single largest lender of any kind to donald trump himself. of course, we haven t seen much of his tax return but from the president s only financial disclosures it appears he owes more than $300 million to a bank called deutsche bank, deutsche bank appears to be his single largest lender. the justice department is currently prosecuting deutsche bank over currency trading practices and their role in the mortgage crisis and the financial collapse and also russian money laundering. we can now report that senator chris van hollen of maryland is writing to attorney general jeff sessions urging the attorney general that he needs to recuse himself from overseeing that at the department of justice. if there s going to be ttlement negotiations with deutsche bank over the issue of russian money laundering, senator sessions should recuse. that case is being made by maryland senator chris van hollen. he s also demanding to know from the attorney general, demanding to know from jeff sessions and th
if the evidence leads in that direction. that s how the week started and things have gone downhill since then. you might remember this past weekend the top democrat on the house intelligence committee said the only evidence he had seen of collusion between the trump campaign and the russian attack on our election, he said the only collusion evidence he d seen could be described as circumstantial evidence. that was his perception as of sunday morning. well, that perception changed this week. as of the middle of this week adam schiff was no longer describing the evidence that way, saying instead that the evidence is now more than circumstantial. more than circumstantial evidence now, that there was collusion between the trump campaign and russia in their attack on the united states. shortly thereafter cnn reported the ongoing fbi investigation into the russian attack into potential trump collusion with that attack, cnn reports that that fbi investigation is increasingly focused on the
evidence that investigators have uncovered about collusion between the trump campaign and the russians. and so it s been a bad week even before today and this whole thing was poised to get worse for the administration. the first open hearing of the house intelligence committee where the fbi announced the investigation, that was this past monday. the next open hearing of the same committee was scheduled for tuesday morning of next week. today without warning and without consulting anybody else on his committee, the republican chairman of the house intelligence committee, himself a trump campaign official and trump transition official, today he abruptly canceled the next public meeting of the house intelligence committee and their investigation into trump and russia. this is the hearing, this tuesday hearing he just canceled today, this is the one where former cia director john brennan is due to testify. former national intelligence director james clapper and, importantly, the former act
cyprus where he s a major shareholder and, until recently, was vice chairman. senator booker gave wilbur ross, the commerce secretary, until today to explain his connections through that bank or otherwise to another major bank of cyprus shareholder who also happens to be the russian oligarch who did this otherwise inexplicable real estate transaction with donald trump in palm beach a few years ago which netted president trump over $50 million in profit. the deadline for commerce secretary wilbur ross to respond to the senator s inquiry about that was today. we can further report that the commerce secretary has given no response to that letter. we can also report and this is definitely new, this has not been reported elsewhere and this is potentially a big deal we can report exclusively tonight that there is more turmoil beneath the surface when it comes to another criminal investigation of another bank that has been implicated in multibillion dollar russian money laundering. a bank
you can bet if the shoe were on the other foot and a democratic president was under investigation by the fbi the republicans would be howling at the moon about filling a supreme court seat in such circumstances. back with us now is senate minority leader chuck schumer. it has been remarkable, senator schumer, from my perspective, to see this incredible ornate and still unfolding scandal around the trump/russia stuff and then to see stuff trying to be politics as usual, moving the health care bill, moving the supreme court nominee. are you making the argument that nothing should happen? that the president shouldn t do anything particularly anything big along as this fbi investigation is under way. i think that s not the case but with the supreme court justice who has a lifetime appointment and such profound influence on all of our lives, yes.