Pod Insights The Pomp Podcast #235 David Enrich - Business Investigations Editor, NYT on Deutsche Bank and their Trail of Destruction About this episode David Enrich is the Business Investigations Editor at the New York Times and Author of Dark Towers: Deutsche Bank, Donald Trump and an Epic Trail of Destruction. In this conversation, David and Anthony discuss the time he was threatened with jail, asked not to appear on a national television show, the 200+ interviews that went into writing Dark Towers, Deutsche Bank helping the Nazis build Auschwitz, manipulating markets, violating international sanctions to aid terrorist regimes, scamming investors, defrauding regulators, and laundering money for Russian oligarchs. CRYPTO. COM-----The only all-in-one platform that allows you to BUY / SELL / STORE / EARN / LOAN / INVEST crypto all from one place. Join over 1 million users and download the Crypto.com app today to earn $50 USD using the code ‘pomp2020’ when you sign up for one of their MCO Visa Cards. TAXBIT-----Refund-maximizing, cryptocurrency tax software you can depend on. Visit taxbit.com/invite/pomp and receive 10% off your tax plan today by signing up for a free trial. TRAVALA. COM-----Travala.com is the world’s leading blockchain-based travel booking platform trusted by thousands of customers worldwide as their preferred online travel agency. Book over 2 Million hotels and accommodations and pay with 25 cryptocurrencies or credit and debit cards.
Transcript 17,468 words · 3 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Anthony Pompliano? What's up everyone, this is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to Off the Chain, simply the best podcast in crypto. Let's kick this thing off.
0:11 Anthony Pompliano? David Enrich is the Business Investigations Editor at The New York Times. He's also the author of a new book called Dark Towers: Deutsche Bank, Donald Trump, and an Epic Trail of Destruction. David has spent the last 15-plus years doing financial industry investigations across a number of different stories. In this conversation, we talked about all kinds of different things that he's uncovered, including the time that he was threatened with jail, and another time when he was asked not to go on a national television show. But his work on Dark Towers involved over 200 interviews, and led to his discovery of things like Deutsche Bank financing Nazis
0:53 Anthony Pompliano? during World War II, including the building of Auschwitz, and what is described as, quote, "the manipulation of markets, violating international sanctions to aid terrorist regimes, scamming investors, tricking regulators, and laundering money for Russian oligarchs," end quote. I really enjoyed this conversation with David. We had a lot to talk about, both in his work, and also just being a New York Times reporter in today's environment. I really hope you enjoy it. But before we get into the episode, I also want to talk about our three sponsors. The first, Crypto.com. They're a pioneering payment and cryptocurrency platform that seeks to accelerate the world's transition to cryptocurrency. They've got a vision to put cryptocurrency in every wallet,
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3:04 Anthony Pompliano? TaxBit.com/invite/pomp. Lastly, Travela. Travela is the world's leading blockchain-based travel booking platform, trusted by thousands of customers worldwide as their preferred online travel agency. You can book over 2 million hotels and accommodations and pay with 25 different cryptocurrencies or credit and debit cards. Sometimes you can even save up to 40% on travel bookings when you're using Travela.com. They've got over 2 million listings in 230 countries and territories, and they've got a partnership with Booking.com. So head on over to Travela.com. T-R-A-V-A-L-A.com. Travela.com. Leading cryptocurrency-friendly hotel and accommodation booking service.
3:47 Anthony Pompliano? 2 million properties, 230 countries, and they accept crypto, and they have a partnership with Booking.com. Head on over and check them out. All right, let's get into this episode with David. I really enjoyed this one. He's awesome, and I hope you enjoy it as well.
4:02 Speaker 01 Anthony Pompliano is a partner at Morgan Creek Digital. All opinions expressed by Pomp or his guests on this podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Morgan Creek Digital or Morgan Creek Capital Management. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only.
4:28 Anthony Pompliano? All right, guys. Bang, bang. We're here live with David. Thanks so much for coming to do this.
4:35 Speaker 02 Thanks for having me.
4:35 Anthony Pompliano? You're a busy man.
4:36 Speaker 02 Well, it's good to be here.
4:38 Anthony Pompliano? You are writing books and also the finance editor at the New York Times.
4:43 Speaker 02 You know what? I was the finance editor until about a week ago.
4:47 Anthony Pompliano? Okay.
4:48 Speaker 02 And then I got a new job at the Times, which is I'm the business investigations editor at the Times now.
4:52 Anthony Pompliano? That sounds more important.
4:53 Speaker 02 Well, no, they're both important. It's more, it's better suited to my skills. They basically were like, maybe you'd be more comfortable in this role.
5:00 Anthony Pompliano? All right.
5:02 Speaker 02 And I am.
5:03 Anthony Pompliano? So you've done a whole bunch of stuff. You've worked at the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and I kind of want to go through just the work you've done before getting to New York Times and the recent book that you wrote, Dark Towers. And then we can get into what is an epic story, but just kind of what did you do pre getting to the Times?
5:18 Speaker 02 So I'd been at the Wall Street Journal for about a decade in New York and then London and back in New York. And that was kind of my crash course. I'd actually worked at Dow Jones Newswires before that. But I kind of the formative years of my career were at the Journal, writing about banking, finance, all sorts of shenanigans all over the world.
5:39 Anthony Pompliano? Why the interest in finance and banking? Like, if you're a reporter, there's a whole bunch of shit you can write about, but like, why is that so interesting to you?
5:47 Speaker 02 You know, it's funny. It wasn't really. I got into it. I had started covering politics out of college because I was fascinated by politics and that's kind of the most glamorous thing to do in journalism. And it turned out for someone straight out of college like myself, it's very hard to find decent jobs and especially ones that pay. So I was in a job that was like paying $15,000 a year. My paychecks would bounce. I had no health insurance and I needed a new job. And it turned out there are a lot of jobs we had in business journalism. And so that's why I gravitated toward it. And I was not interested in it at first. I kind of got interested in it. And one of the reasons is that it's, there's just kind of a... Symmetry and kind of, it's almost like math.
6:30 Speaker 02 Like you can kind of like, there are puzzles to actually untangle that have real answers, which I found really satisfying. You can see reactions to your stories in the stock market. It's something that's tangible and real. And I really liked that.
6:42 Anthony Pompliano? Yeah. And so what is like the process for when you're looking at all these different stories you could go write about? Like, how do you choose which ones end up being, I'm gonna go spend a lot of time and really resources in pursuing this versus, nah, that's interesting, but that's not a story for the New York Times or Wall Street Journal or wherever you're working?
6:59 Speaker 02 It just really depends. I mean, there's, you, I mean, there are kind of multiple ways to look at it. One is just if something is big and in the news and has news value, you're gonna cover it. And if there's, if you're on a beat, and I was at the Journal, for example, I was from 2007 to 2010, I was the beat reporter covering Citigroup. And that was a moment during the financial crisis where there was a tremendous amount of news. And so you would go, basically anything to dealing with Citigroup's kind of rapid unraveling was something I would write about. As in quieter times, you wanna go over the stories that not only you think will have impact and resonate with readers, but also things that, in my case, I was passionate about and cared about and found really interesting.
7:42 Speaker 02 And there's, there's nothing worse than working on a story you don't care about. And, and part B is it's boring and that's, so if, if you, the writer and reporter are not interested in the story, that shows very clearly to readers and no one's gonna read it.
7:58 Anthony Pompliano? Yeah. So you've broken a ton of stories over the last couple of years when it comes to the finance world. But before we get into that, I want to have you break a story here on Wikipedia, which is, if somebody goes to your Wikipedia page, they see all kinds of cool facts about you, but some of them may not be as true because people might be confused?
8:18 Speaker 02 Yeah, it's Wikipedia, I mean, anyone who's watching this who knows me knows, they've heard this all a million times, but it's like the bane of my existence. There's someone a long time ago, actually, let me just at the outset state what I told you earlier, which is that I have never edited, created, deleted, ever touched anything on Wikipedia. Including my own page, but there's someone created a Wikipedia page for me a long time ago. And since then, it's built into this very big and kind of unnecessarily and unwarranted, very detailed thing about my life, including just some stuff that's not true. Like, I think it calls me an accomplished French horn player.
8:54 Anthony Pompliano? Yeah, so it literally says that you're, I think, experienced French horn player.
8:57 Speaker 02 I think it's not experienced because I am, you could, you could argue that that is true because from like grades, I don't know, like two to six, maybe, I played the French horn. And I think I was like, pretty good as.
9:10 Anthony Pompliano? It does say accomplish, you're right.
9:11 Speaker 02 Yeah, it was grades two to six. I was like, pretty good as French hornists go. But I stopped and by no reasonable, and I haven't played in, what, 30 years or something? And I certainly like was not accomplished by.
9:26 Anthony Pompliano? Did you win awards or anything in sixth grade?
