S4 E12 — Why Did Trump Sue Deutsche Bank?

Trump hadn’t careened against the “guard rails” yet. He just drifted across double yellow lanes and passed in the “no passing lane” and sped over the limit, but he made it to his destination. Except for those nagging assertions that he hadn’t played the game fairly.

“The Tau of Steves: What You Don’t Know Could Fill a Book”

“5” Steve Greene, 34; Steve Guttenberg, 61; Stephen King, 72: “It would be tempting to veer off course to set your sites on an entirely different goal, but you’d be missing out on all the confidence to be gained from doing exactly what you set out to do.” Virgo

Hi and welcome to Sunday’s 12th Episode in Season 4 of “Our Disruptively Resilient Year” on this 20th day of March in the spring of 2022.

We concluded the three-year examination of how bits of wisdom changed — during the “normal” pre-pandemic year compared to the pandemic year, and more recently to the paradoxically normal year.

Season 4 continues now within domestic and global chaos.

Previously in Season Four, The Disruptively Resilient Year

S4 E11 — Were Putin and Trump Dipping into the Same Piggy Bank?; S4 E10 — Who’s the First Person You Wanna Tell?; S4 E9 — Did the Luck of the Irish Run Out This Time for Old Orange Hair?

Related from Season Three, the Paradoxically Normal Year

S3 E12 — You Can’t Cure Stupid, but There’s a Cure for Ignorance; S3 E11 — Looking for a New Predictive Belief System?; S3 E10 —Feeding the Beast for Sheila in Fantasyland; S3 E9 —Melancholy and Undercover Brooklyn Moms Know Best

Related from Season Two, the Pandemic Year

S2 E12 — Too Anxious to Meet and Eat; S2 E11 — Waiting for the 3rd Shoe to Drop; S2 E10 — Cats, Ladders and Shaking Salt …; S2 E9 — Blame It On Your D4DR Gene, Not Me!

Related from Season One, the Normal Year

S1 E12 — Day 12 of My 1-Year Experiment; S1 E11 — Day 11 of My 1-Year Experiment; S1 E10 — Day 10 of My 1-Year Experiment; S1 E9 — Day 9 of My 1-Year Experiment

Context

The president’s efforts to obstruct by false and misleading public statements were detailed in Robert Mueller’s, “Report On The Investigation Into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Elections” part Two Putin in other findings, etc.

Robert Mueller subpoenaed Deutsche, demanding records related to its relationship with Trump, as he had subpoenaed Deutsche for the records of Paul Manafort.

According to Wikipedia, Volume II detailed the former President’s reaction to the Mueller appointment and laid out the logic to find him guilty of obstruction of justice including the former Presidents:

- - Efforts to remove the Special Counsel
  - Efforts to curtail the Special Counsel investigation
  - Efforts to prevent disclosures about Trump Tower meeting
  - Efforts to have Attorney General control investigation
  - Orders McGahn to deny reports
  - Conduct towards Flynn, Manafort, and “redacted name”
  - Conduct involving Michael Cohen

Meanwhile, David Enrich spelled out how the “Trump administration was rapidly relaxing government regulations designed to hem in Wall Street — cutting a break to Deutsche and four other banks in their manipulation of interest rates.”

It was the old revolving door that had allowed Deutsche (and plenty of its peers) to co-opt its pursuers by hiring them.

Russia was off-limits, too hot to handle, for the Trump administration. So, it seemed, was Deutsche. To any government official paying attention, this was a powerful signal: Investigate Deutsche and risk the president’s wrath.

Christian Sewing became new Deutche’s new CEO.

He was the one who nixed the final Trump loan.

November 6, 2018, riding a wave of anti-Trump anger, Democrats seized a majority in the House. Maxine Waters chairman of the House Financial Services Committee was responsible for overseeing the banking industry.

At the top of the todo list was uncovering Trump’s relationship with Deutsche. The investigation by Adam Schiff’s panel wanted to know whether Trump was in hock to the Kremlin

In early 2019, after decades in the Senate, Bob Roach agreed to move to the other side of Capitol Hill, Twenty years earlier, he had started his pursuit of Deutsche.

Now he rejoined the hunt for his white whale, investigating the ties between a private banker and Donald Trump.

When Trump learned of the subpoenas, his lawyers sued to block Deutsche from complying.

The intelligence committee in June issued a new subpoena—this one to Val.

February 2019, meeting took place the same day that Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer, testified on Capitol Hill , lasting three hours.

Val Broeksmit had been trying to drum up Hollywood interest in his life story. At a small dinner party at a house in the Hollywood Hills he met Moby, the electronic music legend.

It turned out that Moby and Adam Schiff , a fellow vegan, were pals. Val Broeksmit

was in possession of a trove of internal Deutsche materials he found when his father committed suicide.

Two committees in April issued subpoenas to Deutsche for its records related to the Trump and Kushner accounts.

Agents told him they had started out investigating Deutsche’s money laundering in Russia—the mirror trades—but they had widened their scope.

November 21, 2019, another suicide at Deutsche Bank occurred, Tom Bowers, who openly praised Rosemary Vrablic—whom he had hired. Democrats in Congress who were investigating Deutsche’s relationship with Trump had hoped to question Bowers.

Normally, cases before the Supreme Court were litigated inside the body’s hallowed chamber,

The coronavirus pandemic had shut down much of the world—including trio of cases that together represented the most important test in decades of the constitutional separation of powers between the executive and legislative branches.

