German banking and financial services giant Deutsche Bank may have destroyed its physical copies of President Trump’s tax returns, an anonymous former executive from the bank has reportedly said.
David Enrich, NYT finance editor, posted what looks like a screenshot of a WhatsApp conversation with the executive, who was not named, asking him to comment on how the bank may have ‘lost’ the US president’s tax returns after Deutsche Bank lawyers told a US federal court that they did not have the returns in their possession on Thursday.
“Holy f***,” the former executive reportedly replied. “The circumstance could be that they returned any physical copies or destroyed any physical copies under an agreement with a client and cleansed their servers,” they explained.
“Not normal though,” the ex-exec added.
Deutsche Bank has yet to comment on the veracity of the NYT’s reporting.
On Thursday, Deutsche Bank told a US appeals court that they did not have copies of Trump’s tax returns. Trump was known to have done business with the lender, with a 2017 disclosure form showing he had at least $130 million in liabilities with the bank at that time.
House lawmakers issued a subpoena for the president’s records back in April in a bid to determine whether there was any connection between Trump, his family or company y to “any foreign individual, entity or government.”
In August, Deutsche Bank indicated that it did have tax returns related to the Trump family, but did not identify which particular documents it had.
Trump called the Congressional investigation into his finances politically motivated, alleging that it was part of the Democrats increasingly “desperate” efforts against him. Trump’s lawyers sued the House committee digging into his records in April, accusing them of acting in an unconstitutional manner.
On Monday, Southern District of New York Judge Victor Marrero ordered the president’s accountants Mazars USA to hand in eight years of his tax returns, rejecting the president’s claim of broad immunity.
On Friday, the president lost a second round in the legal fight over the returns, with judges from the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruling 2-1 that House Democrats did have the right to enforce a subpoena for the records. Pending an appeal, Trump’s lawyers may turn to the US Supreme Court to rule on the issue.
Calls for Trump to release his tax returns began to surface long before he became president, with his Republican contenders calling on him to release the returns, as per a recent tradition which started under President Richard Nixon.