Who would co-sign a loan to a Bankrupt Unstable Moron?

[Kid Berwyn]

The story so far...

[Frustratedlady]

1. This photo signifies Trump's fantasy...looking tough. As a serious wimp, the vision is laughable.

But, I'll bet a dime to a donut that he practices it before the mirror every morning.

I hope we finally learn the outcome with his finances.

[Kid Berwyn]

8. Truth is Trump is a deluded serious wimp.

Trump is a moron fixated by fabric swatches.

Trump, the billion-dollar loser — I was his ghostwriter and saw it happen

Charles Leerhson
Yahoo.com, May 9, 2019

EXCERPT...

I tend to see my time with him — the first part of it, anyway, before things started going bad in a hurry — as his “King Midas” period. I never said this to him; if I had, he probably would have thought I was suggesting he enter the muffler business. But there was a stretch of months when everything he touched turned into a deal. The banks seemed to accept the version of him depicted in his first book, “The Art of the Deal,” which we now know from his previous ghostwriter, Tony Schwartz, was entirely invented. They believed it over what they saw on his balance sheets or heard coming out of his mouth, and they never said no to his requests for more money. Often they came up with things he could say yes to before he could think of them himself. As a result, a failing real estate developer who had little idea of what he was doing and less interest in doing it once he’d held the all-important press conference wound up owning three New Jersey hotel-casinos, the Plaza Hotel, the Eastern Airlines Shuttle and a 281-foot yacht.

A real go-getter, right? But Trump’s portfolio did not jibe with what I saw each day — which to a surprisingly large extent was him looking at fabric swatches. Indeed, flipping through fabric swatches seemed at times to be his main occupation. Some days he would do it for hours, then take me in what he always called his “French military helicopter” to Atlantic City — where he looked at more fabric swatches or sometimes small samples of wood paneling. It was true that the carpets and drapes at his properties needed to be refreshed frequently, and the seats on the renamed Trump Shuttle required occasional reupholstering. But the main thing about fabric swatches was that they were within his comfort zone — whereas, for example, the management of hotels and airlines clearly wasn’t. One of his aides once told me that every room at the Plaza could be filled at the “rack rate” (list price) every night, and the revenue still wouldn’t cover the monthly payment of the loan he’d taken out to buy the place. In other words, he’d made a ridiculous deal. Neither he nor the banks had done the math beforehand. Or perhaps Trump knew it because someone had told him, but didn’t want to think about it. The one thing he is above-average at is compartmentalization.

Source:

https://news.yahoo.com/trump-the-billiondollar-loser-his-ghostwriter-recalls-the-king-midas-years-090000640.html

Every word you wrote is true, Frustratedlady. Seeing that Putin’s pals have been exposed through the Panama Papers, etc., there is hope we will see Justice. We need to win in November, though, to make it a certainty.

[N_E_1 for Tennis]

2. Phhhtttt.. gives evil eye...Vlad...did you?...

Nyet, no,no, dog...uh, pence.

[Kid Berwyn]

9. Guy really is well-mannered. Look how he treats those in authority...

[Baked Potato]

3. Well, if the Moron was providing underage models for rich clients

and, also may have blackmail information on prominent men, and a good candidate for a takeover of America.... sure.

[Kid Berwyn]

10. "Integrity is for paupers." -- NBC News motto

Revealed: the $2bn offshore trail that leads to Vladimir Putin

A massive leak of documents shines new light on the fabulous fortunes of the Russian president’s inner circle

Putin’s best friend: the cellist who holds the key to his fortune

Iceland’s PM faces snap election over revelations

What are the Panama Papers?

Panama Papers: global reaction – live

by Luke Harding
The Guardian, April 3, 2016

A network of secret offshore deals and vast loans worth $2bn has laid a trail to Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin.

An unprecedented leak of documents shows how this money has made members of Putin’s close circle fabulously wealthy.

Though the president’s name does not appear in any of the records, the data reveals a pattern – his friends have earned millions from deals that seemingly could not have been secured without his patronage.

