Deutsche Bank, which has lent billions of dollars to the Trump and Kushner companies, rejected their employees’ advice. The reports were never filed with the government.

Writer David Enrich reporters later in the piece that Trump’s two-decade relationship with Deutsche Bank occurred “during a period when most Wall Street banks had stopped doing business with him after his repeated defaults, Deutsche Bank lent Mr. Trump and his companies a total of more than $2.5 billion.”

Odd that the money laundering claim was not what set Trump off but instead the report that Wall Street banks had shut him out. Trump tweeted:

The Failing New York Times (it will pass away when I leave office in 6 years), and others of the Fake News Media, keep writing phony stories about how I didn’t use many banks because they didn’t want to do business with me. WRONG! It is because I didn’t need money. Very old

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 20, 2019

….fashioned, but true. When you don’t need or want money, you don’t need or want banks. Banks have always been available to me, they want to make money. Fake Media only says this to disparage, and always uses unnamed sources (because their sources don’t even exist)……

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 20, 2019

The Mainstream Media has never been as corrupt and deranged as it is today. FAKE NEWS is actually the biggest story of all and is the true ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE! That’s why they refuse to cover the REAL Russia Hoax. But the American people are wise to what is going on…..

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 20, 2019

….Now the new big story is that Trump made a lot of money and buys everything for cash, he doesn’t need banks. But where did he get all of that cash? Could it be Russia? No, I built a great business and don’t need banks, but if I did they would be there…and DeutscheBank……

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 20, 2019

…..was very good and highly professional to deal with – and if for any reason I didn’t like them, I would have gone elsewhere….there was always plenty of money around and banks to choose from. They would be very happy to take my money. Fake News!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 20, 2019

Roughly 10 minutes after posting this twitter thread, Trump then followed with a clarification that two tweets were missing, but that there was “no time for a redo!”

Two Tweets missing from last batch, probably a Twitter error. No time for a redo! Only the Dems get redos!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 20, 2019