9:28 Speaker 02 No, I didn't win an award. I was like, I got picked for like an orchestra, like outside of my. Pretty good at the French horn for a sixth grader.
9:35 Anthony Pompliano? For a sixth grader. But, but now it dominates your Wikipedia page.
9:38 Speaker 02 It's really strange. And the weird thing is, it's not, it's not true that I'm an accomplished French hornist, but it is true like how I got into the French horn because of Peter and the Wolf. This is, I can't even believe I'm talking about this, but uh, so someone who knows me has had been like, I think they're probably just like playing a prank on me.
9:54 Anthony Pompliano? Screwing with you.
9:55 Speaker 02 Yeah, probably. And it's working.
9:56 Anthony Pompliano? Other pieces of Wikipedia are true about, about you. Uh, and one of them is, uh, when you were in, uh, Europe.
10:20 Anthony Pompliano? Think through the framework of like, should I do my job or should I go to jail?
10:24 Speaker 02 Yeah, good choice. I mean, I was in London and the thing I was obsessing about back then was LIBOR, which there's a huge scandal over manipulating interest rates. And this had become a book that I was writing and it was, uh, it was a fascinating topic to me. And we were breaking a lot of news on it. And one of the stories that we were working on was about this list of conspirators that the prosecutors had kind of compiled. And I might be getting the details a little wrong, but it was basically that the prosecutors had amassed this list of all these co-conspirators in this criminal case they were building. And a colleague of mine and I, we were preparing to report that and. The, we called the Serious Fraud Office, which is like the main kind of corporate prosecutor
11:09 Speaker 02 in the UK, and asked them, just basically gave them a heads up we were doing this and wanted to see if they wanted to comment, which is just standard operating procedure. And they responded by telling us that they were going to court to get an injunction against us reporting this. And the UK doesn't really have freedom of the press the way we in America are accustomed to. And so government agencies and individuals too use injunctions as a way to muzzle the press. And so they had not, they warned us they were going to court to get an injunction. And then they called us a little bit later and said, okay, as of 4pm, there's an injunction against you. And it was like, I don't know, like 2pm, I guess. And so we, there was a mad-
11:49 Anthony Pompliano? So you have two hours.
11:50 Speaker 02 Yeah. And we got it published at like 3:59 and like, I don't know, I'm probably exaggerating a little, but it was like moments to go before the injunction kicked in. Or maybe it was before the court hearing was actually taking place. It was with moments ago. And it went online and then nothing happened.
12:05 Anthony Pompliano? And they, and they can't do anything once it's out there.
12:06 Speaker 02 Well, no, they can. They can. In fact, they did. And we thought, I mean, there's a few blissful hours where we thought this is, they were just gonna let it slide. And then I was at home and I got an email from a government agency with a, like a PDF attached saying that there is a court order naming me specifically, threatening me with contempt of court and jail if we didn't promptly like delete any references to this list anywhere. And this was like not great timing for me personally, because I think eight days previous, my wife had had our first child. And so I was like kind of controversial in the family that I was even at work. And we had a low tolerance for me going to jail at that-
12:50 Anthony Pompliano? Was it more controversial that you were at work or that you were being threatened to go to jail?
12:53 Speaker 02 Well, it was, it was just like, it was like pretty bad timing overall for me. My wife was not happy I was at work and was less happy that I was seriously entertaining the possibility of going to jail, which seemed like a low probability event, but stranger things have happened. There, anyway, there is, the Wall Street Journal went to court and fought this and won. And the injunction was overturned. And, uh, but it, you know, and these are relatively low stakes in the grand scheme of journalism. But it's, it's a reminder of how good American journalists have it. I mean, we can do, we just have a lot more freedom and a lot, much greater legal rights enshrined in the constitution.
13:34 Anthony Pompliano? There's more protection of the press.
13:36 Speaker 02 Yeah, we can, the presumption in the United States is that the press, we should err on the side of having a free press rather than err on the side of allowing the government or anyone else to kind of preemptively block the right of free speech. And I mean, that's one of the great things about being a journalist in the US.
13:54 Anthony Pompliano? Yeah. And so as you're going through this, like, you've got an eight day old, you know, child at home. Your wife's not super thrilled, you're at work and you get this, at any point you're like, eh, maybe we won't actually, you know, publish this. Or do you like turn to somebody and you're like, hey, is this jail thing for real? Like, how do you kind of think through it?
14:09 Speaker 02 Well, I mean, initially there was really no question in the newsroom. I mean, this became like one of those scenes, it kind of felt like we were in a movie when people were literally like running, like sprinting across the newsroom, trying to like beat the 4pm deadline. And there is literally no quest, and our lawyers were all involved and they were on board. Uh, and there's no question at that point about like, should we beat the government or not? Of course we should, like, we have a.
14:31 Anthony Pompliano? We have a right to do it.
14:33 Speaker 02 We have a right to do it and it was in the public interest. And in some ways, the fact that government was fighting so hard to silence is, silence has made us. Yeah. And it just, you know, we're journalists by nature or kind of anti-authority. And, uh, so yeah, that encouraged us to publish as quickly as possible. After the fact, I mean, we had, when I got that letter threatening jail and other penalties. I mean, that is a little bit of a scarier moment because our lawyers were like, well, probably you won't go to jail, but like.
15:04 Anthony Pompliano? We can't promise you.
15:05 Speaker 02 Yeah, you can't promise it. And also we were living in the UK with, at like the discretion of the British government, right? We're Americans and we don't have any God given right to be living and working in the UK. And we very much liked living and working in the UK. And so that was, it was, ultimately this got diffused because there was a quick court hearing and it was overturned. The injunction was overturned. Um, and I don't know what I would have done, given the choice. I mean, I would like to say that I would have gone to jail to stick up for my rights, but like. You know, I had like, I was madly in love with my newborn son and like waging a like going
15:48 Speaker 02 to jail on principle in a situation like that when it's not a life and death situation. It's not like, it's not, it wasn't a question of exposing or not exposing a source, for example, which I would have felt much more strongly about. This is a question of whether I stood up on principle for the right to publish things, which technically we didn't have a legal right to do, right? The law in the UK is the law in the UK. We're Americans and so we're kind of spoiled, honestly.
16:11 Anthony Pompliano? Yeah, and that, I think that's my big thing is hearing the story is like, there's some stories that are almost like worth going to jail for, right? And then there's some that are like, yeah, we have the right to do this, like, we think it's a good thing to do, but where is the line? And I've never sat in that seat, so I don't know how you would think through that.
16:25 Speaker 02 I mean, it, like, I don't want to get, I don't want to make it sound like I was some like murderer here. This was not a life and death issue. This is not even an issue. It wasn't an important, it wasn't a particularly important story. And again, I would have felt very strongly about it if it was, there was a source on the line. So if they, if I'd guaranteed I would protect someone's anonymity and the government was trying to unmask that person, I think I would have, I, and I think I would still go to jail to protect that person's, if I'd made a promise, or the New York Times made a promise, I would like to think that I would like go to basically the end of the world to protect that, because that's something that is an issue of my personal integrity, and it's an issue fundamentally of journalists
17:07 Speaker 02 being able to do their jobs properly. And I think that's a very important precedent. This was not that, and luckily I didn't get put in a position where I actually even had to make the choice ultimately. And so, thanks to Wikipedia, this is still a live issue, what, six years later?
17:24 Anthony Pompliano? Yeah, well, I was, so I was telling you, the name of the movie is Nothing But The Truth, which is a movie, I believe it's rooted in, in reality, but there's a reporter, Rachel Armstrong, who writes a story that reveals the identity of a covert CIA operative. Actually, this is the Valerie Plame, right, situation? And so if you haven't seen that movie, I highly suggest people go see it, it's pretty good. But in that, she does have a source. That she wants to protect and needs to protect and ultimately is thrown in jail. Right. So to your point of like, that's a little bit different situation than you were in, but it's not without kind of the jail scenario playing out in some of these.
18:01 Speaker 02 Yeah, but I would argue like it's a it's like it's similar, but it's actually pretty different. I mean, this that was a situation where the government was trying to get some a journalist to divulge a source to whom she had promised anonymity.
18:16 Anthony Pompliano? And that feels like that is like the most like concrete, um, kind of ethical or ethos driven part of journalism is protecting the source. Like you hear this over and over and over again in situations on the extreme side, but they really go to lengths to protect those sources.
18:31 Speaker 02 Well, we need to, right? I mean, that's it. Sounds kind of like a little bit self indulgent and kind of precious, but it's really important. I mean, there's like, and we'll talk about this in a bit, I think. But and for the book I just did on Deutsche Bank, the only way I can write a book like that or write the stories like that I did for the Times are based on people taking personal risks to talk to me. And those people, for one reason or another, end up believing that it's in their self interest to talk to me, but they're doing it based on this assumption that they can trust me and they trust the New York Times, that I'm not going to screw them. And it's like, I that's a vow. When I make that promise to someone, I don't do it lightly. And and again, I'm not holding myself up here.
