Donald Trump Attacks ‘Failing’ ‘New York Times’ Over Report That He Was Flagged By Deutsche Bank
Donald Trump spent Monday morning attacking The New York Times in a series of tweets after the news outlet released a report that Deutsche Bank employees flagged transactions related to Trump’s entities.
“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,” Trump wrote. “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.”
He went on to criticize The New York Times further. He called the outlet the “enemy of the people,” a term that he has used for media outlets before, and decried the story as fake news, a term that he uses for stories that he disputes and disagrees with.
“The Mainstream Media has never been as corrupt and deranged as it is today,” he said.
He then added that the media is refusing to cover the “real Russia Hoax.” The president then mused, referring to himself in the third person, that he has made a great deal of money and pays for everything with cash, but said that if he had needed money from Deutsche Bank, or any other, they would have been happy to provide it.
For more on the long, complicated history between @realDonaldTrump and @DeutscheBank —> https://t.co/5kD4vCXm7y
— David Enrich (@davidenrich) May 20, 2019
The New York Times report said that Deutsche Bank had flagged several transactions related to Trump and his son-in-law Jared Kushner’s entities, including Trump’s now-defunct charitable organization, as suspicious. According to five sources within the bank, certain transactions set off alerts that prompted employees to prepare a report meant for the Treasury Department to review. Ultimately, the transactions weren’t reported because, as the employees said, the bank had a more lax approach to money laundering laws.
A Deutsche Bank spokesperson denied that anyone was prevented from turning in their suspicions to the Treasury Department and said that that they use sophisticated anti-money laundering software to screen for potential problems.
David Enrich, The New York Times financial editor, responded to Trump’s barrage to defend the story with a tweet. He wrote that he had spent a great deal of time investigating the story, and discovered that Deutsche Bank was the only one willing to lend to Trump because of his history of bankruptcies and defaults. He noted that the bank was also clamoring to expand in the U.S. market, so it was more willing to lend to borrowers like Trump.
