In the midst of the New York attorney general’s and two different Congressional committees’ simultaneous investigations into President Donald Trump’s relationship with Deutsche Bank AG, the New York Times reported Monday that Trump received more than $2 billion in loans over the course of two decades.
The Times interviewed 20 Deutsche board members and executives who said that the bank lent to Trump despite of multiple “red flags” waved by other financial institutions as well its own internal investigations between the late 1990s and 2016.
According to the Times, Trump also tried to woo Deutsche bankers with private helicopter rides and promises of free weekend trips to play golf at his Florida resort Mar-a-Lago—which many now refer to as the “winter White House” due to the president’s high-frequency, highly scrutinized visits.
But his promises didn’t always hold up, according to an anonymous Deutsche executive.
The executive told the Times that Trump tried to rescind a Mar-a-Lago invitation he’d promised a group of the bank’s salesmen in 2003, after they’d successfully managed to sell hundreds of millions of dollars of Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts bonds in 2003. Although Trump ended up flying the salesmen to Mar-a-Lago, the executive said, his casino ended up defaulting on those very bonds the next year, costing the bank significant amounts of money. While that specific bank division stopped working with Trump, others continued.
Even though a senior investment-banking executive told the Times that he warned management that Trump worked with people who were tied to organized crime and should be avoided, the bank lent him $500 million in 2005, according to the report.
Years later, Deutsche continued lending to Trump even though two former executives told the Times he was found to have inflated his real estate assets by 70%.
Deutsche finally denied Trump a loan he requested in 2016, during his presidential run. The bank reportedly feared that if Trump won and defaulted on the loan, it would have to decide between seizing the assets of a sitting U.S. President and not collecting his debt.
“We remain committed to cooperating with authorized investigations,” Deutsche spokesperson Kerrie McHugh told the Times.
The bank is expected to give congressional committees its communications with and internal documents regarding Trump in April.