19:13 Speaker 02 This is just kind of journalism one on one, especially at a place like the Times or the Wall Street Journal or the Washington Post. And, uh, or really anywhere, like any major news organization. And I think I would bet a vast majority of people of my colleagues that those and other news organizations would think about this basically the same way. So it's not, this is not, and also like, again, thankfully, we live in a country where our rights are pretty well established and generally pretty well taken care of. And. And I know I and I think all of my colleagues are like grateful on a daily basis that that's the case and we hope and will fight to make it remain so.
19:53 Anthony Pompliano? Yeah, so part of that is also like the media has this role in society. And another situation that you were involved in, I think, was people trying to protect that role, right? And remain unbiased or the best that humans can do. And so when you wrote your first book, you were invited to go on the Rachel Maddow Show. I'm sure you went on a bunch of other shows, etc. But at the time, it sounds like there was folks at the New York Times who had made a decision that certain shows were too political leaning or too biased. And so kind of tell us a little bit about how that played out.
20:26 Speaker 02 That wasn't my first book, actually. That was just stemming from some stories in the Times about Deutsche Bank and Trump.
20:32 Anthony Pompliano? And you know you're writing big stories when Rachel Maddow wants you to come on just to talk about the stories.
20:37 Speaker 02 Yeah, Maddow has like probably unparalleled reach in obviously in one kind of half of the political spectrum.
20:45 Anthony Pompliano? It's like Fox News on one side, her on the other side.
20:48 Speaker 02 Yeah, although I would argue that Maddow, again, putting aside like putting aside her ideology and her personal beliefs, like Maddow's a really serious journalist and she does her homework and she calls it like she sees it, but like I have a lot of respect for her as a journalist. Anyway, yeah, I was told I had I and many others at the Times had been on Maddow pretty regularly. She treated the New York Times reporters and at other news organizations very well. And but she's liberal and she does not hide that. And so there is the Times bends over backwards to try to maintain neutrality on political issues.
21:26 Speaker 02 And there is a decision made by people at the top of the organization that regularly appearing on opinionated shows like Maddow or Lawrence O'Donnell.
21:39 Speaker 02 And some others as well was kind of risked that. And I somehow got, I think it was my, I was like, had agreed without checking with anyone because that's what I do sometimes because I'm stupid. And I had agreed to go on and then it got to back to people at the Times and they said, no, no, no, you can't do that. And that caused like a bit of a sting. A carload. Yeah. And look, I mean, that, I think that was the wrong decision. And one of the great things about the Times is that we can, we have like an open and honest enough newsroom that you can say, I can say, I disagree with Dean Baquet or, you know, someone else and they have enough self-confidence that they can take that and I think they listen.
22:21 Speaker 02 And it's not like I persuaded them to change their minds, but there was other people alongside you who also felt the same way. Like it's frustrating because there's, look, everyone agrees we should be political, we should like be impartial and report without fear of favor. We take that really seriously. We sometimes do it better than others, but like everyone's kind of has the same goal. The question is, how do you achieve that goal best? And saying we're not going to appear on like Mad Out Show because of perception of political bias is, from my perspective, it just really, it's depriving us and the New York Times of access to this huge, like millions of viewers.
23:01 Speaker 02 And I mean, this ban or whatever it was called lasted not that long in the grand scheme of things. And I was just back on Mad Out a couple of weeks ago and I know others have been as well. So, look, that was, I thought that was the wrong decision, but again, I'm very grateful to work at a place where obviously I'm going to respect the decision that gets made above me, but the leaders of the Times have enough self-confidence that they will listen to criticism and listen to people who disagree and change their mind when they think that they should do so.
23:34 Anthony Pompliano? How do you balance as a journalist today, just given kind of the social media driven world and all this stuff of like, being a person who just, it's impossible for you, me, or anyone else to be 100% neutral, unbiased, etc. With the kind of job requirement of, I need to write from that, you know, without fear of, uh, would you say?
23:54 Speaker 02 Without fear or favor. That's like a New York Times saying going back 100 some years.
23:59 Anthony Pompliano? Yeah. So like, how do you balance that? And how do you, is it almost like, you know, when I go to work, I put a hat on that's super neutral. And then when I go home, I take that hat off or like, how do you actually do that?
24:08 Speaker 02 You know, it's hard and I don't know what the right answer is. And I think different, we're just, there's some discussion about this today in the newsroom. It's like different people have different approaches. Some people just don't vote, like they won't even, they just try to like, and that's people in our DC bureau, who are much more experienced with this kind of stuff than I am. Uh, look, I mean, we, the Times has rules on what you're supposed to not do. Like, we're not supposed to, neither I nor my wife should contribute money to political causes or go at a march or a fundraiser or like engage in any overt political activity. I'm not registered as with any party personally. Um, but look, everyone has their opinions and I think it's our, I think the ultimate test, we kind of know in our gut.
24:52 Speaker 02 If we are betraying bias in a bad way, or at least I feel like I do, maybe my judgment is probably not 100%. But like, you know, we need, and it's really, it ultimately comes down, I think, more to a gut check on the stories you're working on than anything else. And people do stupid tweets all the time. I know I do. And generally, if you have to like, ask yourself if I should be tweeting something, you should not be tweeting that thing. Um, but.
25:19 Anthony Pompliano? I feel like there's certain industries where if you have to ask yourself, you should tweet it.
25:23 Speaker 02 You should, you definitely should. Even if you're like agonizing, like if you think you need to ask a colleague if you should, you shouldn't. Like, and it's, I've learned that the hard way over the years. So.
25:34 Anthony Pompliano? Have you had dumb tweets?
25:35 Speaker 02 Oh my God.
25:36 Anthony Pompliano? Oh, really? Okay. Well, what's, what's the one that you feel most comfortable talking about that you're like, man, that was stupid?
25:41 Speaker 02 I don't even have any idea where to begin. Um, there's just so many stupid things I've tweeted, like there, look, we, the Trump administration started. Frankly, even before the Trump administration started, during the Trump campaign, that was.
25:55 Speaker 02 That was shattering everyone's understanding of what was normal. And I think it was really, including me personally, and including, I think, probably 99.9% of journalists, and probably most of the public too. And it was very hard in those early days of the Trump administration to like, see things that were extremely abnormal. Whether it was Trump and Sean Spicer lying about the crowd size, or like, this, I don't even care, I can't really remember, it seems like decades ago. But there was, we, I'll just speak for myself. I struggled to find the right balance between like, making a point where I thought a public figure is lying, and making a point where I want to kind of feel good about standing
26:35 Speaker 02 up on a pedestal myself, and just like, preening for this like, kind of circular audi-, you know, like, insular audience you're talking to. And it's just like, I don't know, I think there are battles worth having, and battles that are just make it seem like you're preaching to the choir, and there's nothing to be gained from preaching to the choir.
26:53 Anthony Pompliano? It's really interesting. A lot of people that have come on, kind of talked about media in general, they usually are not at New York Times, Wall Street Journal, etc. They're usually building kind of more the new age media models. And one of the things that has been hotly debated in other episodes is kind of this balance for a journalist today of, you want to write stories that people read, right? You want to be accurate, you want to tell certain stories, but also the mediums at which you do that, the ways you do that evolve over time, right? So literally, you used to write on a typewriter, now you get to write on a computer. Like, there's technology advancements, but also the distribution models change. And so Twitter, for example, is a great way to distribute those stories. And I've had people who come on and say like, the downfall of mainstream media is, every journalist wants to be a blogger now, right? And kind of the degradation of some of those things.
27:36 Anthony Pompliano? But at the same time, there's people who will come on and literally say, the reason why the media still exists in the form factor it does is because all of those journalists have taken some of the best things that bloggers innovated on, and incorporated them, but kept that framework of, you know, kind of not having prejudice, etc. Like- You sit inside one of those newsrooms. How do you guys think about it?
27:57 Speaker 02 I mean, I think there's, I think it's not like a monolithic thought, you know? There's different people, and I think this cleaves primarily along age lines.
28:08 Anthony Pompliano? Okay, that would make sense.
28:10 Speaker 02 Yeah, I think the older you are, the more likely, just as a general rule, the more likely you are to hew to journalistic, kind of the more rigid journalistic standards of objectivity, meaning we don't take sides and we don't call it right and wrong, or like very reluctant to call a lie a lie. Or, you know, honestly, one of the new places where that's really popping up is with race. And I think there has been historically in white male dominated newsrooms of great reluctance to call racism racism. And I think that's one of those things that's starting to change. I think it's, I think the younger generation, and I'm kind of somewhere in the middle probably, the younger generation is, has just a very different vision
28:54 Speaker 02 of the appropriate role of objectivity in a newsroom. I think a lot of younger people view that increasingly as something that perpetuates bias in actually, in much more pernicious ways than just being honest about what your own personal views are. And, look, I mean, I don't actually know what the answer is to this.
