JACKSONVILLE, Florida — Anti-money laundering specialists at Deutsche Bank recommended in 2016 and 2017 that multiple transactions involving legal entities controlled by Donald Trump and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, be reported to a federal financial-crimes watchdog.
The transactions, some of which involved Trump’s now-defunct foundation, set off alerts in a computer system designed to detect illicit activity, according to five current and former bank employees.
Compliance staff members who then reviewed the transactions prepared so-called suspicious activity reports that they believed should be sent to a unit of the Treasury Department that polices financial crimes.
But executives at Deutsche Bank, which has lent billions of dollars to the Trump and Kushner companies, rejected their employees’ advice. The reports were never filed with the government.
The nature of the transactions was not clear. At least some of them involved money flowing back and forth with overseas entities or individuals, which bank employees considered suspicious.
Real estate developers like Trump and Kushner sometimes do large, all-cash deals, including with people outside the United States, any of which can prompt anti-money laundering reviews. The red flags raised by employees do not necessarily mean the transactions were improper. Banks sometimes opt not to file suspicious activity reports if they conclude their employees’ concerns are unwarranted.
But former Deutsche Bank employees said the decision not to report the Trump and Kushner transactions reflected the bank’s generally lax approach to money laundering laws. The employees — most of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to preserve their ability to work in the industry — said it was part of a pattern of the bank’s executives rejecting valid reports to protect relationships with lucrative clients.
“You present them with everything, and you give them a recommendation, and nothing happens,” said Tammy McFadden, a former Deutsche Bank anti-money laundering specialist who reviewed some of the transactions. “It’s the D.B. way. They are prone to discounting everything.”
2019 New York Times News Service
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WASHINGTON - A merit-based immigration proposal being put together by White House senior adviser Jared Kushner could lead to an increase in U.S. visas for highly skilled workers, sources familiar with the effort said on Wednesday.
Kushner is expected to present the comprehensive plan next week to President Donald Trump, who will decide whether to adopt it as his official position or send it back for changes, the sources said.
The plan does not propose ways to address young people who came to the United States illegally as children who were protected by President Barack Obama in the 2014 program known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), or those people who have Temporary Protected Status, the sources said.
Democrats, whose support the White House would need to advance any kind of immigration legislation through Congress, have insisted that the DACA recipients be protected.
Kushner has held about 50 listening sessions with conservative groups on immigration, a senior administration official said. He has been working with White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett and policy adviser Stephen Miller on the plan and the sources said there has been some intense behind-the-scenes jockeying about the plan.
At a Time magazine forum in New York on Tuesday, Kushner said he was working well with Miller, an immigration hawk, on the topic. The two men are both long-time Trump advisers.
"Stephen and I haven't had any fights," he said with a smile.
That drew skepticism from immigration advocate Marshall Fitz of the Emerson Collective, who gave Kushner credit for advancing criminal justice reform but said immigration was a dramatically different issue that Miller was dominating at the White House.
"It's impossible to see how Kushner could navigate an issue this freighted with history and central to the president's re-election strategy in a way that would actually move the ball forward," Fitz said.
As a White House candidate in 2016 and throughout his presidency, Trump has advocated a hard-line policy on immigration, pushing for a wall to be built on the U.S.-Mexico border and using bruising rhetoric to describe people who have fled Central American countries to enter the United States.
Republicans have largely supported his immigration proposals, but the latest White House plan aims to bring them together on a broader basis.
Some in the U.S. business community have asked that the number of highly skilled visas be raised to attract more employees from abroad for specialized jobs amid a booming U.S. economy. Trump himself has talked of the need to bring in more skilled workers.
The immigration plan would either leave the number of highly skilled visas each year at the same level or raise it slightly, the sources said.
The overall goal is to reshape the visa program into a more merit-based system, a key Trump goal. Officials working on the plan have been reviewing the systems used by Canada and Australia as possible models for the Trump effort.
The group has been working on a guest-worker program as part of the proposal to address the U.S. agriculture community's need for seasonal labor while not hurting American workers, but nothing has been finalized, the sources said. Trump has sought to court farmers in key battleground states to boost his chances of re-election in 2020.
The proposal will include recommendations for modernizing ports of entry along the U.S. border to ensure safe trade while preventing illegal activity. It will also address asylum laws to take account of Trump's desire to reduce the number of people who overstay their visas, the sources said.
