Russia 2016 Meets “Dark Towers: Deutsche Bank, Donald Trump and an Epic Trail of Destruction”

The 2016 Russian Hacking Part

This New Book Brings More into Focus

My introduction and analysis of these two events: 

Assume for a minute that the sexual dirt scandal about Trump is really false and not true with zero positive proof hyped by the “Steele Dossier” – in other words: There was no “Golden Pee Pee Video,” or no “Hookers all over Trump in weird sexual acts” etc., etc., and etc.

In other words, it planted out there in an all-out effort to purposely and carefully and skillfully plant disinformation for “The Dossier” to distract from the real crimes (not just DNC hacking) and a bunch of made-up sexual hanky-panky never proven 100% true?  If so and can be proven true, then why and what crimes to deflect and cover-up? 

We know the Russian 2016 hacking was real – but was it harmful for any political again, or just a skillful diversion from the real crime? 

If so, what was what was the real crime, or crimes? 

Let's try money laundering by Trump and many Russian networks via say, Deutsche Bank AG, the global multinational investment bank and financial services company headquartered in Frankfurt, Germany.

Snippets from these stories follow. 

Here from NPR:

Some of the world's largest and most powerful banks spent the past decade mired in scandal, but none descended as far into ignominy as Germany's Deutsche Bank. Its rap sheet includes a staggering array of ethical and legal lapses, including money laundering, tax fraud and sanctions violations — not to mention mysterious ties to President Trump that federal investigators are even now looking into. 

How this plodding, conservative bank from a country famous for diligence and thrift turned into the most infamous casino on Wall Street is the subject of David Enrich's excellent, deeply reported book:

“Dark Towers: Deutsche Bank, Donald Trump, and an Epic Trail of Destruction.”  It is by now a familiar story. “This proud national icon was seduced by the siren song of Wall Street riches,” Enrich writes.

Thanks partly to deregulation, big firms, Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch, et al, were coming up with tantalizing new ways to make money, and by 1994 Deutsche Bank wanted a piece of the action.

Here is a 6-minute video clip with book author Enrich’s interview from MSNBC (YouTube). Note the video’s key lead-in question asked of former Trump lawyer, Michael Cohen, testifying before Congress and who is now serving prison time, about Trump attempts to get a big loan from Deutsche Bank to buy the Buffalo Bills and use his over inflated assets to back and get the loan.

Here from Fast Company (more on the book’s source of Deutsche Bank, Trump’s and Jared Kushner ties for loans, etc. in the author’s own words this extract from his book and this intriguing story:

“In the wake of the 2014 suicide of Deutsche Bank executive Bill Broeksmit, who had been long regarded as the conscience of the scandal-plagued firm, his son, Val, accessed his father’s computer files to understand more. He shared some of those files — which touched on the bank’s relationship with clients Donald Trump and Jared Kushner — with reporters and federal investigators (the FBI).”

My 2 cents: We know Russia hacked the DNC in 2016 and it was extensively covered and investigated, but was the real purpose just to get dirt on Hillary Clinton and operational data from the DNC as reported on here from Politico, and here from CNN, or as I have outlined above in my analysis and now from this book was it a skillful ploy to cover money laundering crimes? 

That is the real question I think. There are many moving parts and loose ends to this horrible chapter in American history.

But it all seems to be tied into a neat package for a much stronger criminal case to remove Trump from office and everyone around him.

Time will tell and it’s not totally clear yet, or as the great Yogi Berra once quipped: “It ain’t over ‘til it’s over.”

Thanks for stopping by.