29:18 Anthony Pompliano? I don't actually think there is like one answer, right?
29:20 Speaker 02 Yeah, in part because different audiences want different things. I mean, one of the things The Times has been doing a lot more of recently, which I personally like, is writing more in the first person. And so, which allows the reporter to just be a little more honest about where they're coming from sometimes. And it allows you to embrace and be transparent about whatever personal biases you might bring to this. And it's not necessarily about politics, right? It's a, and I did a story of several months ago about this guy Val Broksmid, who is kind of one of the big whistleblowers in my book. And there was, I wrote that in the first person. And Val has been like a very difficult source to me over the years. And he's an on the record source, so I was free to write about it.
30:02 Speaker 02 And it allowed me, in ways that, you know, I thought at the, especially at the time, were very helpful, allowed me to just be honest about the great frustrations I had dealing with him. And, and also just the, the great strengths and great weaknesses he had as a source. And so- To me, I guess the paramount priority for journalists is honesty. And there are many, and like, you know honesty in your gut. But being, sometimes writing in the first person allows you to just be as transparent, even more transparent than normal with readers. Because, look, everyone has opinions and there's no getting away from that.
30:40 Anthony Pompliano? Yeah. Before we get into the book, because the book heavily relies on Trump and all of his dealings, etc. What's it like being at the New York Times when he's firing away about the quote-unquote failing New York Times? And kind of like actually attacking your employer and sometimes even your colleagues, etc. Like, how do you, like, is it, is it almost like a joke internally at this point?
31:00 Speaker 02 It's not a joke.
31:01 Anthony Pompliano? Or is it more of like, damn, will, will this ever end?
31:04 Speaker 02 It is more, again, and I'm probably not the best person to ask this, but just from my perspective, it's, it's, there's two reasons. One is that it's surreal. I mean, this is the President of the United States. And it used to be the case that it was very rare to hear the President opine on anything that relates to you, right? Like, it would be a huge honor, generally, or maybe dishonor, depending on the context, to, to have a President talking about a story you wrote. And now it's become just, that's par for the course. If you write something negative about Trump that's very prominent, you are, not likely, but there's like a decent chance you're gonna get yelled at on Twitter. And, but to his, what, 60 or 70 million Twitter followers.
31:49 Speaker 02 And, which is surreal and it's like a little nerve wracking at times. I mean, I think the bigger thing, though, is that it's, I'm glad that the Times and other news organizations do are in such a position of strength right now. Like, the Times is not failing. Like, we're doing better than we've ever done. We have huge growth in subscribers and we're doing great. And it would be a lot harder to stomach attacks on us failing and just generally being bad if we weren't doing so well. Just from an objective finance standpoint.
32:22 Anthony Pompliano? It's kind of like if you went to work every day and it wasn't going well, then someone was kicking you while you were down, that would suck.
32:25 Speaker 02 Right.
32:26 Anthony Pompliano? But.
32:26 Speaker 02 As it is, like, he's just wrong when he says we're failing. And he knows he's wrong. And. There's, it's nice to work at a news organization that is succeeding.
32:36 Anthony Pompliano? Yeah. So to do the book, you did over 200 interviews. Maybe just start with like, what was the premise for doing this? And then also, you didn't take book leave to go write the book. You were doing your job and writing at the same time. So maybe kind of just walk us through like how all of this played out and how we get the book.
32:55 Speaker 02 Yeah, it was very stupid to not take a book leave. That was a huge mistake in retrospect and one that I will not be making again as long as I'm married to my wife.
33:09 Anthony Pompliano? So the book is called, just so everyone knows, the book's called Dark Towers: Deutsche Bank, Donald Trump, and an Epic Trail of Destruction. You wrote this, how long did it take?
33:19 Speaker 02 It took, the writing process took about two years.
33:21 Anthony Pompliano? Okay, so two years of writing this book while working. It just came out in February.
33:26 Speaker 02 Yep.
33:27 Anthony Pompliano? Right? And what was the genesis for even going after this story? Was it somebody just came to you or?
33:36 Speaker 02 No, I mean, I back, I've been obsessing about Deutsche Bank for a really unhealthy length of time. I moved to London with the Wall Street Journal back in 2010. And at the time, the financial crisis was just ending, but the European financial crisis was just starting up. And there was Deutsche Bank, the one, probably the biggest bank in Europe at the time, which had these just deep intractable problems. That kind of everyone was talking about or whispering about, but no one really knew how serious it was. And so I immediately gravitated toward that as an important story. It never really got a whole lot of traction, but my colleagues and I spent a lot of time digging into Deutsche Bank. And it was this just great black box that everyone was kind of scared of, but no one really fully understood.
34:21 Speaker 02 And in January of 2014, one of the bank's senior executives, a guy named Bill Broksmat, who was an American and had been, he had been at the bank for on and off for like almost 20 years. He was kind of known as the conscience of the bank. He was like a good guy, a risk manager. With a real solid ethical compass, he committed suicide in London. And I, my colleagues and I kind of started digging into the circumstances of that. It seemed we'd heard a lot of rumors about the, why he had done that. And I ended up talking to Val Brookesmit, his son, and went on this kind of journey or
35:03 Speaker 02 kind of had a ringside seat as Val went on this journey to understand why his father committed suicide. And in that process, Val got all of his father's email files. And there's a ton, there was thousands and thousands of documents, emails, spreadsheets, meeting minutes related to Deutsche Bank. And so, and we started writing about that at the Journal at the time, although we didn't say where we were getting this stuff.
35:27 Anthony Pompliano? Why did, like, how did he get the emails? He just requested it and they gave it to him?
35:31 Speaker 02 No. So his dad had been using his Yahoo and Gmail accounts for enormous amount of work emails, which is obviously not normal.
35:41 Anthony Pompliano? Probably not allowed, but they can't really stop him?
35:43 Speaker 02 Yeah, I think there was a little more complicated because he was on this outside oversight board of the bank and he had actually retired six months earlier. For one reason or another, he had just reams of emails.
35:55 Anthony Pompliano? And his son just logged in?
35:56 Speaker 02 Yeah, his son got his email, his login information and started exploring. And Val is a complicated character and who is, was not an expert in finance. And I kind of helped him understand some of the stuff in there and certainly helped him figure out what words he should be searching for in the search field. Yeah, so, and again, that was a very interesting journey, but it never really got to the point of being a huge story, in part because the stuff Val found was interesting and we wrote about it, but it wasn't earth shattering. And then in November of 2016, Trump got elected president and all of a sudden, the Deutsche Bank story went from being one about a European bank that's in a lot of trouble and isn't
36:39 Speaker 02 well-run and it became a story of how this random European bank had essentially helped elect the 45th president of the United States. And at that point, the story went from being something that was a business story to one that was an international. Very hot international story. And so I kind of started at that point thinking about all of the stuff I'd been gathering as how to, what was kind of the most ambitious way to do it. And even at that point, it took another year or two before I really kind of figured out that this is something I want to spend a couple of years doing as a book.
37:14 Anthony Pompliano? Got it. And so as you're going through it, the Deutsche Bank history, I didn't know until I knew that you were going to come and start looking at it. It's fascinating. I mean, this is a really small bank at one point that decides they're going to go on this global march for domination, right?
37:31 Speaker 02 Yep.
37:31 Anthony Pompliano? And some of the things that I didn't know, the thing that probably stands out the most is they helped finance the Nazis during World War II, including financing the building of Auschwitz.
37:41 Speaker 02 Yeah.
37:41 Anthony Pompliano? Right? And like, is that they know that this is bad and they're still doing it? Or is it more of like, at the time, nobody knows that Nazis are bad? And like, you know what I mean? Like, like, how do they?
37:54 Speaker 02 Some people definitely knew Nazis were bad.
37:55 Anthony Pompliano? Well, what I'm saying, like, yeah, but how do they explain it away to themselves? Or rationalize it, I guess?
38:00 Speaker 02 Well, I mean, the history here is that Deutsche Bank was founded in 1870. So this is its 150th birthday this year.
38:06 Anthony Pompliano? Oh, wow.
38:06 Speaker 02 Happy birthday, Deutsche Bank. And they were founded as a bank that was supposed to be helping big German companies kind of spread their wings internationally. And this is the dawn of the industrial era. So like, companies like Siemens, for example, were relied on Deutsche Bank for global financing. And it was really, the bank, pre-World War II, was really synonymous with the German kind of corporate sector. And so, the Nazis come to power in the 30s, and they, like other big German companies, very quickly became kind of the corporate wing of the Nazi party. And in Deutsche Bank's case, that meant everything from financing the construction of concentration camps like
38:50 Speaker 02 Auschwitz, to financing the factory that manufactured poison gas for Auschwitz, to taking over Jewish-run businesses all over Europe, and getting the Jews out and bringing air, it was a process called Aryanization. And they even took the gold that Nazis extracted from Jews' teeth and sold it internationally. So- The bank, look, the thing I would say in fairness to the bank is that there is not, they didn't really, like, it was a choice between colluding with the Nazis and being driven out of business. The thing I will say not in offense of Deutsche Bank is that they were a party to genocide.