One of the cases, No. 19760, was Donald J. Trump, et al. v. Deutsche Bank AG, et al.

The Trump family sued Deutsche to stop it from complying with the subpoenas issued by the House financial services and intelligence committees.

A federal district judge ruled against the Trumps, and on the morning of May 12, 2020, appellate court affirmed the ruling.

Adam Schiff, Maxine Waters, and their investigators could green light their inquiries.

Trump’s records from Deutsche Bank—not tax returns , but a variety of other information reveal a pattern of wrongdoing by the president, his family, and his companies.

In a classic Trump strategy— he didn’t need to win—he just needed not to lose.

The court had upheld Congress’s right to investigate the president and to issue subpoenas.

But found subpoenas were overly broad.

In practical terms, the ruling was an important victory for a president, according to David Enrich, leaving open unanswered questions:

- - - Was Trump dodging taxes?
    - Was he in hock to or in business with the Russians who helped him win the White House?
    - Had he misled Deutsche about the value of his assets?
    - Were he or his company or his family using their Deutsche accounts to launder money or for other illicit purposes?
    - Was he using the presidency to enrich himself?

David Enrich accounts of his story leaves readers with a list of character traits and behaviors fellow authors of his administration have echoed:

His lies may become true in his mind as soon as he utters them, but they’re still lies.

“Get even with people who have screwed you,” Donald has said, but often the person he’s getting revenge on is somebody he screwed over first.

Donald as a petty, pathetic little man””ignorant, incapable, out of his depth, and lost in his own delusional spin.”

What Donald can do in order to offset the powerlessness and rage he feels is punish the rest of us.

What Donald thinks is justified retaliation is, in this context, mass murder.

He has no imagination. The pandemic didn’t immediately have to do with him, and managing the crisis in every moment doesn’t help him promote his preferred narrative

Donald is fundamentally incapable of acknowledging the suffering of others. Telling the stories of those we’ve lost would bore him.

Acknowledging the victims of COVID-19 would be to associate himself with their weakness, a trait his father taught him to despise.

His ignorance overwhelms his ability to turn to his advantage the third national catastrophe to occur on his watch.

He can never escape the fact that he is and always will be a terrified little boy.

And of course, questions about his real relationship with Putin leading up to the famous holding up of funds Congress had earmarked for Ukraine in his Quid Pro Quo phone call with Ukraine’s newly elected President Zelensky.

His acquittal in the sham Senate impeachment (1.0) trial was another such reward for bad behavior. And a clue that no guard rails could contain his lust for clinching a second term in the White House.

Evidence

But enough about him, what about us?

“4” Steve Zahn, 51: “You are enough. What you know and have lived is perfectly suited to take full advantage of this place and time. As you relax into the moment, the future will take shape.” Scorpio

I’m not feeling this one legitimately for Emma the Baroness and me on this Sunday afternoon. Is there anytime left to relax into the moment and let our future take shape?

Random ones that make me want change my sign.

“5” Steve Greene, 34; Steve Guttenberg, 61; Stephen King, 72: “It would be tempting to veer off course to set your sites on an entirely different goal, but you’d be missing out on all the confidence to be gained from doing exactly what you set out to do.” Virgo

This one feels like I should ignore any temptation that comes from relaxing in the moment and trekking off in a curious new direction.

“4” Steve Harvey, 62; Stephan Patis, 53; Stephen Hawking (1943 – 2018): “Rushing around just won’t be fun. Leave time for things like exploring and goofing off. Memory-making moments tend to happen between the cracks.” Capricorn

So the theme I feel is relax in the moment, finish what I’ve been doing outside of those relaxed moments, but explore, goof off and just have fun absorbing memory-making moments at the edges.

What’s Going On …

Literally Bottled and Set Adrift from KnowWhere Atoll

- @KnowLabs suite of 36 digital magazines according to my analytics, grew from 12252 this week to 12344 organically grown followers.
- Orange County Beach Towns 234 viewers stopped by the week before.

Foresight

Quality-of-Life

Long-Form

- “Here, Right Matters: An American Story” by Alexander Vindman. “We’d long been confused by the president’s policy of accommodation and appeasement of Russia, the United States’ most pressing major adversary. Russia’s president Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, seizing the Crimean Peninsula, attacking its industrial heartland, the Donbass, from the capital, Kyiv. By 2019, little had changed, Russian military and security forces and their proxy separatists continued to occupy the Donbass. The biggest change was to Ukraine’s importance as a bulwark against Russian aggression weeks earlier, the White House had abruptly put a hold on nearly four hundred million dollars.”
- David Enrich begins his book with a suicide in “Deutsche Bank Dark Towers: Deutsche Bank, Donald Trump, and an Epic Trail of Destruction” and then meticulously details the bank’s Russian money laundering operations. Deutsche’s Russian business surged after revenues had fallen 50% due to the 2008 financial crisis. Putin’s Russia, poured in to Deutsche from deals it did with VTB Bank, linked to the Kremlin’s intelligence apparatus. Deutsche positioned itself as a crucial cog in “The Laundromat” by doing what couldn’t be done — processing cross-border transactions for banks that were too small and didn’t have offices outside their home countries.

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Inspired by Holiday Mathis – Creators Syndicate

CENTER FOR KNOWLEDGE CREATION AND INNOVATION