Attorney Scott Pilutik wrestles with the news of the day, from a lawyerly perspective…
[Regarding this article: Trump loses appeal to block Deutsche Bank, Capital One from handing over his financial records to Congress]
Yet another court (Second Circuit Court of Appeals) rules against Trump’s attempt to prevent disclosure of his financial records, here Capitol One and Deutsche Bank, the latter which was the only bank willing to lend Trump money.
The last loan to Trump, for $175 million, came not long after after he’d stiffed Deutsche on a $640 million loan. There were also loans of $48 million and $125 million, the latter against property (Doral) valued at only $105 million.
It’s never been clear why Deutsche continued to loan Trump money when he would habitually default. But it may be relevant that Deutsche was also the bank of choice to Russian money launderers, for which dubious activity Deutsche was fined $600 million in 2017.
So the Deutsche documents could wind up being far more damaging to Trump than his tax returns, because the former would tend to more thoroughly explain who is actually loaning Trump money via Deutsche and perhaps for what reason.
So like the two Mazars (Trump’s accountants) cases, both which cleared the Second and DC circuits, the next question is whether the Supreme Court chooses to hear it at all. If not, it’s game over. If so, we’re looking at John Roberts’ worst nightmare, where multiple conservative justices might ditch centuries of unambiguous precedent in political servitude to a crook president.