Kushner, who is Trump's son-in-law, is also a main architect of a Middle East peace proposal that the president is expected to unveil this summer.
His objective on the immigration plan at the very least is to have a document that represents the president's immigration policy and provide something that Republicans can rally around.
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WASHINGTON - U.S. President Donald Trump ordered his chief of staff in May to grant his son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner a top-secret security clearance, the New York Times reported on Thursday.
It said senior administration officials were troubled by the decision, which prompted then White House Chief of Staff John Kelly to write an internal memo about how he had been ordered to give Kushner the top-secret clearance.
The White House counsel at the time, Donald McGahn, also wrote an internal memo outlining concerns raised about Kushner and how McGahn had recommended against the decision, it said.
The Times said the memos contradicted a statement made by Trump in an interview with the newspaper in January that he had no role in Kushner's receiving his clearance.
Asked about the report, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said: "We don’t comment on security clearances."
Peter Mirijanian, a spokesman for Kushner's attorney Abbe Lowell, said in an email that White House and security clearance officials last year asserted that Kushner's clearance was "handled in the regular process with no pressure from anyone."
"New stories, if accurate, do not change what was affirmed at the time," Mirijanian said.
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WASHINGTON - Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump's son-in-law and a senior White House adviser, likely paid little or no federal income taxes between 2009 and 2016, the New York Times reported on Saturday, citing confidential financial documents.
The documents were created with Kushner's cooperation as part of a review of his finances by an institution that was considering lending him money, the Times reported. The Times said that Kushner's tax bills reflected the use of a tax benefit known as depreciation that lets real estate investors deduct part of the cost of their properties from their taxable income.
The Times report said that nothing in the documents reviewed "suggests Mr. Kushner or his company broke the law."
Peter Mirijanian, a spokesman for Kushner’s lawyer Abbe Lowell, told Reuters on Saturday that he would not respond to the newspaper's assumptions, which he said were "taken from incomplete documents obtained in violation of the law and standard business confidentiality agreements."
He added, "Always following the advice of numerous attorneys and accountants, Mr. Kushner properly filed and paid all taxes due under the law and regulations."
The records reviewed by The New York Times did not expressly state how much Kushner paid in taxes, but included estimates for how much he owed called “income taxes payable” — and how much Kushner paid in expectation of forecasted taxes known as “prepaid taxes." The paper said that for most of the years covered, both were listed as zero, but in 2013 Kushner reported income taxes payable of $1.1 million.
Kushner Cos, the family company for which Kushner previously served as chief executive, has been profitable in recent years, the Times said, citing the analysis. Kushner sold his interests in the company to a family trust last year.
The White House and Kushner Cos did not immediately comment Saturday.
The newspaper noted that the 2017 tax rewrite signed by Trump includes provisions that benefit real estate investors.
Mirijanian said that on tax reform efforts, Kushner "followed his approved ethics agreement and has avoided work that would pose any conflict of interest."
In December, a group of Democratic lawmakers wrote to Kushner, asking whether in his talks with foreign officials he had ever discussed financing for a deeply indebted property in midtown Manhattan, citing concern he was using his position for financial gain.
Kushner Cos said previously it had more than $2.5 billion in transactions 2017 and has 12 million square feet under development in New York and New Jersey.
Documents released by the White House in June showed Kushner held assets worth at least $181 million, the Associated Press reported. The disclosures also show that Kushner and his wife, Ivanka Trump, received at least $82 million in outside income in 2017.
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WASHINGTON - Special counsel Robert Mueller is probing Jared Kushner's efforts to get foreign investors beyond Russia to provide financing for his company during the presidential transition, including in China, CNN reported Monday.
The probe was previously only said to have focused on the Russia contacts of President Donald Trump's senior adviser and son in law, only with the campaign's data analytics and Kushner's ties with disgraced ex-national security adviser Michael Flynn.
Mueller's team is probing Kushner's conversations during the presidential transition to get financing for the Kushner Companies-backed 666 Fifth Avenue office building in New York after financial setbacks, CNN said, citing people familiar with the investigation.
Kushner's father founded the real estate developer and lender.
CNN said Mueller's investigators have yet to contact Kushner Companies or request interviews with its executives, and the reasons behind the focus on the outreach to foreign investors are unclear.
