Impeachment. Taxes. Collusion with Russia. A White House cover-up. Delaying military assistance to Ukraine. There are several reasons why President Donald Trump might have needed a huge distraction when he ordered the airstrike that killed top Iranian General Qasem Soleimani.
Here’s another reason. According to Forensic News, Trump’s loans from Deutsche Bank were underwritten by Russian state-owned bank VTB. The news comes from a whistleblower with access to documents from both Deutsche Bank and VTB Bank, Daily Kos reported. VTB Bank was also the proposed lender on the never-completed Trump Tower Moscow project.
If it’s true that Russia underwrote Trump’s Deutsche Bank loans, that answers a question that has stumped most of the world since before Trump declared he was running for president — what was Deutsche Bank thinking?
When Trump first approached Deutsche Bank, he was broke, having gone through several bankruptcies at his casino and been fined a massive amount for money laundering. If Forensic News is right, what Deutsche Bank was thinking was that it wasn’t risking anything, because the Russian government covered for Trump through VTB Bank. If Trump didn’t make good, Vladimir Putin was offering to do so.
The 1997 film, “Wag The Dog,” is about a White House that invented a war to distract the country from a presidential sex scandal. The term “wag the dog” became synonymous with presidential acts of distracting attention away from a political scandal, often through military action.
In August 1998, then-President Bill Clinton ordered U.S. military action to avenge Aug. 7, 1998 bombings in Kenya and Tanzania. Clinton’s retaliatory missile strikes in Afghanistan and Sudan targeted a terrorist network linked to Osama bin Laden.
Monica Lewinsky was Clinton’s sex scandal. She was planning to return to a grand jury and testify about Clinton’s extramarital affair with her on the same day Clinton sent the retaliatory missiles. Some countries, media outlets, protesters, and Republicans accused Clinton of ordering the attacks as a diversion.
Starting a war may not be only about Trump’s impeachment. Cumulative pressures could include other things going on behind closed doors.
A top-performing lobbyist connected to Trump’s White House was raided Thursday by the FBI, Washington Post reported. Michael Esposito claimed close ties to Trump and his family. Trump denies those claims.
Esposito’s business, Federal Advocates, was so successful in the Trump era Bloomberg Government news service ranked it the top-performing lobbying firm in 2017. It collected $4.66 million from lobbying clients in 2018, $3.25 million in 2017 and $907,000 in 2016, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
Trump, White House officials and senior Republicans said Esposito exaggerated his claims of access to the president and his inner circle. Following a Washington Post story in November on Esposito’s business, Trump tweeted: “I don’t know, to the best of my knowledge, a man named Michael Esposito. . . . I don’t like him using my name to build his consulting company, or whatever. Please advise his clients and Administration officials accordingly.”
Trump campaigned on promises to pull the U.S. out of wars in the Middle East. But Republicans in Congress, allies in Israel and Saudi Arabia are pushing for a confrontation with Iran, NBC News reported in May.
Listen to GHOGH with Jamarlin Martin | Episode 68: Jamarlin Martin
Jamarlin talks about the recent backlash against Lebron James for not speaking up for Joshua Wong and the violent Hong Kong protestors.
Israel and Saudi Arabia have no official diplomatic relations, however they have a common enemy. News reports have surfaced about extensive behind-the-scenes diplomatic and intelligence cooperation between the two. The Iran nuclear deal caused friction between President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Israel and Iran have exchanged threats of war. There’s a small window of opportunity for a war. If Trump is defeated in the 2020 election, that window could close.
A former Deutsche Bank executive who reportedly signed off on some of Trump’s loans hung himself on Nov. 19 at his home in Malibu. Thomas Bowers, once the head of Deutsche Bank’s American wealth-management division, oversaw Trump’s private banker, according to LA Magazine.
Bowers isn’t the first Trump-connected Deutsche executive to commit suicide. In 2014, Deutsche derivatives analyst William S. Broeksmit, who reportedly had links to Trump and Russia, hung himself at his London home.