39:31 Speaker 02 And that's not a good thing. Deep thoughts.
39:37 Anthony Pompliano? Yeah, well, so there's a movie on Netflix called The Resistance Banker that I watched. Actually, Keith Royboys, I think, was the one who told me to watch it. And it's all about during the same time periods, basically, citizens getting together and providing, literally, like, underground financing to fight back against these people who empower. And so it sounds almost like, in some sense, they were, you know, basically counterbalancing the Deutsche Banks of the world?
40:03 Speaker 02 Yeah, I mean, Deutsche, and it's not really the Deutsche Banks of the world. Deutsche Bank was the primary financial enabler of the Nazis as they laid waste to Europe and as they killed tens of millions of Jews and others. And this is, the bank, the US described Deutsche Bank after the fact as a war criminal. Its leader was tried and convicted of being a war criminal.
40:25 Anthony Pompliano? The leader of Deutsche Bank?
40:27 Speaker 02 Yeah. And then he was reinstated as the leader of Deutsche Bank and, like, remained at the top of Deutsche Bank for a decade and a half afterwards. And, and, look, again, in Deutsche Bank's defense...
40:38 Anthony Pompliano? That's fucking crazy. Sorry.
40:40 Speaker 02 It is crazy.
40:41 Anthony Pompliano? That is not...
40:42 Speaker 02 The history of this bank is, and if you look at the bank over the past century, the bank is a criminal enterprise. It participated in the single worst criminal event of the 20th century, which was the Holocaust. And it didn't just participate, it was a, the Holocaust would have happened without Deutsche Bank, but Deutsche Bank allowed the Nazis to be much more efficient and ruthless in what they were doing. And there's no, there's no way around that. Deutsche Bank would defend itself, saying, A, that everyone was doing this. Deutsche Bank, first of all, has apologized, so they get credit for that, I guess. And, look, after the war, the bank became one of the leading forces for European reconstruction and redevelopment, which is a good thing. And but I mean, there's just no getting around that original sin. There's no getting around it.
41:27 Anthony Pompliano? Yeah. Another part of this in the description for the book is that the bank was quote, manipulating markets, violating international sanctions to aid terrorist regimes, scamming investors, tricking regulators and laundering money for Russian oligarchs. And those are all different situations.
41:47 Speaker 02 And that's not it. Yeah, that's a that's an incomplete list.
41:49 Anthony Pompliano? Yeah. And so like, as you're writing this book, it really is kind of a history of Deutsche Bank, as much as it is some of the political stuff, etc. Like, what are you thinking as you're uncovering kind of each one of these things? And is it at some point, you're just like, what else could they have done?
42:07 Speaker 02 Yeah.
42:08 Anthony Pompliano? It's a pretty long list of things.
42:10 Speaker 02 Yeah. And as again, that's a partial list. Is I was thinking that I've covered finance for 15 or 16 years. And this is the worst bank I've ever seen.
42:22 Anthony Pompliano? Really?
42:23 Speaker 02 Yeah, I mean, without any doubt, honestly, and I've covered some bad banks.
42:26 Anthony Pompliano? And how much of this is, I'll call it pre my birth, right? So I was born in 1988. So like, people who are listening to this, who are my age or older, or I'm sorry, or younger, saying, ah, that stuff happened way before I was around. Like, that's the way everything happened, you know, before I was born versus like, this stuff happened like five years ago, 10 years ago.
42:45 Speaker 02 Yeah, this is stuff, most of this, and not all of it, most of it is, I mean, definitely very much in your adult life.
42:52 Anthony Pompliano? So this is bad shit that happened before, still bad shit happening now.
42:55 Speaker 02 Yeah, I mean, look, it's all on, there's like a spectrum of badness, right? I mean, the worst thing Deutsche Bank has ever done was finance the Holocaust. Nothing that they've done since then, or anyone has done since then, really compares to that. And it's kind of evilness, I don't think.
43:12 Anthony Pompliano? That was before I was born.
43:13 Speaker 02 Yeah, me too, me too. Although you are a lot younger than me.
43:19 Anthony Pompliano? Sorry, I look old, so it's fine.
43:23 Speaker 02 You've had your hair, though. Be grateful for that.
43:25 Anthony Pompliano? Listen, probably not for long, so I'll enjoy while I can.
43:31 Speaker 02 Aiding of terrorist regimes, violating sanctions, laundering money, manipulating markets, bribing public officials, evading taxes, tricking customers and regulators, that's all stuff that's happened in the past decade.
43:43 Anthony Pompliano? Okay.
43:44 Speaker 02 And it's stuff that continues. Look, the banking industry has been a very badly behaved industry in the past 10 or 20 years, and there's no getting around that. And I think there's a tendency, at least for me, or there had been a tendency, to just think, well, banks behave badly. That's kind of like...
44:02 Anthony Pompliano? It's almost like the cost of admission to being a bank.
44:04 Speaker 02 Yeah, exactly. And Deutsche Bank took it to an extraordinary level that I'd not previously seen. And there is, every bank, every major international bank has been involved in scandals over the past 10 or 20 years. Deutsche Bank was at or near the center of just about everyone, and that's pretty extraordinary. I mean, this is, there's something very rotten with the bank's culture for a very long period of time that led to that. And one of the things I've tried to do in the book is not just have this be a litany of like evil shit the bank has done, but it's, I've tried to use, kind of construct a narrative around it, that actually, with human beings being the ones making decisions as opposed to a
44:46 Speaker 02 faceless institution. So, and that's kind of one of the things that I care most about that people get out of this book, which is that, yes, banks do bad things. All companies, like many companies do bad things. But this is not, this is not like a blameless, just fact of life. This is a result of decisions, very clear decisions, that humans made at a very, at the very top of the bank, over and over again, that had, you know, especially with hindsight, very anticipatable consequences, which was that the employees were going to go to these great lengths to make as much money as possible, as quickly as possible, consequences be damned. And if that meant violating the law, or being immoral or unethical, so be it.
45:26 Anthony Pompliano? Yeah. One of my questions was going to be, one, like, how high the awareness or poor decision making goes. It sounds like all the way right up to the top, especially in kind of the Nazi situation, literally war criminal.
45:38 Speaker 02 Yeah, but even, but the Nazi situation, let's put that aside, because that, I mean, again, that's, yeah, that was awful.
45:45 Anthony Pompliano? Yep. But even the last 10 years.
45:47 Speaker 02 Yeah, I think in some ways, comparing everything to the Nazis makes the other stuff seem trivial by comparison, because it is trivial by comparison. But the stuff in the past 10 years or 20 years is not, it's not like the CEO of the bank was saying... Please commit like crimes, you know? But the CEO of the bank was saying, we need to maximize short-term profits every quarter. We don't, I don't care about next quarter or next year. I care about this quarter right now. The CEO at the time, Joe Ackerman, said in 2002, 2003, he said he wanted profits to basically go up 500% in a period of two to three years. And that's-
46:25 Anthony Pompliano? Me too.
46:26 Speaker 02 Exactly. And you know what? They did it.
46:28 Anthony Pompliano? And- Oh, they did?
46:28 Speaker 02 They did it. And the reason that they did it is because they, and then he wanted it to go up even more. And they did that too. And the way they did that was by just going, stepping on the gas and just maximizing short-term profits over and over again. And just kicking tough decisions down the road, not investing in things like technology or, which sounds kind of technical and like not like that important. But Deutsche Bank, to this day, has hundreds of different computer systems that don't talk to each other. And so if you were to ask a simple question at Deutsche Bank, like, what is your exposure to Russia right now? There's no answer.
47:07 Anthony Pompliano? Do you think that's all banking industry wide? You think that's a-
47:10 Speaker 02 It's a Deutsche Bank issue. They, I mean, yeah, like a lot of banks have technological problems for sure. Deutsche Bank has, just as a matter of policy, did not invest in any sort of upgrades to their computer systems, no sort of integration of computer systems. And they've now got, I mean, it's a multi-billion dollar project now that they've basically got to start from scratch. And they didn't invest in compliance. And so you've got a huge compliance and anti-money laundering staff down in Jacksonville, Florida, for the bank that is, I mean, I was just down there last spring and summer talking to people there. And to a person I spoke to, like, they feel like they're being set up to fail because the interests of the bank that they're getting from their bosses and their bosses' bosses are that we need to churn through transactions. We don't want people saying no.