Kushner played a leading role in the presidential transition team's contacts with foreign governments, and has indicated he spoke during that time with more than 50 contacts from over 15 countries.
One week after Trump's November 8, 2016 election, Kushner met with the chairman and other executives from the Chinese group Anbang Insurance, The New York Times has reported.
Kushner and Anbang chairman Wu Xiaohui were close to finishing a deal for the Chinese conglomerate to invest in 666 Fifth Avenue.
But the talks broke down, the Times said.
Other business dealings targeted by Mueller include negotiations on the same property with Qatar's former prime minister Hamad bin Jassim Al Thani, according to The Intercept. But that deal also failed.
Kushner purchased the building in 2007 for $1.8 billion in a mostly debt deal, but the housing crisis triggered financial setbacks for 666 Fifth Avenue, leading Vornado Realty Trust to take a 49.5 percent stake in 2011.
"In all of Mr Kushner's extensive cooperation with all inquiries, there has not been a single question asked nor document sought on the 666 building or Kushner Co. deals," Kushner attorney Abbe Lowell told CNN.
"Nor would there be any reason to question these regular business transactions."
Kushner also met Sergey Gorkov, chairman of Russian state-run Vnesheconombank, during the transition, but he testified in Congress that the meeting was only for official government purposes.
However, the bank has said the talks were part of a series of business meetings. And The Washington Post has reported that Mueller is probing that meeting as well.
oh/mdl
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WASHINGTON - The probe into Russia's role in the US election pierced the innermost circle of the White House Saturday, with reports that Donald Trump's son-in-law sought a secret communications line with Moscow -- the most damning allegation yet from the scandal.
The latest furor was stirred up after the Washington Post reported late Friday that Jared Kushner -- arguably Trump's closest White House aide, and husband to the president's eldest daughter Ivanka -- made a pre-inauguration proposal to the Russian ambassador to set up a secret, bug-proof link with the Kremlin.
Kushner, 36, even suggested using Russian diplomatic facilities in the United States to protect such a channel from monitoring, The Post said, quoting US officials briefed on intelligence reports.
The revelation, if confirmed, would raise new questions about the Trump team's relationship with the Russians, who US intelligence agencies say tried to sway the November election in Trump's favor.
News reports said the White House, reeling from the explosive developments in the long-running Russia saga, is creating a new rapid-fire communications unit to respond to the controversy, led by Kushner, senior presidential adviser Steve Bannon and White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus.
'NAIVE' OR 'SINISTER'
White House officials declined to comment on Saturday, ahead of Trump's return to Washington following his first overseas trip.
"We're not going to comment on Jared, we're just not going to comment," said Gary Cohn, Trump's chief economic adviser, during a press conference in Italy as a G7 summit wound down.
National Security Advisor HR McMaster refused to talk about the allegations but said that in general, "We have backchannel communication with a number of countries. What that allows you to do is communicate in a discrete manner."
"I would not be concerned about it," he added.
But a former head of the US National Security Agency harshly condemned Kushner's alleged effort to set up a secret communications line, saying if it's true, it would reveal a dangerous degree of ignorance or naivete.
"What manner of ignorance, chaos, hubris, suspicion, contempt would you have to have to think that doing this with the Russian ambassador was a good or appropriate idea?" Michael Hayden said on CNN.
He said he leaned toward "naivete" as an explanation, though he did not find it comforting.
Malcolm Nance, a retired naval officer and expert on terrorism and intelligence, said: "This is now sinister. There is no way this can be explained, from the intelligence perspective."
"That is indicative of espionage activity of an American citizen that is working in league with a hostile government," he told MSNBC.
The Washington Post said Kushner's secret communications proposal was made December 1 or 2 at Trump Tower in New York, according to intercepts of Russian communications that were reviewed by US officials.
Michael Flynn, who was Trump's national security adviser for just 24 days before being fired amid questions about meetings he held with the Russian ambassador, was also present, the newspaper reported.
The Post said the Russian ambassador to the United States, Sergei Kislyak, was surprised by the future White House aide's idea of a secret channel and passed it on to the Kremlin.
The New York Times said the channel was never established.
Trump will return to Washington to face a cascade of other worries related to the Russia probe in the coming days, including expected testimony by fired former FBI director James Comey before a Senate committee.
