Senate is now probing the Donald Trump Taj Mahal money laundering case we told you about last month

| 3:57 pm EDT May 10, 2017
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Four weeks ago Palmer Report brought you the story of the U.S. Treasury department having busted Donald Trump’s Taj Mahal hotel for money laundering in the summer of 2015. The case was visible on the Treasury’s website all along, but had gone completely unreported by any news outlet until our research team managed to dig it up. Now the Senate Intel Committee is probing that same money laundering fine.

Back on April 15th, we brought you the story of how the Taj Mahal, which was part-owned by Donald Trump at the time, had been fined $10 million by the FinCEN division of the U.S. Treasury for years of money laundering violations (link). Even though our source was the U.S. Treasury website (link), we were told by the peanut gallery that the story couldn’t be “real” or else it would have been all over cable news during the election cycle.

But now CNBC is reporting that the Senate Intelligence Committee is in fact asking the Treasury for details on the $10 million money laundering fine (link). This is a crucial development because this wasn’t a mere allegation of money laundering, but rather a ruling that the Taj Mahal did launder money. The fine was a civil penalty, meaning that no judge or jury were involved. But in terms of civil law, Trump’s hotel did commit money laundering.

As we previously documented, Trump himself owned a declining but significant stake in the hotel during the years in which his Taj Mahal was laundering money. This will serve to significantly weaken any attempt on Donald Trump’s part to believably fend off any upcoming money laundering charges as New York State comes after him on RICO charges. We don’t know if the Senate committee saw our reporting on the Taj Mahal money laundering and decided to follow up on it, or if this is a coincidence. But it points to the importance of independent political reporting. Help fund Palmer Report