47:54 Speaker 02 And again, the consequences of this are, in the short term, it's profitable because doing as much business as possible tends to be profitable in the short term. In the medium to long term, it's disastrous because you end up laundering money for people and helping people evade taxes. Or commit bribery and then you get in trouble for it. And we say, oh, look, it's a bad cluster of employees here, a rogue person here. When in fact, it is the work of an institution and very top executives at the bank. Setting priorities and creating a culture that is deliberately designed to foster this really reckless mentality.
48:30 Anthony Pompliano? When you said that you were down there, like, does the bank invite you in and roll out the red carpet and they're like, hey, nice to see you again?
48:36 Speaker 02 They do not. In fact, for some reason, I didn't think they would. You know, it's funny, the bank, my Jacksonville trip, I think that was like probably last May, it was funny. Look, I had a pretty good relationship and still do with some of the bank's PR people who are trying to do their jobs and they're not high up in the organization. And I respect them and I think they respect me. Most of the time, at least they respect me and most of the time I respect them. But they, I was down there and just in advance had been contacting, I don't know, probably hundreds of people on LinkedIn, just trying to set up meetings. And you know, you get, this is one of my favorite tactics as a journalist, is you just flood the zone with LinkedIn requests for a company like this. And you get a very low hit rate. You get a hit rate of maybe 5%, maybe even less than that.
49:21 Speaker 02 But if you've sent out 200 feelers, that's 10 people. And that's great. So I was down in Jacksonville and met or spoke with about 20 people. And, but I got back.
49:31 Anthony Pompliano? You were busy on LinkedIn before you went.
49:33 Speaker 02 I was extremely busy on LinkedIn. I got back and I'd taken great pains while I was there to kind of conceal, I wasn't like tweeting or Instagramming or doing any of that. I was keeping a low public profile because I didn't want the bank to know that I was, you know, literally in their backyard snooping around, talking to their employees. And I got back and I somehow ended up on the phone with one of the bank's very nice PR people. And they're like, so how's Jacksonville? And I was like, wow, what? How did you know? And it turned out that the 95% of people who I.
50:03 Anthony Pompliano? Just forwarded to.
50:04 Speaker 02 Yeah, exactly. Which was, I guess, kind of naive of me that I thought that wouldn't happen. But it did.
50:10 Anthony Pompliano? And so like. As you're writing this, one of the things that I read was the CEO, Joe Ackerman, I think is his name, had a really interesting relationship with the Russians. Maybe talk to us a little bit about that. And there was like a job offer at some point, or how does all that play out?
50:28 Speaker 02 So Deutsche Bank in general is a really interesting relationship with the Russians. And going back-
50:32 Anthony Pompliano? I think everyone, anyone who has a relationship with the Russians has a really interesting relationship.
50:35 Speaker 02 Well, Deutsche Bank has probably more of a relationship historically with Russians than any other non-Russian bank. And it goes back to financing railroads for the czar in the late 19th century. And Deutsche Bank took great pride in being kind of the premier Western bank, basically in Russia, basically without interruption for well over a century. And Ackerman, as he did with many things, took this to an extreme. And he really, he found Russia fascinating, and he wanted to be big in Russia. He wanted to be big in a lot of emerging markets, but Russia to him was this just great frontier of banking. And he cultivated relations with very senior people in Russia, and including the CEOs
51:16 Speaker 02 of some of the state-owned banks, including one VTB that is, has very close links to what had been the KGB, cultivated very close ties with Vladimir Putin. And so much so, that when Ackerman retired as CEO back in 2012, Putin met with him and personally offered him a job working for the Kremlin, which is pretty unusual.
51:40 Anthony Pompliano? That doesn't happen every day, I'm assuming?
51:41 Speaker 02 It doesn't happen every day, and it's really unusual for a non-Russian person to get an offer like that, or much, even more so for a non-Russian who has worked his entire career, working for like these big capitalist banks. And it was an indication of just how close Deutsche Bank and the Kremlin had gotten in the Ackerman years. And that was a relationship that was very profitable for Deutsche Bank, and also ultimately got the bank in a lot of trouble, because as they were doing all over the world, they were really pushing the envelope in Russia, and in some cases violating the law.
52:14 Anthony Pompliano? Yeah. So they obviously have this interesting relationship with the Russians. They've got one that's pretty interesting with Donald Trump as well. Talk to us a little bit about that.
52:24 Speaker 02 So Deutsche Bank, back in the late 1990s, made this fateful decision that it no longer wanted to be just a German bank or a European bank. It wanted to get on Wall Street and in the city of London. And the way to do that, they basically tried to build from scratch an investment bank, which is hard, right? There's like big established players that are already out there.
52:44 Anthony Pompliano? It's not just building it, but you gotta compete with others that are already much bigger.
52:47 Speaker 02 Right. So they spent billions of dollars hiring thousands of people, especially from Merrill, but other firms as well. And one of the things they did was tried to build up in the US, a commercial real estate business that was going to be packaging real estate loans into mortgage bonds and then selling those on to investors, which in the late 90s was one of the kind of hot new fads on Wall Street.
53:05 Anthony Pompliano? How'd that turn out in the late 2000s?
53:07 Speaker 02 Although Deutsche Bank, again, like, this story is so weird with Deutsche Bank, because Deutsche Bank had a pretty good crisis. They shorted the US housing market more effectively than just about any other bank with the possible exception of Goldman. Anyway, that's a story for another day. But there's, uh, one of the, basically, they weren't gonna go for customers in the US who were well-established and already had good relationships with other big banks, because why would they, right? Like, why would, if you're a big, established, real estate tycoon, you don't have any bank in the world kind of on speed dial, ready to serve you up loans. So they needed to go for kind of second or third-tier players. The way one Deutsche Bank person described to me is that they would go for the scraps. And at the
53:47 Speaker 02 time, Donald Trump was, uh, was a scrap. And he had defaulted over and over again on his company's debts. He was unbankable on Wall Street because of that, and because he was, did not have a reputation as a very serious person. And Deutsche Bank, so Deutsche Bank needed unbankable clients, and Donald Trump was an unbankable client, and so it was kind of a match made in heaven. And so, starting in the 90s, Deutsche Bank started making hundreds of millions of dollars of real estate loans, uh, to Trump and his companies. And over the ensuing two decades, dispensed about two, more than $2 billion of loans or debt to Trump. And that was despite the fact that Trump, over and over again, defaulted
54:28 Speaker 02 on his debts, including to Deutsche Bank. And so, you'd have these just wild situations where one arm of Deutsche Bank would, say, make a $600 million loan to Trump. Trump would default on the loan, sue Deutsche Bank, and then find another part of the bank, in this case, the private banking division, to come in and restart the relationship with Trump, lend him money so he could repay the other arm of Deutsche Bank. To whom he had defaulted and they would just restart the relationship. This happened on multiple occasions and you know, I've covered Wall Street a long time and I've more important, I've talked to a gazillion people on Wall Street and in the banking industry. And this is not normal practice.
55:09 Speaker 02 It's one in general, generally when you default on your loans, especially when you do it in a way, kind of this scorched earth way that Trump was doing where he was not only defaulting, but he was suing the bank, kind of going on the attack against the bank. That is a very good way to end your relationship with a bank. And low and I mean understandably, and lo and behold, in Trump's case, Deutsche Bank was so eager to keep winning business and really so eager to, each individual division was so eager to maximize its short-term profits that they would look the other way.
55:39 Anthony Pompliano? And this is a thing where they were doing it with a bunch of other clients as well that similar situations, bad credit or unbankable as you described it. Or was this a specific, you know, hey, two or three individuals and that was pretty much it and then everyone else was quote unquote, "good" and it's taking it from other banks?
55:56 Speaker 02 No, I mean, they were doing this a lot and the other classic, there are a lot of kind of like examples I've, I'd never really heard of before that aren't that important. The other classic example of this though is Jeffrey Epstein.
56:08 Anthony Pompliano? I wanted to talk about Jeffrey Epstein.
56:10 Speaker 02 Well, here we go. So Epstein was obviously convicted of sex crimes back in 2008 and somehow managed to remain a valuable client of JP Morgan, thanks in large part to his senior executives at the bank had these personal relationships with him. But by 2012, 2013, even JP Morgan had decided that this was, he was too toxic and he had a very, even though he hadn't been accused of anything new, he had a very well-known reputation all over the world and certainly on Wall Street for, you know.
56:43 Anthony Pompliano? Not being a good dude.
56:45 Speaker 02 Yeah, not being a good dude. And it's not just the fact that he appears to have been raping girls and sex trafficking, but it was also that he was widely suspected of engaging in money laundering activity for some of his clients. And while he's never, he was never accused of that officially, that, there were lots of rumors about that and that's not the type of client. That real, serious banks want to do business with. And so JP Morgan in 2012, 2013 severed ties with him. And that left Epstein in this predicament because he has hundreds of millions of dollars in assets, some of which are in cash. And he has all these shell companies he's been using to do weird stuff with his money for many years. You need a bank, and these are offshore. So you need a bank, an international bank that's going to be able to help you deal with this.
