President Donald Trump exploded at his former lawyer John Dowd after reading news reports indicating the special counsel Robert Mueller had subpoenaed records from Deutsche Bank, according to the journalist Bob Woodward.

Woodward reported on the exchange in his new book, "Fear: Trump in the White House."

Dowd reportedly received assurances from Mueller's team that the subpoena did not directly involve the president.



President Donald Trump exploded at his former lawyer John Dowd after reading news reports indicating the special counsel Robert Mueller had subpoenaed records from Deutsche Bank, the journalist Bob Woodward reported in his coming book, "Fear: Trump in the White House."

Woodward wrote in the book, which was obtained by Business Insider ahead of its release Tuesday, that after learning of the news regarding Mueller and Deutsche Bank, a primary lender to the president, a furious Trump phoned Dowd at 7 a.m.

"I know my relationships with Deutsche Bank," Trump reportedly told Dowd, with Woodward writing that the president said the bank loved him and was always paid back for its loans. "I know what I borrowed, when I borrowed, when I paid it back. I know every godd--- one."

Woodward wrote that Trump added, "This is bulls---!"

Dowd then apparently spoke with Jim Quarles, a member of Mueller's team who was also an assistant special prosecutor on the Watergate investigation. Dowd repeated Trump's assertion that "this is bulls---."

During a conference call, Quarles reportedly said Mueller's team had subpoenas issued to Deutsche Bank "way back in the summertime, but it doesn't involve the president or his finances."

The New York Times reported earlier this year that those reports led to Trump's seeking to fire Mueller in December. But Trump backed down once the initial news reports, which said the subpoenas were aimed at Trump's and his family's dealings with the bank, were found to be inaccurate. Instead, The Times reported that federal prosecutors in a separate inquiry issued a subpoena for entities that were connected to Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, a White House senior adviser.

The Times columnist David Leonhardt wrote this weekend about the possible nexus between Trump's business and Russian money laundering involving Deutsche Bank, which has been tied to such illicit money.

The relationship between Trump and the German bank dates back two decades, a time when major Wall Street firms would no longer loan Trump money following a series of disastrous ventures such as the Trump Shuttle airline and Trump's Atlantic City, New Jersey, casinos.

Prior to Trump's election as president, The Washington Post reported his financial disclosures showed he held roughly $360 million in debt to the bank, with about $125 million in two mortgages for one of the president's major Florida golf courses, Trump National Doral.

Deutsche Bank was under investigation by the Justice Department both for its role in a "mirror trading" scheme with Russian oligarchs that allowed them to launder cash out of Russia in the face of US sanctions and for its mortgage practices amid the financial crisis, for which regulators sought a $14 billion fine. Deutsche Bank ended up settling with the government on the mortgage front for $7.2 billion just days before Trump took office in January 2017.

Last July, The Times reported that US banking regulators were reviewing the hundreds of millions of dollars in loans Deutsche Bank made to Trump over the past two decades. It was in the same story that The Times reported that the bank was in contact with federal investigators related to the special counsel's investigation. Sources said the bank was expecting it would have to turn over information on Trump's accounts to Mueller.

Here are more details from the book so far: