Thread by @saradannerdukic

Trump’s financials are one of the smoking guns that House Dems are working to get in defense of our country.

Why do I believe this? Apart from already knowing that he's engaged in deals that leave more questions than answers, I’m looking at what they’re DOING.

An aside: I find it very hard to imagine that one or more patriots hasn’t come forward with at minimum an extremely detailed oral account of what those documents contain. And if not a patriot, then perhaps someone who would know and is trying to save their own skin.

Like Cohen
nbcnews.com/news/us-news/s…

or Weisselberg
nytimes.com/2018/08/24/us/…

I think they likely have a good idea of what they might find once they receive these materials. So does Trump, which is why he’s fighting this tooth and nail.

The approach is a multi-pronged effort - they haven’t put all their eggs in one basket, which is good (and expected).

There are currently efforts to obtain Trump financials by:

House Intelligence

House Financial Services
nytimes.com/2019/04/15/bus…

House Oversight
politico.com/story/2019/07/…

Manhattan District Attorney
nytimes.com/2019/09/16/nyr…

State of New York
nytimes.com/2019/07/08/nyr…

Additionally, Mueller subpoenaed Deutsche Bank as part of his probe:
handelsblatt.com/today/finance/…

The fact that his financials were not included in his report makes me wonder if they are part of the counter intelligence investigation that was handed off.
thedailybeast.com/mueller-tells-…

Adding to the multi-pronged approach: they haven’t only subpoenaed Deutsche Bank, or Mazars. The following institutions have received a subpoena: Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, Royal Bank of Canada and Toronto-Dominion Bank, JP Morgan Chase, Capital One, and Royal Bank of Canada.

I spent the weekend listening to something that occurred on August 23. It wasn’t covered very much at the time because we were instead talking about: Trump buying Greenland.

What I listened to was Douglas Letter arguing before the US Court of Appeals, 2nd Circuit, in New York.

Douglas Letter is the House General Counsel, and he was arguing on behalf of the House Financial Services and Intelligence Committees in their pursuit of Trump’s financial documents.
c-span.org/video/?c481851…

This is Douglas Letter. If you listen to the clip above, you’ll hear that he’s amazing. I am sleeping better knowing that he’s doing this work on our behalf.
thedailybeast.com/nancy-pelosi-a…

I put on my headphones and listened while cleaning up the path of destruction my kids had created around the house. I know not everyone can drop everything and listen to a 35-minute argument, so here are some highlights:

The House had ALREADY had their authority upheld by US District Court SDNY in May:
financialservices.house.gov/news/documents…

On the same day as that ruling, some of the institutions went ahead and complied with the subpoena:
thehill.com/homenews/house…

So, this argument you’re hearing is Trump’s appeal to the ruling in May.

Trump’s arguments against the subpoena are: Congress is doing law enforcement, which is unconstitutional; there’s no legit reason to ask for this; and this prevents him from doing his job as president.

Letter pokes huge holes in Trump’s argument:
-it’s not law enforcement - it’s a sweeping investigation into why billions of dollars of Russian money is being laundered into the US, and what future regulations are needed to stop it

-there is a legit reason - see above, and, HPSCI has reason to believe that there are very dangerous financial ties making Trump beholden to Saudi Arabia, Russia, and others. It’s a national security issue.

-there is a legit reason - see above, and, HPSCI has reason to believe that there are very dangerous financial ties making Trump beholden to Saudi Arabia, Russia, and others. It’s a national security issue.

Other interesting (some might say explosive) highlights:
-the subpoena includes records of checks

-the subpoena includes grandchildren. Why? As our House argues: money launderers use family members to hide dirty money.

-Trump’s personal lawyer argues that we don’t need any domestic records. Letter, representing us: It’s money laundering. Of course we need domestic records.

-Trump is apparently trying to force the House to subpoena HIM instead of the financial institutions so that he can then make the argument that it’s preventing him from doing his job.

-Trump has tried to obtain discovery on Congress, and is constitutionally unable to do so

-Deutsche Bank and Capital One were present at this argument, and refused to confirm whether or not they were in possession of Trump’s tax returns, or exactly how much documentation they’d already gathered.
nypost.com/2019/08/23/deu…

Days later, they admitted that they did:
nbcnews.com/politics/donal…

Here’s something that I haven’t been able to find reported elsewhere: the date that the subpoena was issued. Here, they say it was issued on April 11:
c-span.org/video/?c481851…

(If you have a link of any report disclosing the date, please let me know)

It’s probably difficult to remember because it was absolute mayhem, but April 11 was in the middle of the Mueller report release - at this point Barr was still holding the report from public view. Just to give you an historical reference.

One other thing that stood out to me: they straight up said that they want to know why Deutsche Bank loaned Trump $2 billion when no one else would give him money.

Why does this stand out? Because it’s not some rando on Twitter (me) banging pots about it. It’s the General Counsel for the US House of Representatives. A guy who had a 40-year career at the DOJ. A visiting professor at Georgetown.

I’d like to also point out the reason this has gone uncovered is because, as I’ve mentioned, newsrooms are a finite resource. Any time Trump is on the ropes, he does something crazy, and that’s what gets covered.

I see lots of fear that no one is doing anything. Our House is doing something. We just don’t notice because we’re in the middle of asymmetric warfare, and because it’s way more satisfying to focus on spectacle.

Looking back at timelines for relevant events and context is helpful:
sutori.com/story/spy-wars…