Deutsche Bank probed in Manhattan DA’s Trump Org investigation

German financial giant has been Trump’s main lender since the 1990s

Deutsche Bank CEO Christian Sewing and President Donald Trump (Sewing by Thomas Lohnes/Getty Images; Trump by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
Deutsche Bank CEO Christian Sewing and President Donald Trump (Sewing by Thomas Lohnes/Getty Images; Trump by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

New York prosecutors’ investigation into the Trump Organization may run even deeper than was previously known.

The Manhattan district attorney’s office subpoenaed Deutsche Bank last year as part of a criminal investigation into President Donald Trump’s business practices, according to the New York Times.

Two sources familiar with the matter told the Times that the German bank — Trump’s main lender since the 1990s — complied with the subpoena, providing prosecutoes with financial statements and other records related to Trump’s loan applications.

The grand jury inquiry was originally focused on hush-money payments made by the Trump campaign in 2016 to women who claimed they had affairs with Trump.

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However it has since broadened out: A new filing this week from the DA’s office cited “public reports of possibly extensive and protracted criminal conduct at the Trump Organization.” It also indicated prosecutors were looking into possible bank and insurance fraud.

Prospectors have also been trying to obtain Trump’s eight years of the president’s personal and corporate tax returns — a lengthy battle that recently went to the Supreme Court.

Trump has described the investigation as a “continuation of the worst witch hunt in American history,” and “a terrible thing that they [Democrats] do.” [NYT] — Sylvia Varnham O’Regan