'I didn’t need money': Trump bristles at report Deutsche Bank staff flagged his transactions

President Donald Trump once again went after The New York Times on Twitter, this time to deny and deride its report that anti-money laundering specialists with Deutsche Bank flagged transactions involving himself and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

Software designed to identify illegal activity alerted the staff about the transactions, involving the now-shuttered Trump Foundation and business entities owned by Trump and Kushner, the Times reported Sunday, citing five current and former Deutsche Bank employees.

After reviewing the transactions, bank staff prepared to file suspicious activity reports to send to the Treasury Department. But the bank had issued loans worth billions of dollars to Trump and Kushner and bank executives directed the staff not to file the reports, according to the Times.

On Monday, the president railed against "The Failing New York Times" – which he claimed will "pass away when I leave office in 6 years" – and the "Fake News Media" in a series of tweets.

@realDonaldTrump: "The Failing New York Times (it will pass away when I leave office in 6 years), and others of the Fake News Media, keep writing phony stories about how I didn’t use many banks because they didn’t want to do business with me. WRONG! It is because I didn’t need money. Very old fashioned, but true. When you don’t need or want money, you don’t need or want banks. Banks have always been available to me, they want to make money. Fake Media only says this to disparage, and always uses unnamed sources (because their sources don’t even exist)......

But Trump did not address the reported suspicious activity, focusing instead on the article's assertion –which has been widely reported previously – that he borrowed from Deutsche Bank when other lenders were unwilling to give him money.

"There was always plenty of money around and banks to choose from."

He said the reports that he was rejected by other lenders were meant "to disparage" him and said reporters use unnamed sources "because their sources don't even exist." All but one of Deutsche Bank employees in the Times story were anonymous.