The rejected deposits
=====================

The claim under discussion was Trump's, that major banks had rejected his deposits, in one telling hundreds of millions of dollars, and that this was discrimination against conservatives orchestrated by the Clintons and the Obamas.  Kiriakou says he believes the underlying story. He does not believe the explanation. 

The legal mechanism

Under the USA PATRIOT Act and, in Kiriakou's phrase, "a lot of other banking securities regulations," a bank that receives major deposits it cannot explain in "some kind of credible way" is exposed to felony charges. That is true whether the account holder is an individual or a business.  The obligation, in other words, runs to the bank rather than to the depositor, and it is the bank that carries the criminal risk.

His own experience

Kiriakou offers himself as the ordinary case. After his mother died and left him money, he moved a significant sum from one bank to another and was telephoned about it. The questions were what the money was, how he had derived it, and what he intended to do with it. 

His reaction at the time, he admits, was irritation, "god, what a bunch of busybodies", and he stresses the thing that made the call survivable: "as it is I had an answer. I just told the truth." 

The inference

From this Kiriakou draws a conclusion about Trump directly: that he "obviously made some big deposits that he wasn't able to explain to the satisfaction of his bankers. That's why they kicked out the deposits." 

He reinforces it with a point about banking incentives. "The one thing banks don't want to do is reduce their nightly float," he says. "So if they're turning your money away, it's because there's really a problem."  On Kiriakou's reading the refusal is itself the evidence: a bank has every commercial reason to keep the deposit, so declining one signals that the bankers looked at the provenance and did not like it. 

Kiriakou goes further and says he thinks there is a scandal in this, while doubting the Democrats would either think of it or execute it without leaving fingerprints. 

The sequel

The grievance, in Kiriakou's account, is now being converted into leverage: Trump is going after the banks with regulatory powers as he went after universities through the Department of Education, with the threat of revoking banking licences and a shakedown for contributions, including to his presidential library. 

See also

- Donald Trump
- Athens bank fraud report
- Petra Bank
- The Talk Liberation bank freeze
