In a string of tweets Monday, the president pushed back on The New York Times' characterization of his relationship with the German lender Deutsche Bank. | Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images white house Trump lashes out after report bank found suspicious transactions

President Donald Trump lashed out at The New York Times on Monday, disputing the paper’s reporting on his relationship with Deutsche Bank and launching into a broader criticism of the news media.

The president appeared to be responding to a Times report that anti-money laundering experts at the German bank noticed suspicious activity in accounts belonging to Trump and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, in 2016 and 2017. According to the Times, bank executives blocked employees from reporting the suspect transactions to the U.S. Treasury, and one former employee says she was fired for raising concerns about the bank’s scrutiny of certain clients.


In a string of tweets Monday, the president pushed back on the paper’s characterization of his relationship with Deutsche Bank, which has lent Trump's and Kushner’s companies billions of dollars over the years, showing a willingness to work with Trump despite his rocky financial history in the 1980s and ’90s.

“The Failing New York Times (it will pass away when I leave office in 6 years), and others of the Fake News Media, keep writing phony stories about how I didn’t use many banks because they didn’t want to do business with me,” Trump wrote, kicking off a flurry of posts. “WRONG! It is because I didn’t need money. 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 also appeared to criticize reporting from a year ago that cast suspicion on his transition over the past decade or so to using cash for real estate purchases, a break with industry norms.

“Now the new big story is that Trump made a lot of money and buys everything for cash, he doesn’t need banks,” he wrote in a subsequent tweet, before offering praise for Deutsche Bank’s service. “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...and DeutscheBank was very good and highly professional to deal with - and 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. They would be very happy to take my money.”

“Fake Media only says this to disparage,” Trump said, railing against the media's reliance on unnamed sources even though members of his own administration routinely request not to be quoted by name.

David Enrich, who wrote the Times story, pushed back on Trump’s denial.

“This is not true. I have spent a long time looking into this, and @DeutscheBank was the only bank willing to lend to @realDonaldTrump for 20 years because of his pattern of defaults and the bank’s hunger for growth in the US,” he wrote in a tweet.

A spokeswoman for the Times said Monday that the paper stands by its story.

Deutsche Bank said there were "numerous inaccuracies and misleading statements" in the story, but it declined to identify them.

"Legal restrictions on the bank prevent us from refuting publicly and in detail the inaccuracies in The New York Times story," the bank said.

Trump’s history with Deutsche Bank has become a renewed focus as Democrats in Congress battle the White House for the release of his financial records and tax returns. Last month, Trump and his family sued Deutsche Bank and Capital One to block them from turning over those records in response to congressional subpoenas.

As Trump fights the House’s Deutsche Bank investigation in court, he was dealt a major legal defeat in another case on Monday when a judge upheld a congressional subpoena seeking his financial records from an accounting firm.

In an interview with POLITICO, Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) said he planned to raise the New York Times story at a Tuesday Senate Banking Committee hearing where a top Treasury Department official responsible for policing financial crimes such as money laundering was scheduled to testify.

Van Hollen said he felt misled by Deutsche Bank after previously receiving assurances that it had controls in place to manage potential conflicts of interest involving clients who hold public office.

"It looks like their processes resulted more in a coverup than anything else," he said.

Deutsche Bank said it stood by statements it had made to Van Hollen.

"We have taken steps to ensure the bank’s policies, processes and controls address the potential for conflicts of interest," the bank said. "We are safeguarding the integrity of the decision-making process with respect to clients that hold public office or perform public functions in the U.S."

On Monday, Trump turned his ire on news outlets who have churned out damaging stories about the president, proclaiming that “the Mainstream Media has never been as corrupt and deranged as it is today.” He reiterated his claim that the press and congressional Democrats were ignoring the “REAL Russia Hoax,” which he claimed were “all of the crimes committed by Crooked Hillary and the phony Russia Investigation.”