CONGRESS/MICHAEL COHEN/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT/TRUMP BUSINESS: “In early 2014, Donald J. Trump approached his personal bankers at Deutsche Bank to sound them out about potentially lending him money to buy the Buffalo Bills. He provided the bankers with a collection of bare-bones personal financial statements. The documents were provided so that Deutsche Bank — the only major bank that had consistently been willing to do business with Mr. Trump over the previous two decades — could make a preliminary decision about whether to make the loan. Mr. Trump has said he offered to pay $1 billion for the Bills, and the team was sold to a rival bidder for a little more than that, meaning that Deutsche Bank was never formally called on to make the loan. Now the financial documents Mr. Trump provided to the bank are under scrutiny by members of Congress. Michael Cohen, Mr. Trump’s former personal lawyer, told a congressional committee on Wednesday [2-27-19] that the documents listed Mr. Trump’s assets at values that had been ‘inflated’ with Mr. Trump’s knowledge.”
–David Enrich, Matthew Goldstein and Jesse Drucker, “Trump Exaggerated His Wealth in Bid for Loan, Michael Cohen Tells Congress,” The New York Times online, February 27, 2019