Special Counsel Robert Mueller has subpoenaed Deutsche Bank to hand over President Donald Trump’s business records as part of his investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election and related matters, according to reports.
Mueller issued the subpoena several weeks ago, asking for records pertaining to Deutsche Bank’s dealings with Trump and his family, Bloomberg reports.
The decision by Mueller’s team to investigate the president’s business dealings could lead to a showdown. Trump has previously said in an interview with the New York Times he believes his business transactions were beyond the scope of Mueller’s investigation. It’s not immediately clear why Mueller has asked for business records from the bank.
Deutsche Bank has been Trump’s biggest lender for years and he owes the bank around $300 million, according to Bloomberg. The president used the bank to finance his hotel in Washington D.C. and has mortgages for the Trump National Doral in Miami and his tower in Chicago, the news outlet reports.
Mueller’s investigation has continued to heat up in recent weeks. In late October, Mueller announced that members of Trump’s campaign—including former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos—had been charged with crimes stemming from the probe.
Last week, his team announced that the highest-profile member of Trump’s campaign and administration so far, national security adviser Michael Flynn, had been charged with one count of lying to the FBI and that he had agreed to cooperate with the investigation.
Mueller’s team also interviewed other former White House administration officials including former Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and former White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer, Bloomberg reports.
The quickened pace of Mueller’s investigation has caused Trump to launch a number of attacks on Twitter, including bashing the FBI—something that people were quick to point out as ironic, considering a tweet from his press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, once said when people do that show they are “losing.”
You can read all of Bloomberg’s report here.
Update 2:51pm CT, Dec. 5: One of President Trump’s lawyers, John Dowd, said they could confirm the Bloomberg story was false.
“We have confirmed that the news reports that the Special Counsel had subpoenaed financial records relating to the president are false. No subpoena has been issued or received. We have confirmed this with the bank and other sources,” Dowd told Bloomberg in an email.
In her daily briefing, Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders reiterated that claim, attributing it to another of Trump’s lawyers. .
“I think it’s important to note … Jay Sekulow, a member of the president’s legal team, has put out within the last hour, that they confirmed that the news reports that the special counsel has subpoenaed financial records relating to the president are completely false. No subpoena has been issued or received. We’ve confirmed this with the bank and other sources. I think that this is another example of the media going too far too fast and we don’t see it going in that direction.”