57:29 Speaker 02 And who does he turn to? Deutsche Bank. And Deutsche Bank is not only initially willing to do business with him, but sticks with him for, I mean, up until the middle of last year, basically. So right shortly before he was arrested and charged again and then committed suicide, Deutsche Bank was the only bank willing to touch him. And it's.
57:49 Anthony Pompliano? And what are they doing with, are they giving him loans? Or are they just banking him?
57:52 Speaker 02 It's both. It was, they were lending him money. They were managing, they were doing wealth management services. And I think probably most importantly, but also most opaque. So we don't have a full story on this yet. They were providing all sorts of transaction services and account management services for all these shell companies he had, where he was moving money on behalf of himself. And I think other people into basically offshore tax havens and just jurisdictions where there's even less transparency.
58:21 Anthony Pompliano? Got it. And what I understand from the Epstein, and I'm by no means an expert or really haven't spent too much time looking into it, is there's two general thought processes that who he was and his importance to the world. One was here's a money manager who's got a bunch of really wealthy clients and kind of is more the clean image, right? In terms of there's the criminal activity, but from like a business perspective, was just a money manager who's investing, et cetera. Then there's this world of like, no, there's this whole like blackmail ring and the money laundering. And then on top of that, all of the underage girls and sexual assault, et cetera. It sounds like there's evidence or records that would suggest
59:03 Anthony Pompliano? the second example is much more accurate than the first.
59:07 Speaker 02 Well, I think it's not a question of accuracy. It's more a question of probabilities. And so, I mean, look, Epstein was convict or was charged, but not convicted of vast array of sex crimes. And I think based on the reporting that the Times and many others like the Miami Herald have done, you know, if you were to ask me, like he. Pretty sure shit did a lot of bad stuff. Uh, the question is whether on top of that, he was also providing money laundering services or blackmailing people or things like that. And we don't know is the bottom line. There's, there are a bunch of investigations into what he was doing with his and other people's money.
59:49 Speaker 02 He certainly managed to win the confidence of some very powerful wealthy people, whether it's Les Wexner, who is the CEO of L Brands, or Leon Black from Apollo, or Jess Staley, who's now the CEO of Barclays and had been at JP Morgan for many years. And there was a group of people who should have known better.
1:00:10 Anthony Pompliano? Mm-hmm.
1:00:11 Speaker 02 And the most generous interpretation is that they didn't know better.
1:00:14 Anthony Pompliano? Yeah. And through this, um, we are unlikely to get any... You think so?
1:00:25 Speaker 02 Yeah. Well, I mean, Deutsche Bank has records of what he was doing with his money.
1:00:30 Anthony Pompliano? Yeah. There is... How do you get them?
1:00:33 Speaker 02 I don't know. If I knew the answer to... I mean, I have some ideas, but, uh...
1:00:36 Anthony Pompliano? Any you can share?
1:00:37 Speaker 02 Well, look, I mean, the argument I would make to Deutsche Bank is that this is their bank right now that has a very, very bad reputation. And yet their current management is new and I think is making an honest effort to repair that image and move past the huge mistakes they've made recently and long ago. And how do you, how do you win back the public's trust after you've so clearly betrayed it over and over again? Well, I would argue that one good way to do that is to take an example of something you've done that allowed something very bad to happen, which is Jeffrey Epstein, and come clean about it. You know? Help the world better understand the role you, your institution, played in allowing this to happen.
1:01:21 Speaker 02 And at the same time, do a, provide a public service of shedding light on something that's very opaque right now. And so, look, I mean, will Deutsche Bank...
1:01:31 Speaker 02 Buy that argument? I don't know. If anyone from Deutsche Bank is listening or watching, you should buy that argument.
1:01:36 Anthony Pompliano? Yeah, I mean Goldman just did this, right? With the 1MDB type stuff. Like, they definitely didn't walk out and say like, hey, here's everything we did wrong. But there was a little bit of scapegoating, right? There's certain people who got arrested, charged, you know, all this kind of stuff. I think there was even people barred from the financial industry. I don't know all the details, right? But just, there was some punishments to individuals. But the bank itself, to some degree, has said, yes, we did participate in this. I don't think that they were super forthcoming.
1:02:04 Speaker 02 Yeah, I feel like Goldman, in the 1MDB case, has done that in a pretty half-assed way, to be honest with you. Like, they've done it in a way where they're-
1:02:10 Anthony Pompliano? In a very pro-Goldman way.
1:02:11 Speaker 02 In a pro-Goldman way, right? They're like, they're throwing lower-level employees under the bus. And they are denying, very staunchly, any institutional responsibility in a legal or just moral sense. And, look, they're under criminal investigation, and I guess that's what you do. But in Deutsche Bank's case with this, I mean, look, you talk to people inside Deutsche Bank, up and down the food chain, and they're just apoplectic about the fact that their institution was providing these services to someone as bad as Jeffrey Epstein up until, and quite recently, less than a year ago. And that is something that they're, I think, mortified about. And they genuinely, I think, a lot of them feel badly about it
1:02:53 Speaker 02 and would love to be able to wash away that stain. And the argument I would make to them, and I know, yeah, I would make to them, I don't have any idea if it'll be effective, is that one good way to wash- you know, sunlight is the best disinfectant.
1:03:08 Anthony Pompliano? Absolutely. You think he killed himself?
1:03:13 Speaker 02 I know that the coroner has said that he killed himself. I know that there are a lot of people that don't believe it. It's, man-
1:03:22 Anthony Pompliano? Both of those are true statements.
1:03:23 Speaker 02 And I don't know, is the short answer? I mean, I, the-
1:03:28 Anthony Pompliano? By the way, I don't know either.
1:03:29 Speaker 02 No, of course. I mean, no one.
1:03:31 Anthony Pompliano? But to me, it's like one of, if there's a mystery that I think sums up like 2019, 2020, it's this.
1:03:38 Speaker 02 I, look, but and also, though, it sums up the way, the, the, the way that many Americans have just lost faith in public institutions to tell the truth, right? The fact that, and again, I don't know what the truth is here. There's, um, what I, I guess my argument would be that there's, there could be a conspiracy without him having been murdered. Like somehow he managed, like those, again, I'm not an expert on this either, but the two guards like fell asleep or were not paying attention.
1:04:09 Anthony Pompliano? They could have simply allowed him to commit suicide, and that is the conspiracy, rather than he got murdered.
1:04:15 Speaker 02 Yeah, and I don't know, I mean, there, look, I don't know, I have no idea whether, all I know is what the coroner has said, and that I know that his fa, some of his family and many others doubt what the coroner said. But one thing that is for sure is that there are a number of extremely powerful people who have, for all intents and purposes, unlimited money, who quite possibly had a lot of reason to be concerned about what Epstein might have said to protect himself. And the, and he was working with and socializing with some of the world's, in fact, a number of the world's most powerful, wealthiest people, and had been doing so over a period of years.
1:05:00 Speaker 02 And there is, I have no doubt that he had dirt on some of them. In fact, he, a year before he died, uh, one of my colleagues, Jim Stewart at the Times, went to his townhouse and, and interviewed him. He was in his townhouse, and Epstein was kind of boasting about the dirt he had on powerful people. And we, we wrote about this, so this is in the public domain. And, but this is a man who-
1:05:23 Anthony Pompliano? That's wild.
1:05:24 Speaker 02 Yeah, it is wild. Uh, the Epstein story is crazy. And I, I mean, this is, I've been working on these stories with some of my colleagues over the past year, and it's-
1:05:35 Anthony Pompliano? It's wild.
1:05:37 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:05:38 Anthony Pompliano? You also wrote about the guy who came forward to the attorneys after the fact. Like there was a guy who claimed to be a hacker, I think, right? And he came to two.
1:05:46 Speaker 02 Patrick Kessler.
1:05:47 Anthony Pompliano? He came to two attorneys and said, hey, I have all the tapes. Like all these tapes, everyone thinks are out there. I have them. Uh, help me.
1:05:53 Speaker 02 Yep.
1:05:54 Anthony Pompliano? And then these guys went from like defending the victims to all of a sudden switching around. And now they were gonna like go basically blackmail. Is blackmail the right word?
1:06:03 Speaker 02 Um, probably, I don't know. Blackmail has a particular legal meaning that we definitely were not comfortable using in our stories. And they were, our reporting showed that they, the lawyers were expressed eagerness to use any materials that this guy might have.
1:06:19 Anthony Pompliano? Got it.
1:06:20 Speaker 02 To reach financial settlements with very wealthy people like the Les Wexners of the world or Leon Blacks of the world and get money out of them.
