US prosecutors probing Russia’s election meddling have subpoenaed financial records from Donald Trump’s long-time financiers Deutsche Bank, two sources said on Wednesday, but the White House denied the President was targeted directly. A source close to the matter said that Germany’s biggest bank had received a subpoena from Robert Mueller’s team for documents related to its dealings with the US President and had already begun to provide them.
However, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders rejected reports of a subpoena for Mr Trump-related financial records as “completely false,” as did Mr Trump’s personal attorney Jay Sekulow. “No subpoena has been issued or received. We have confirmed this with the bank and other sources,” Sekulow said in a statement.
“We have confirmed that the news reports that the special counsel had subpoenaed financial records relating to the president are false,” Sekulow said. A second source familiar with the investigation said that the subpoena was linked to Mr Trump’s indicted former campaign chairman Paul Manafort. “There was a subpoena to Deutsche Bank in the Manafort case,” the source said.
German business paper Handelsblatt reported earlier on Wednesday that Mueller had subpoenaed the German lender to hand over financial information about Mr Trump and members of his family. It reported that the subpoena arrived “a few weeks ago,” and that the most important files relevant to the request have already been sent to Mueller’s team.
