Trump rips ‘failing New York Times’ over report about bank staff’s concerns of ‘suspicious activity’: ‘WRONG!’

President Trump attacked The New York Times in a series of tweets Monday morning, criticizing a report that Deutsche Bank employees flagged possible suspicious transactions by entities controlled by Trump and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

“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. WRONG! It is because I didn’t need money,” Trump tweeted Monday. “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.”

….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. Fake Media only says this to disparage, and always uses unnamed sources (because their sources don’t even exist)……

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 20, 2019

{mosads}Trump also accused the Times of using nonexistent sources for its report, which cites five current and former Deutsche Bank employees.

“FAKE NEWS is actually the biggest story of all and is the true ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE!” Trump said, using a frequent term he has used interchangeably for both stories he disputes and the mainstream media in general.

In response to Trump’s tweets, David Enrich, the Times’s financial editor, disputed the president’s claim that he could have done business with any bank.

“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.

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. https://t.co/Qh4siSpEgM

— David Enrich (@davidenrich) May 20, 2019

The Sunday report said the bank’s anti-money laundering personnel identified several transactions they deemed suspicious involving entities owned by Trump and Kushner, many of them tied to Trump’s now-dissolved charitable foundation. Despite employees’ recommendations, the reports were never filed with the Treasury Department. Certain large transactions, such as those involved in real estate development, are often big enough to automatically trigger review procedures without any actual wrongdoing. It was not clear what the transactions involved, according to the Times, but some of them involved funds transfers between the Trump- and Kushner-controlled entities and foreign individuals or organizations.

“At no time was an investigator prevented from escalating activity identified as potentially suspicious,” Deutsche Bank spokeswoman Kerrie McHugh told The Hill on Sunday. “Furthermore, the suggestion that anyone was reassigned or fired in an effort to quash concerns relating to any client is categorically false.”

Updated at 8:30 a.m.