President Donald Trump once again went after The New York Times on Twitter, this time to deny and deride its report that anti-money laundering specialists with Deutsche Bank flagged transactions involving himself and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner. 

Software designed to identify illegal activity alerted the staff about the transactions, involving the now-shuttered Trump Foundation and business entities owned by Trump and Kushner, the Times reported Sunday, citing five current and former Deutsche Bank employees.

After reviewing the transactions, bank staff prepared to file suspicious activity reports to send to the Treasury Department. But the bank had issued loans worth billions of dollars to Trump and Kushner and bank executives directed the staff not to file the reports, according to the Times. 

On Monday, the president railed against “The Failing New York Times” – which he claimed will “pass away when I leave office in 6 years” – and the “Fake News Media” in a series of tweets. 

But Trump did not address the reported suspicious activity, focusing instead on the article’s assertion –which has been widely reported previously – that he borrowed from Deutsche Bank when other lenders were unwilling to give him money. 

“WRONG! It is because I didn’t need money,” Trump said. “Very old fashioned, but true.” 

“When you don’t need or want money, you don’t need or want banks. Banks have always been available to me, they want to make money.” Trump said Deutsche Bank was “very good and highly professional to deal with” but “if for any reason I didn’t like them, I would have gone elsewhere.” 

“There was always plenty of money around and banks to choose from.” 

He said the reports that he was rejected by other lenders were meant “to disparage” him and said reporters use unnamed sources “because their sources don’t even exist.” All but one of Deutsche Bank employees in the Times story were anonymous. 

Despite his claims that he did not “need or want money,” the president still owes the bank $300 million, according to The Associated Press. And in 2016, the bank lent $285 million to Kushner Companies affiliates. 

The bank lent Trump money after several bankruptcies and defaults in the 1990s. 

Tammy McFadden, a former Deutsche Bank anti-money laundering specialist, told the Times that in 2016 she had reviewed transactions Kusnher and Russian individuals. She thought the activity should be reported to the federal government, in part because the bank had already been hit with fines for failing to report Russian money laundering. 

Other employees told the Times that the bank’s Special Investigations Unit, charged with looking into potential financial crimes, “produced multiple suspicious activity reports involving different entities that Mr. Trump owned or controlled.” At least one involved the Trump Foundation. 

But the bank chose not to file the reports with the Treasury Department. 

“You present them with everything, and you give them a recommendation, and nothing happens,” McFadden told the Times. “It’s the D.B. way. They are prone to discounting everything.” 

Deutsche Bank fired McFadden in April 2018 after being transferred for a lack of productivity. But she told the Times that the bank has “attempted to silence” her for asking too many questions about why Trump and other high-profile clients were not being more thoroughly vetted. Two unnamed former managers told the Times that they agreed that she was fired for speaking out. 

Deutsche Bank spokeswoman Kerrie McHugh told the Times that “at no time was an investigator prevented from escalating activity identified as potentially suspicious.

“Furthermore, the suggestion that anyone was reassigned or fired in an effort to quash concerns relating to any client is categorically false,” McHugh said. 

Trump Organization spokeswoman Amanda Miller told the Times that they were unaware of any “flagged’ transactions” with the bank. 

“Any allegations regarding Deutsche Bank’s relationship with Kushner Companies which involved money laundering is completely made up and totally false. The New York Times continues to create dots that just don’t connect,” Karen Zabarsky, a spokeswoman for Kushner Companies told the Times. 

Although the report did not specify that the transactions connected to Trump involved Russians, but Trump indicated he believed that was the implication. 

“Now the new big story is that Trump made a lot of money and buys everything for cash, he doesn’t need banks,” Trump tweeted. “But where did he get all of that cash? Could it be Russia? No, I built a great business and don’t need banks, but if I did they would be there.” 

Trump and three of his children – Ivanka Trump, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump –have sued Deutsche Bank in an effort to block it from complying with a congressional subpoena for the family’s financial records. 

Deutsche Bank has been hit with several fines by regulators in the U.S. and Europe in recent years. In 2015, the bank was fined $258 million for violating sanctions on Iran and other blacklisted nations. In 2017, it finalized a deal to pay $7.2 billion for misleading investors about mortgage securities and the same year it was hit with $630 million in fines in connection with a Russian money laundering scheme. 

Contributing: Kevin McCoy, Kristin Lam and David Jackson

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