In the months since Robert Mueller began sniffing around the White House for evidence of electoral misbehavior, President Donald Trump has watched warily to see whether the special counsel would sift through his personal finances. In July, he told the New York Times such an action would amount to crossing a red line.
But on Tuesday, reports suggested Mueller might be doing exactly that. Bloomberg reported that Mueller had issued a subpoena in November to Deutsche Bank, a German lender which Trump has often done business with throughout his career.
But that report, based on a single anonymous source, was called into question almost immediately by a Fox News report quoting another anonymous source near Mueller, who said there was no subpoena from Mueller’s office to Deutsche Bank.
Meanwhile, White House attorneys denied the Bloomberg report as well.
“We have confirmed that the news reports that the Special Counsel had subpoenaed financial records relating to the president are false,” lawyer Jay Sekulow said in a statement. “No subpoena has been issued or received. We have confirmed this with the bank and other sources.”
Bloomberg said their source repeated his claims after the White House statement went public. A spokesman for Mueller declined to comment.
Whether Mueller’s team will investigate Trump’s personal business dealings remains an open question. They certainly have the power to do so, should Mueller deem it necessary: The order establishing the investigation authorizes him to pursue “any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump,” as well as “any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation.”
But until Mueller opts to bring his investigation into the public eye, we’re unlikely to know for sure whether he’s decided to cast his net so broadly. That’s the most that can be said of these kinds of he-said/she-said battles between anonymous sources: The special counsel has been highly successful keeping things close to the chest.
