Not a ton of analysis needed on this one, it pretty-well speaks for itself, provided the evidence pans out.
Trump’s loans from Deutsche bank are co-signed by Russians, according to a source within Deutsche or close enough.
A source close to Deutsche Bank says Trump’s tax returns show he pays very little income tax and, more importantly, that his loans have Russian co-signers.
If true, that explains every kind word Trump has ever said about Russia and Putin. @TheLastWord 10pm
— Lawrence O'Donnell (@Lawrence) August 28, 2019
Let’s count the number of ways this makes sense.
- Obsessive secrecy regarding Trump’s tax returns? Check.
- Obsessive need to please Russians? Check.
- Duetsche notorious for banking with criminal Russians? Check
- Every other fcking thing we’ve seen from Trump that seems “odd” concerning his money? Check.
It is not proven, but, if true, it is literally all over for Trump. No amount of Republican reticence will hide the obvious implications. Moreover, at that point – should it pan out – each and every Republican, especially Mitch McConnell, will be terrified of the sure to come scrutiny as to what they knew and when. Some might be headed for hearings themselves.
But, no amount of “sources close” to the bank will seal this. It will take getting the tax returns, and the Deutsche loan agreements. One might speculate as to whether Trump would step down rather than produce those tax returns, then fight for his future from the Oval Office. He could possibly get a deal to step down, from Pence, “I will pardon you, if you leave.”
We will see.
I hope.
Oh, and if you have read my self-indulgent post on Trump’s diminishing property values, and you certainly should, it might well fit in with “insiders” knowing that the very property they share an interest in is backed up by Vladimir Putin, as all things Russian are.
As I said, we’ll see.
****
Peace, y’all
Jason
If I had a dollar for every time someone wrote that “THIS will mean it’s all over for Trump”…..well, you know the rest…..
…they will just say that it’s not illegal for Russians to co-sign loans and if confronted with Trump’s claims that he had no dealings with Russia during the campaign they will say, in the same spirit as Dick Cheney had answering that a majority of Americans are against the war in Iraq, SO???….and the press will move on to the next scandal.
Not busting on you…..but I am really sick of this sh!t…..even if caught red handed, no one that has the power to do anything about it has the fn guts to pursue the matter or do anything about it.
The only way we will ever get this orange stain off of our flag is to vote the MFer out!!!
*gets down off of soapbox*
*dabs brow with hanky*
You are right to be wary.
But this is entirely different than all those.
It cuts through every element of the man, from “really rich” to “northing to do with Russia” to conflicts of interest, to criminal money laundering, and Trump knows it or he wouldn’t still be trying to hide this.
Appears it’s yet another wild goose chase……O’Donnell is backtracking.
*sigh*
Yeah, it’s not like we don’t know his money comes from Russia and they have his balls in a vise. We’ve known that for all while.
I’m assuming that you heard the audio on Maddow’s show, where the lawyer for Deutsch was hilariously trying to convince the judge that he couldn’t say whether they had tax returns or not. My God, that was funny. Mark my words, someday that dialogue will appear verbatim in a movie. No screenwriter can write anything funnier.
Per Ursula Faw’s comment…If only Lawrence’s friend is correct…and the slippery, slimy Orange menace does not slither off on some technicality ( fake signatures?).
That sputtering dialogue explanation from the lawyer to the judge could be the background audio to a beautiful scene where we see the arresting officer, stuffing the large Orange head down and into the police car…perhaps accompanied by soft strains of a goodbye song like “Bye Bye Miss American Pie”…or “Bye Bye Don’t let the Door Hit You in the Ass” or “Good Riddance to Bad Rubbish”…anything for good measure.
How about something meaner…the Stones’ version of “It’s All Over Now” from the TAMI show?
Putin’s Puppet.
O’Donnell kept emphasizing he had only a single source. Still, it’s explosive and those loan documents would (if O’Donnell’s source is accurate) be worse for Trump than his taxes.
Why? Well, Trump’s taxes will be complicated as hell. The average person, and even very smart people will have trouble making sense of them. Even those trained in taxes will be challenged to present the information in an understandable way to a jury – that’s why white collar prosecutions are so difficult. OTOH loan documents while also complex are something the average person will “get” much more easily. In fact, an awful lot of the Trump goobers will have, like so many of us at some point in life needed someone to co-sign a loan. Back in college I did when my dad co-signed vehicle loans. The average person WILL understand all aspects of having a co-signer, and even in most cases be able to grasp the distinction between a business partner and a co-signer. Needing one looks bad for Trump even when it was his dad doing so long after Diaper Donnie was supposedly a fabulously successful real estate mogul. Having Russian oligarchs and worse, close associates of Putin who serve as his primary go-betweens with the business/banking world be co-signers is something that even goobers who think Trump is the most awesomest businessman ever will look at and say WTF?
Given a Hobson’s choice I think Trump would rather have his taxes out there than those loan documents if they indicate what O’Donnell’s source says they do. Worse for Trump is that unless I’m mistaken it will be far more difficult if not impossible for him to provide a legal justification for keeping them out of court proceedings. Look at it this way. Trump actually hired real, competent lawyers up in NYC to fight this and I imagine they demanded a helluva upfront retainer. Trump wouldn’t part with that kind of money unless he was scared. He considers this Deutsche Bank stuff dangerous enough to him to have hired first rate legal representation but even so they are on thin (and cracking) ice once they get in a courtroom. When I consider the timeline of Trump’s “devolvement” people have been writing/talking about lately I can’t help but wonder if his lawyers up there said they could stall for a while but eventually this would come out – and after his tantrum Trump checked with his chief accountant Alan Weiselberg at the Trump Org who told him the lawyers knew their stuff and it was just a matter of time. That would explain Trump’s increasingly rapid slide into a blithering mess.
Why is this “explosive”? I’m not clear what this adds to what we already know.
We already know it because we presume it. The press and government work on an entirely different level, it must be “proven” and clear. This would be as clear as it could possibly be, left in legal documents for the world to see. And it wouldn’t be an informal “co-sign” (as I had feared, it would be understood but not documented), this is right on the documents, that he is 100% in bed with the Russians.
It is a totally new level, even IF most of us assumed something like this had to happen, we have never been able to flesh out the details, even Robert Mueller couldn’t. It would be a massive shift in the outlook.
We know it because his idiot sons have flat out told us — boasted about it, in fact.
And now a story comes out about Trump telling people to break the law… build that wall anyway, I will pardon you! Will something finally stick?
The frequency in which the bad press keeps accumulating…and not in the usual quarters either. I keep getting the impression that the American business class, having got what they wanted out of Trump and having perhaps lost more ground than they ever expected, are as done with Trump as we are. The main difference between us and them is that I’m not convinced that they understand yet how some of this damage cannot be capped.
They seem to think there are unlimited resources.
Trump’s sons have already both admitted their money comes from Russia. How many more layers of proof do we need? If he were a Democrat, they’d have ten times more than they need to get rid of him.