Justice Kennedy's son was Donald Trump's favorite banker

Donald Trump and Anthony Kennedy

Justice Anthony Kennedy didn’t announce his retirement until after Donald Trump had put one of Kennedy’s former clerks onto the Supreme Court with him and floated two others as future nominees. Trump sweet-talked Kennedy in various other ways, hoping to hasten his retirement, but Trump also had a very interesting tie to Kennedy: the justice’s son.

In recent years, pretty much the only major bank that’s been willing to lend to Trump has been Deutsche Bank, but luckily for Trump, Deutsche Bank has been willing to lend him more than $1 billion. And the bank’s global head of real estate capital markets during that time? One Justin Kennedy, son of Anthony Kennedy. So this was the scene after Trump’s first address to Congress, in February 2017:

As he made his way out of the chamber, Mr. Trump paused to chat with the justice.

“Say hello to your boy,” Mr. Trump said. “Special guy.”

It’s another Trump moment that would seem way, way over the top as a plot point in the most lurid of political thriller novels: the judge whose retirement gives the president elected with the help of a foreign government the ability to appoint a judge who is likely to hear that president’s own case is the father of the last major bank executive willing to give the president’s business a loan. But that’s our real world now.