2/2/19
Donald J. Trump was burning through cash. It was early 2016, and he was lending tens of millions of dollars to his presidential campaign and had been spending large sums to expand the Trump Organization’s roster of high-end properties. To finance his business’s growth, Mr. Trump turned to a longtime ally, Deutsche Bank, one of the few banks still willing to lend money to the man who has called himself “The King of Debt.” Mr. Trump’s loan request, which has not been previously reported, set off a fight that reached the top of the German bank, according to three people familiar with the request. In the end, Deutsche Bank did something unexpected. It said no. Senior officials at the bank, including its future chief executive, believed that Mr. Trump’s divisive candidacy made such a loan too risky, the people said. Among their concerns was that if Mr. Trump won the election and then defaulted, Deutsche Bank would have to choose between not collecting on the debt or seizing the assets of the president of the United States. Two of the people familiar with the loan request said the Trump Organization had been seeking to borrow against its Miami resort to pay for work on a golf property in Turnberry, Scotland. A Trump Organization spokeswoman, Amanda Miller, denied that the company had needed outside funding for Turnberry. She did not specifically address whether the Trump Organization had sought a loan from Deutsche Bank.
The failed loan request is an untold chapter in Mr. Trump’s long and tortured relationship with the banking industry. It shows that he was actively engaged in running his business in the midst of the presidential campaign, and it is likely to attract scrutiny from Democrats on two House committees that are investigating his two-decade relationship with Deutsche Bank. Officials in the private-banking unit protested that Deutsche Bank already had numerous outstanding loans to Mr. Trump and that there was no reason not to make another, two of the people said. The decision was appealed to Deutsche Bank’s top executives in Frankfurt. That was the first time that some senior officials realized the extent of their bank’s dealings with Mr. Trump, the three people said. During the campaign, Mr. Trump sought to take advantage of that relationship when rivals painted him as a bad businessman who was frozen out of the mainstream financial system. The same month that Deutsche Bank rejected the loan proposal, Mr. Trump sought to blunt those attacks by citing his warm relationships with Wall Street firms. He singled out Deutsche Bank. “They are totally happy with me,” he told The New York Times in March 2016. “I do business with them today.”
