In 2019, New York prosecutors subpoenaed Deutsche Bank, President Trump's longtime lender, seeking financial records that Trump and his company had given the bank, four people familiar with the matter told The New York Times.
The same prosecutors have been trying for the last year to get Trump's personal and corporate tax records. The criminal inquiry into Trump's business practices at first appeared to be focused only on hush money payments made in 2016 to two women who said they had affairs with Trump, the Times reports, but this move indicates that their investigation is wider in scope than previously known. In a court filing this week, prosecutors suggested they were investigating possible bank and insurance fraud.
Deutsche Bank became Trump's primary lender in the late 1990s, giving him and his company more than $2 billion. The bank complied with the subpoena and turned over to the Manhattan district attorney's office financial statements and other documents Trump submitted while trying to get loans, two people with knowledge of the matter told the Times.
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In 2019, Trump's former personal lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, told Congress that Trump regularly inflated the actual value of his real estate assets while trying to secure loans. Trump and his company have denied any wrongdoing.
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