Schiff shrugs at Don’s ‘red line’
Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff ramped up his threats to investigate President Trump’s personal finances on Sunday — a subject Trump has called a “red line.” The California c congressman, who is expected to take over the House Intelligence Committee when Democrats retake the majority in January, says he wants to use his position to probe the Trump Organization after Trump’s former fixer Michael Cohen admitted the company was secretly hashing out a deal in 2016 to build a Moscow tower as Trump was preaching for warmer US-Russia relations on the campaign trail.
“If [special counsel Robert Mueller] is not looking into this — and I don’t know whether he is — someone needs to because otherwise we are being derelict with our security,” Schiff told NBC’s “Meet the Press,” adding that the Moscow arrangement appeared “deeply compromising.”
Trump told the New York Times in July 2017 that probing his family business would cross a “red line.”
Schiff also wants to subpoena Trump’s financial records with Deutsche Bank — particularly because “they have a history of laundering Russian money,” he said.
Deutsche was fined last year for its role in a $10 billion Russian money-laundering scheme.
“This apparently was the one bank that was willing to do business with the Trump Organization,” Schiff said.
Trump forged a relationship with Deutsche in the 1990s when Wall Street stopped lending him money because his company was teetering on the edge of financial ruin.