The documents suggest Putin’s family has benefited from this money – his friends’ fortunes appear his to spend.

The files are part of an unprecedented leak of millions of papers from the database of Mossack Fonseca, the world’s fourth biggest offshore law firm. They show how the rich and powerful are able to exploit secret offshore tax regimes in myriad ways.

The offshore trail starts in Panama, darts through Russia, Switzerland and Cyprus – and includes a private ski resort where Putin’s younger daughter, Katerina, got married in 2013.

Continues...

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2016/apr/03/panama-papers-money-hidden-offshore

[Baked Potato]

15. Hopefully there is some justice coming!

[smirkymonkey]

4. Deutsche Bank

[Kid Berwyn]

11. My neighbor's college roommate's cousin knew somebody who interned there a long time ago.

Can’t be certain, but you seem to have found video of the Fellow.



...a couple brass knuckles’ worth of truth:

DEUTSCHE BANK, TRUMP, RUSSIA, SAUDI ARABIA: WHAT’S THE CONNECTION?

By Klaus Marre
WhoWhatWhy.org / May 1, 2019

If Donald Trump invested as much time and effort in his presidency as he spends on keeping his financial records secret, his first two years in office might actually be as successful as he claims on Twitter.

Alas, he does not, so the one thing he fights tooth-and-nail over is making sure that any possibly shady business dealings he may have had with the Russians, Saudis, etc., will never see the light of day.

Deutsche Bank plays a crucial role in these transactions, and House Democrats, now armed with subpoena power, have made the German financial institution one of their main targets in trying to get to the bottom of the president’s opaque dealings.

Knowing that disclosure of the information would not be in his interest, Trump and three of his children went to court this week to prevent Deutsche Bank (and Capital One) from releasing any documents to congressional investigators.

But all this calls to mind a puzzling question: Exactly why are Trump’s dealings with Deutsche Bank presumed to be intimately bound up with Trump’s relationship to Russia and Saudi Arabia?

Long before most people were talking about that, WhoWhatWhy had already explained why Germany’s largest financial institution may be the key to tearing down Trump’s house of cards.

Now that Deutsche Bank is in the news again, you should read our past stories to get the scoop on why the president is so desperate to keep his banking history secret.

Here’s our Deutsche primer:

Deutsche Bank: A Global Bank for Oligarchs — American and Russian, Part 1 (1/08/2018)
International banking colossus Deutsche Bank has a track record of deploying illegal financial trading, money laundering, and shady offshore tax shelters in the service of the global elite. Should anyone be surprised that Deutsche is on Robert Mueller’s Trump-Russia investigation radar?

Deutsche Bank: A Global Bank for Oligarchs — American and Russian, Part 2 (1/15/2018)
What do President Donald Trump and a number of Russian oligarchs have in common? Answer: Deutsche Bank. We pick up where we left off by examining how Trump first became involved with the international colossus — a bank catering to clients who understood that sometimes the line between profit and illegality blurs.

Deutsche Bank: A Global Bank for Oligarchs — American and Russian, Part 3 (2/01/2018)
Not only is President Donald Trump personally tied up with Deutsche Bank to the tune of $300 million, but his son-in-law Jared Kushner has his own history with the global banking giant. Part 3 looks closely at these relationships, and asks just how far President Trump’s Justice Department will be willing to go in probing potential illegality on the part of Deutsche.

Deutsche Bank: Where the Dots of Russiagate Connect (1/24/2018)
Martin Sheil, a retired branch chief of the IRS Criminal Division, discusses his WhoWhatWhy series on Deutsche Bank and how nearly all the main figures involved in Russiagate also have ties to the financial institution.

House GOP Leads Russia Probe… Away From Deutsche Bank (2/27/2018)
House Republicans who are supposed to be investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election say there is no need to look at Deutsche Bank. Here is why they are wrong.

SOURCE: https://whowhatwhy.org/2019/05/01/deutsche-bank-trump-russia-saudi-arabia-whats-the-connection/

[smirkymonkey]

12. Good info.

They are the key to nailing Trump.

[UTUSN]

5. Some bits:

********QUOTE*********

.... In his new book, Dark Towers: Deutsche Bank, Donald Trump, and an Epic Trail of Destruction, (David) Enrich traces the full arc of the relationship, offering plenty of juicy details—including the amazing story of a bank executive’s suicide and how it led his son to dig into confidential files, which he has shared with government investigators. ....

David Enrich: .... Deutsche Bank, as one executive there told me, needs damaged clients. And the reason it does is because if you’re an established wealthy business man or business woman, you often have your pick of which banks you are going to go to. And Deutsche Bank would not top the list. So Deutsche had to be content with clients that were off-limits to other banks. ....

DE: ... At the end of the Obama administration in late 2016, there were a number of investigations into the bank’s laundering of money for wealthy Russians. And that included a Justice Department criminal investigation. And I had been hearing that the DOJ was pretty close to bringing some sort of charges against the bank and possibly individuals at the bank. And I believe those were likely to be criminal charges, but I’m not 100% certain.

And it sounded like they were very close to wrapping up an investigation and punishing the bank. And then Trump gets sworn into office and the investigation goes silent. And initially people at Deutsche Bank, who had braced themselves for the punishment and for it to be quite large and quite damaging publicly. And at first they figured that this is just the product of one administration transitioning to another. And that it’s a matter of time—and the weeks pass and the months pass and a year passed and still nothing. Just complete radio silence. And at this point, a lot of people within the bank have breathed a sigh of relief that this has essentially gone away in the Trump administration. And I think the view from some people I’ve spoken to is that it is not a coincidence, that there is a belief in some quarters, I know there’s a belief in some parts of the bank, that Trump viewed Deutsche Bank and Russia as completely off limits. ....

FastCompany: I wanted to ask you about Val Broeksmit, the son of the Deutsche executive who hanged himself in 2014, and who has since accessed his father’s computer files. When Val met with two FBI agents last year, they told him they had started investigating Deutsche money laundering in Russia but had widened their scope. Is there any indication that included Kushner moving money to Russian individuals or any Trump deals?

DE: All I know is what the FBI has told people about their investigation. And one of those people is Val. And I’ve got a very complete recounting of everything the FBI told Val in those meetings. But I’ve also talked to at least two other people who had been interviewed by the FBI about things related to Deutsche Bank. And in both of those cases, the FBI agents have been looking at or been asking questions about aspects of the Trump relationship—in one case, asking about suspicious activity reports that were filed related to Trump and Kushner. And in the other case, they were asking about some transactions that Trump had been involved with, and all of them [were] people outside of the United States. ....

*********UNQUOTE*********

[Kid Berwyn]

14. Shocking. Absolutely shocking.

“Even by the amoral standards of Wall Street, Deutsche exhibited a jarring lack of interest in its clients' reputations," Enrich writes.

'Dark Towers' Chases Scandal-Ridden Deutsche Bank's Mysterious Ties To Donald Trump

by Jim Zarroli
NPR, February 18, 2020

Excerpt...

It is by now a familiar story. "This proud national icon was seduced by the siren song of Wall Street riches," Enrich writes. Thanks partly to deregulation, big firms such as Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch were coming up with tantalizing new ways to make money, and by 1994 Deutsche Bank wanted a piece of the action.

It started by recruiting Edson Mitchell, an American executive from Merrill, who believed Deutsche Bank's "stubborn Germanness was the main impediment to unleashing its full animal spirits." Mitchell set about building a global markets operation, not at the bank's Frankfurt headquarters but in London, where he could function more independently. He hired a staff of "bloodthirsty piranhas" from Wall Street who knew how to push boundaries, as Enrich's tale tells.

Among them was Bill Broeksmit, a risk management genius who subsequently killed himself as regulators were moving in on the bank and whose death is the mystery Enrich uses to frame the story.