In another development, The New York Times reported Friday that Oleg Deripaska, a Russian once close to Trump's former campaign manager Paul Manafort, has offered to cooperate with congressional bodies probing alleged Russian election meddling.
NOT YET A 'TARGET'
Kushner boasts an enormous portfolio of domestic and international responsibilities underscoring his importance as Trump's chief aide-de-camp, despite having no experience in politics before the 2016 White House race.
He is the only person currently in the White House known to be under investigation.
The Post and other media have been careful to note that their sources did not say Kushner was a "target" of the investigation, nor that he was accused of any wrongdoing. Labeling him a "target" would suggest Kushner was a main suspect of the investigation.
But there have been a number of as yet unexplained contacts -- during last year's presidential campaign and afterward -- between other top Trump aides and senior Russian officials, including Flynn, US Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Manafort and others.
The investigation is being led by Robert Mueller, a respected former FBI director who was given broad powers to pursue the case as a special counsel after Trump abruptly fired Comey on May 9.
The Senate and House Intelligence committees also are investigating, but not with an eye to bringing criminal charges.
Former CIA director John Brennan revealed this week that intelligence chiefs had been looking into suspicious contacts between Trump campaign associates and Russian officials since mid-2016.
Trump has denied any collusion with Russia, calling the probe "the greatest witch hunt" in American political history.
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WASHINGTON - Donald Trump's daughter Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner have held onto real estate and business investments valued in the hundreds of millions while working government jobs, according to ethics filings released late Friday by the White House.
The disclosures came in a mass document release showing the wealth and financial assets of scores of senior White House staff members at the time they began government work.
Ivanka Trump's stake in the Trump International Hotel, located blocks from the White House, is one source of income that could represent a conflict of interest.
Critics have noted that interest groups or foreign governments could stay at the luxury hotel to get in the administration's good graces.
The White House documents show that Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, who are both officially close advisers to the president, are still getting income from holdings valued at between $240 million and $740 million.
Ivanka Trump -- who just days ago announced she would officially enter a federal role as an unpaid adviser to the US president -- will hang on to her stake in the Trump International Hotel.
According to her husband's disclosure the hotel stake is worth between $5 million and $25 million. Between January 2016 and March 2017 she made between $1 million and $5 million in rent or royalties from the hotel, the documents showed.
Kushner was recently tapped by his Republican father-in-law to lead a new White House office that aims to use business ideas to help streamline the government, according to the Washington Post.
The 36-year-old is a senior adviser to Trump with far-reaching influence over domestic and foreign policy.
Kushner left high-level positions at more than 200 entities related to his family's real estate business, according to the documents, but will continue to reap benefits from many holdings related to the business empire he ran with his father.
BANNON, COHN ASSETS
The White House disclosures included information on the assets of Gary Cohn -- the former president of Goldman Sachs who heads the White House National Economic Council -- and Steve Bannon, Donald Trump's chief strategist.
Cohn reported assets of between $253 and $611 million, and income in 2016 of up to $77 million.
Bannon's most important asset is his private consulting firm, valued at between $5 million and $25 million. He also had rental real estate valued at up to $10.5 million, and up to $2.25 million in the bank.
Bannon reported $191,000 in consulting fees earned from the conservative outlet Breitbart News Network, which he formerly headed, as well as more than $125,000 for work at the data firm Cambridge Analytica, which worked for the Trump campaign, and more than $61,000 in salary for a conservative nonprofit group.
The Trump administration is considered one of the wealthiest in US history -- Bloomberg estimates his cabinet and senior staff are worth some $12 billion.
NO TRUMP DIVESTMENT
Since being elected president, Donald Trump's vast business empire has been scrutinized by ethics experts who say it poses major conflicts of interest.
Before taking office in January Trump said he would formally hand "complete and total" control of his business empire to his adult sons, Don Jr and Eric, in a bid to avoid conflicts of interest - but he would not divest from his business holdings.
The Trump Organization, whose network of hotels, golf clubs and luxury residential towers stretches across 20 countries, is not listed on the stock market, and thus releases no public statistics.
Trump has thus far refused to release his tax returns, meaning little is known about the extent of its interests.
Don Jr, 38, and Eric, 32, are Trump's eldest sons from his first marriage. They are currently executive vice presidents in the Trump Organization.
Trump's personal lawyer Sheri Dillon promised that the new president would "build in protections" to show that his actions "are for their benefit and not to support his financial interests."
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