When Democrats take over the House Intelligence Committee in January, they plan to investigate Donald Trump's financial entanglements and are hiring experts to assist in that task.
The committee is looking to hire money-laundering and forensic accounting experts, three sources familiar with the plans confirm to The Daily Beast. One Democratic committee office said the purpose of the potential new hires is to examine unanswered financial questions about Trump and Russia, but their work could apply broadly across the panel’s intelligence oversight.
[Incoming Chairman Adam] Schiff (D-CA), a California Democrat, has said publicly and privately that he’s interested in President Donald Trump’s relationship with Deutsche Bank, the German financial giant that has been scorched for its connections to money-laundering. When other lenders were loath to lend money to Trump in the 1990s, Deutsche Bank stepped up and spotted him tons of cash. The president may still owe the bank up to $175 million, according to MarketWatch. Bringing on staffers with expertise in financial crimes would position the committee to pursue those questions.
Democrats could face pushback from Republicans who spent their time in the majority protecting the president from any real in-depth investigation, but without subpoena power, that opposition may not matter much.
Under the control of Republican Chairman Devin Nunes, partisan tensions ripped the committee asunder. Early in 2017, the committee set out to investigate Russian meddling in the previous year’s election. But that turned into a partisan brawl, with Nunes allying himself closely with the White House. A lawyer for Michael Cohen––then still in the president’s good graces––received inside information from the probe, which ended earlier this year. Democrats said Nunes hobbled it to protect partisan interests. Trump, for his part, told Fox & Friends that Nunes deserves “the Medal of Honor.”
House Intelligence Panel Hiring Money-Laundering Sleuths (Daily Beast)