As Democrats eye a fecund field of investigative options, Donald Trump's ties to Russian money laundering provides one relatively untapped area of inquiry. Incoming Democratic House Intelligence Chair Adam Schiff has expressed interest in the topic recently, notes Mother Jones's Dan Friedman.
“No one has investigated the issue of whether the Russians were laundering money through the Trump Organization and this is the leverage that the Russians have over the president of the United States,” Schiff noted at a Brookings Institution event last month.
Schiff brought up money laundering again last week when NPR asked him what direction he planned to take the committee, noting that neither the House nor the Senate had been “allowed to pursue” it.
Democrats on the Intelligence panel also touched on the money laundering topic in a statement they issued last March after Republicans abruptly ended the probe, concluding they had found no evidence of collusion. Democrats were specifically interested in Trump's ties to Deutsche Bank, which suffered a $630-million fine last year for its role in a $10 billion Russian money-laundering scheme.
Under a section titled "Financial Leverage," Democrats wrote, "We must also seek to determine: Did the Russian government, through business figures close to the Kremlin, seek to court Donald Trump and launder funds through the Trump Organization; and did candidate Trump’s financial exposure via Deutsche Bank or other private loans constitute a point of leverage that Russia may have exploited and may still be using?"
Democrats named eight lines of incomplete inquiries in that March statement—all areas that they can choose to pursue once they take control of the House next year.