Mitchell died early in a plane crash, but the machinery he built kept chugging along. Enrich tells the story of its rise and fall in the careful style of a good newspaper reporter (he is an editor at The New York Times) but allows the complicated material to unfold like a good novel.

Over time, he writes, Deutsche Bank became less German and more global, so much so that the bank had to post a sign in its London lobby explaining how to say "Deutsche." Too many of the American traders were pronouncing it "douche bank."

Continues...

https://www.npr.org/2020/02/18/806984703/dark-towers-is-a-cautionary-tale-of-pursuing-profits-at-any-cost

Seemed like such nice people, too. Like IMPOTUS congratulating Anthony Kennedy on his son’s great job at Deutsche Bank then lobbying him to foist Kavanaugh upon the Constitution.

[meow2u3]

6. Only someone who's laundering money would co-sign a loan to a bankrupt organization

Because that said organization is really a criminal enterprise, now posing as a government administration. Such "loans" are really fronts for a money laundering operation.

[Kid Berwyn]

17. Speaking of criminal enterprises: the GOP.

How Putin's oligarchs funneled millions into GOP campaigns

Campaign finance reports show troubling connections between a group of wealthy donors with ties to Russia and their political contributions to Trump and top Republican leaders.

By Ruth May|Contributor
6:50 PM on May 8, 2018

EXCERPT...

In total, Blavatnik, Intrater, Shustorovich and Kukes made $10.4 million in political contributions from the start of the 2015-16 election cycle through September 2017, and 99 percent of their contributions went to Republicans. With the exception of Shustorovich, the common denominator that connects the men is their association with Vekselberg. Experts who follow the activities of Russian oligarchs told ABC News that they believe the contributions from Blavatnik, Intrater and Kukes warrant intense scrutiny because they have worked closely with Vekselberg.

Even if the donations by the four men associated with Russia ultimately pass muster with Mueller, one still has to wonder: Why did GOP PACs and other Trump-controlled funds take their money? Why didn't the PACs say, "Thanks, but no thanks," like the Republicans said to Shustorovich in 2000? Yes, it was legal to accept their donations, but it was incredibly poor judgment.

McConnell surely knew as a participant in high level intelligence briefings in 2016 that our electoral process was under attack by the Russians. Two weeks after the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued a joint statement in October 2016 that the Russian government had directed the effort to interfere in our electoral process, McConnell's PAC accepted a $1 million donation from Blavatnik's AI-Altep Holdings. The PAC took another $1 million from Blavatnik's AI-Altep Holdings on March 30, 2017, just 10 days after former FBI Director James Comey publicly testified before the House Intelligence Committee about Russia's interference in the election.

And consider Steve Mnuchin, Trump's campaign finance chairman. Could he have known that the Trump Victory Fund, jointly managed by the Republican National Committe and Trump's campaign, took contributions from Intrater and Kukes? Mnuchin owned Hollywood financing company RatPac-Dune with Blavatnik until he sold his stake to accept Trump's appointment as the Treasury secretary.

Continues...

https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/commentary/2018/05/08/how-putin-s-oligarchs-funneled-millions-into-gop-campaigns/

And to think Chuck Todd wonders why members of the GOP lie when they talk to him.

[DFW]

7. Someone who............

Someone who knew that said Bankrupt Unstable Moron would soon be placed in a position of great power, and who owed his ass, lock, stock and barrel.

That's who.

[sarcasmo]

13. Russian Oligarchs who run Deutsche Bank.

[DFW]

16. Our neighbor's son interned and then worked for Deutsche Bank for a while

He then left, not giving details (probably signed some ironclad agreement), but saying in no uncertain terms that he "didn't like it there." This guy, one of my daughter's classmates, is as conservative (English definition, not Republicanese) and as straight-laced as you can get. If he had a problem with the place, it would have been with their business ethics. Anything else, and he would have stuck it out.