Dead Deutsche Banker's Son Peddled Trump Financial "Dirt" To The Highest Bidder - Which Adam Schiff Promptly Subpoenaed
A trove of insider Deutsche Bank documents was subpoenaed by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA) after a bizarre series of events involving Moby.
Val Broeksmit, stepson of top Deutche Bank executive Bill Broeksmit - who committed suicide in January 2014 in the wake of several banking scandals he had overseen, had been trying to sell or distribute information from the German bank which he obtained after his father's death, which may have contained information on Donald Trump, according to the New York Times.
Mr. Broeksmit’s late father, Bill, had been a senior executive there, and his son possessed a cache of confidential bank documents that provided a tantalizing glimpse of its internal workings.Some of the documents were password-protected, and there was no telling what secrets they held or how explosive they could be.
Federal and state authorities were swarming around Deutsche Bank. Some of the scrutiny centered on the lender’s two-decade relationship with President Trump and his family. Other areas of focus grew out of Deutsche Bank’s long history of criminal misconduct: manipulating markets, evading taxes, bribing foreign officials, violating international sanctions, defrauding customers, laundering money for Russian billionaires. -NYT
Broeksmit was eventually introduced to Schiff through the musician Moby (Schiff's "friend and neighbor" who said the CIA asked him to help spread dirt on Trump and Russia - h/t @LeicaLexus). When Schiff refused to pay for the materials, the lawmaker instead issued a subpoena for them.
Mr. Schiff’s investigators badly wanted the secret Deutsche files. Mr. Broeksmit tried to extract money from them — he pushed to be hired as a consultant to the committee — but that was a nonstarter. An investigator, Daniel Goldman, appealed to his sense of patriotism and pride. “Imagine a scenario where some of the material that you have can actually provide the seed that we can then use to blow open everything that [Trump] has been hiding,” Mr. Goldman told Mr. Broeksmit in a recorded phone call. “In some respects, you — and your father vicariously through you — will go down in American history as a hero and as the person who really broke open an incredibly corrupt president and administration.” (Mr. Broeksmit wouldn’t budge; eventually, Mr. Schiff subpoenaed him.) -NYT
All of that said, it's clear that the information is of low value as it relates to Trump for two reasons. First, Schiff has them - yet is pushing for impeachment based on a phone call between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky in regards to investigating former VP Joe Biden.
Second, Fusion GPS paid Broeksmit $1,000 to give the documents to a reporter for the Financial Times on New Year's Eve, 2016 - so they've been in the Trump resistance's arsenal for more than three years without seeing the light of day.
In Rome on New Year’s Eve of 2016, Mr. Broeksmit shared the files with a reporter for the Financial Times, periodically excusing himself to snort 80-milligram hits of OxyContin, and the journalist later connected him with someone willing to pay for the documents. On the third anniversary of his father’s death — Jan. 26, 2017 — $1,000 arrived in his PayPal account.
The money was from Glenn R. Simpson, a former journalist who ran a research company called Fusion GPS. Weeks earlier, it had rocketed to notoriety as the source of the so-called Steele Dossier — a report by a former intelligence agent containing salacious allegations against Mr. Trump. Mr. Simpson was searching for more dirt and, Mr. Broeksmit told me, he agreed to pay $10,000 for the Deutsche materials. -NYT
Simpson then convinced Broeksmit to work with him - instructing him via encrypted messaging to start searching for "Any Russia stuff at all," adding "Let's get you here ASAP."
Two days later, Simpson and Broeksmit met in the US Virgin Islands to look for dirt on Trump, Russia and Trump donor Robert Mercer - a financial backer of Breitbart and then Steve Bannon. As the Times reports however, "They didn’t discover bombshells — more like nuggets. One spreadsheet, for example, contained a list of all of the banks that owed money to one of Deutsche Bank’s American subsidiaries on a certain date — a list that included multiple Russian banks that would soon be under United States sanctions."
Mr. Simpson asked Mr. Broeksmit to travel with him to Washington and meet some of his contacts. Mr. Broeksmit shared some of his files with a Senate investigator and — after snorting some heroin — a former prosecutor in the Manhattan district attorney’s office. The documents found their way to a team of anti-money-laundering agents at the New York Fed. Coincidence or not, a few months later, the Fed fined Deutsche Bank $41 million for violations inside the American unit that Bill Broeksmit had overseen. (A Fed spokesman declined to comment.)
Mr. Broeksmit moved to Los Angeles to drum up Hollywood interest in his life story. Early this year, a producer invited him to a dinner party. Among the guests was Moby, the electronic music legend, who told me he was impressed by Mr. Broeksmit’s exploits and existential sadness. Moby arranged an introduction to his friend Adam Schiff, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, which had recently opened an investigation into Deutsche Bank’s relationship with Mr. Trump. -NYT
After Broeksmit was subpoenaed by Schiff, The Los Angeles FBI field office contacted him, as someone coincidentally noticed his whistleblower submission to the Justice Department's website (presumably satisfying the requirement for 'first-hand' information).
They wanted to talk about Deutsche Bank — one of the world’s largest and most troubled financial institutions, and the bank of choice to the president of the United States. Mr. Broeksmit’s late father, Bill, had been a senior executive there, and his son possessed a cache of confidential bank documents that provided a tantalizing glimpse of its internal workings. Some of the documents were password-protected, and there was no telling what secrets they held or how explosive they could be. -NYT
According to the report, "After the three-hour session, Mr. Broeksmit still needed some stroking, and the F.B.I. agents obliged. They told Mr. Broeksmit he could have a special advisory title. They promised to keep him in the loop as their investigation proceeded. They let him tell the world — via this article — that he was a cooperating witness in a federal criminal investigation. They even helped procure a visa for his French girlfriend."
At the end of the day it appears that Brieksmit attempted to help take Trump down with information he didn't himself understand, and he's now being punished for delivering a nothing burger by The Times' David Enrich, who details it all in his new book - "Dark Towers."
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