1:06:29 Anthony Pompliano? And the point of the story, uh, cause I actually remember reading this and.
1:06:32 Speaker 02 It's a bizarre story.
1:06:33 Anthony Pompliano? And didn't know that you were also one writing the Dark Towers book. Was these lawyers, not, not these two specifically, but just lawyers in these positions that have high powered clients and, and they can kind of choose sometimes to defend the victims, sometimes to defend the, uh, the accused, et cetera.
1:06:50 Speaker 02 Well, and sometimes they try to do both.
1:06:52 Anthony Pompliano? Yeah. And they just, they just navigate this really fine line, uh, in life. And we put a lot of trust again.
1:06:59 Speaker 02 Yep.
1:06:59 Anthony Pompliano? In them doing the right things, et cetera. And it was just a fascinating story. Cause then you overlay it with like the whole Epstein stuff and just the salaciousness of it.
1:07:07 Speaker 02 That was one of the weirdest stories I've ever worked on. And there's in part because the guy who's claiming to have these videos is, we don't know his real identity and we have not.
1:07:15 Anthony Pompliano? Oh, you guys still don't know who it is?
1:07:16 Speaker 02 No, I mean, we've met him, but like, and talked to him and, but we, he says his name is Patrick Kessler, but that does not, uh, and even he acknowledges that's a fake name and.
1:07:26 Anthony Pompliano? But you've met him in person.
1:07:27 Speaker 02 I actually haven't, but my colleagues have. And we, we did a, like a little documentary and he sat for it. And like, there's, yeah. So we.
1:07:34 Anthony Pompliano? And no one came forward that saw it and was like, oh, that's my brother?
1:07:37 Speaker 02 No, we, you, that's part of the reason we did this is we thought maybe that would get him out of the like.
1:07:43 Anthony Pompliano? Like who is this guy?
1:07:44 Speaker 02 We have no idea. This guy, he could be, the range of possibilities is like, he's an insane person or he's for real and he really does have these videos or he's working to discredit the lawyers or he's working to discredit the victims or he's working to discredit.
1:08:00 Anthony Pompliano? Les Wexner and Leon Black, or he's working for Israeli intel. I mean, I'm just making shit up.
1:08:04 Speaker 02 Yeah, but like, we have no idea. What we have no reason to think is true is that he is who he says he is and has what he says he has. Because he present no actual hard evidence of having these supposed videos of powerful people having sex in Jeffrey Epstein's properties. And that was kind of his underlying pitch. And his inability or refusal to actually show the goods made us doubt very much his honesty.
1:08:35 Anthony Pompliano? You live a fascinating life.
1:08:37 Speaker 02 Journalism is awesome, man.
1:08:39 Anthony Pompliano? But just like you specifically, this intersection of kind of the news and the investigative components in the finance world, just a lot of the players involved, etc., are, I think, people are just by those who amass great fortunes and how they do it. And, you know, is it legal? Is it not legal, etc.? And you spend a lot of time on those stories. So I think it's pretty interesting how you specifically do it.
1:09:02 Speaker 02 I mean, I am lucky to be able to do something that I love and do it for an institution that has the resources and the appetite to do really great stuff. And I'm blessed by the amazing colleagues I have who I work around. And, you know, I feel grateful every day.
1:09:22 Anthony Pompliano? Yeah. I want to spend a couple of minutes talking about Bitcoin and crypto because I, when I saw that you're writing the book, I've been saying, I've got the saying for the last two years of long Bitcoin, short the bankers. And really what it was, was more of like short, central banking type monetary policies. But of course, when you say that, the Twitterverse runs with, oh, all bankers are bad, right? And so now I've somehow become like, my DMs are filled. Every time a bank does something bad, I just get flooded with DMs of like, look at what they did. But you also, while you're covering a lot of that and doing the investigative reporting, you also wrote a piece about the Winklevoss, right? And Ben Mezrich's book, etc. What was your take on like, there's like this new finance world that's getting built
1:10:06 Anthony Pompliano? around Bitcoin, etc., and then the Winklevoss twins and kind of all that?
1:10:09 Speaker 02 Yeah, I mean, look, that was a review of Mezrich's book, which I like, wasn't a huge fan of, honestly.
1:10:17 Anthony Pompliano? Oh, you didn't like the book?
1:10:18 Speaker 02 No, I mean, there is.
1:10:19 Anthony Pompliano? Why not?
1:10:21 Speaker 02 I didn't think he made a good argument for why the Winklevii in particular were in a position of particular interest, honestly. Like, they, from my, and I'm not an expert on this, beyond having reviewed a book. To be honest, the thing that was most jarring and kind of off-putting to me as a journalist reading that book was a disclaimer. Those are the very beginning of the book, which is that it was, again, I'm not gonna get this quite right, but it was something to the effect of some scenes and dialogue in this book are imagined. And to me, as someone who labors, like, every day to, and again, I watch my colleagues doing this, and I have so much respect for my colleagues doing this,
1:11:02 Speaker 02 the painstaking way we try to verify every word in a story, and every quote in a story, and every little fact, and the lengths we go to just, like, we agonize over sentences to make sure things are right. It is so frustrating to then see someone in a small print disclaimer at the beginning of a purportedly nonfiction book by a serious bestselling journalist to just kind of blithely state, "Oh, good, just made up a bunch of this shit." Like, that, I don't know, that really, and Mesrick Scott is following, and I, there's nothing, I've never met the guy, I'm sure he's great, and he's-
1:11:38 Anthony Pompliano? He came out of podcasts.
1:11:39 Speaker 02 Look, there's, I have nothing-
1:11:41 Anthony Pompliano? And he also wrote books about aliens, so he's good at my book.
1:11:43 Speaker 02 Hey, man, there's, and, look, The Accidental Billionaires, his first book, which actually I think had a similar disclaimer, but was, like, a, he's a really good writer.
1:11:52 Anthony Pompliano? So here's the one thing he told me, which I actually think plays into this, I'm not speaking for Ben, this is my assumption, so I could be wrong on this, is that he actually, a lot of times, will go sell the movie script first, so he'll get the movie deal, and then he'll write the book-
1:12:08 Speaker 02 Hmm, that's interesting.
1:12:09 Anthony Pompliano? -as a way to, basically, ensure that there's gonna be, so Accidental Billionaires, and Social Network, right?
1:12:15 Speaker 02 Yep.
1:12:16 Anthony Pompliano? And in this case, same thing, right? So the movie script, there was a movie deal done, and then the book was written, and so, I don't know, but my guess would be that part of this is, like, there's a book that's based on true events, but it also is- A hybrid into like a movie script.
1:12:32 Speaker 02 Right.
1:12:32 Anthony Pompliano? But I, again, I hear your point.
1:12:34 Speaker 02 Just like I have an old fashioned stickler in this, but to me, it's personally really important because I see people like the president of the United States going out and labeling things fake news. And our response to that is that, dude, you have no idea how hard, like, we get things wrong every day. But we try so damn hard every day to get our facts right in the lengths we go to, to make sure that there's nothing wrong. And frankly, the way the transparency with which we correct things when we do inevitably get things wrong. Like, that is so core to what mainstream news does as part of its job. It's like, pretty frustrating to then see someone who has this great megaphone like Ben Masriq does,
1:13:15 Speaker 02 go and just have a complete, it's like, fine if he's not gonna call it nonfiction, but nonfiction means it's, anyway, this is my bias and I'm not, I'm not even trying to, like, I guess the other thing, and I'm not an expert on Bitcoin or the Winkleville. Just my critique of the book was that, um, the Winkleville came across to me as like, I didn't have that much like sympathy for them. They, they were, they got, in Mesrick's telling, got kind of ripped off by Mark Zuckerberg on this idea that they had in college. And Zuckerberg becomes extraordinarily wealthy, but it's not, but the Winkleville got pretty well compensated themselves. And it's like, they're getting very, they're getting enormously rich themselves for an idea that was like a half baked college idea.
1:13:57 Speaker 02 And it, it's not like they had executed a plan perfectly or built a company themselves. They, they had a great idea and in their telling, or Mesrick's telling, they got ripped off by Zuckerberg. But they got, I can't remember the number, it was like, tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions of dollars in Facebook stock or in cash.
1:14:14 Anthony Pompliano? And I think it was tens of millions.
1:14:16 Speaker 02 Yeah. And, and to me, I just like, so, so here, here's my, uh, my one pitch to you. But that, can I just say though, that there's not, there's nothing against me, like, there's nothing against digital currencies or Bitcoin or anything like that or crypto.
1:14:30 Anthony Pompliano? Here's the one thing I'll say about Cameron and Tyler that, uh, I think is underrated still. So even after Ben kind of did a 180 on them, right? Cause he even says like, hey, look, I had one perspective of them. Now I've changed my mind. In some weird world in the future, if Bitcoin becomes what I think a lot of Bitcoiners believe it will become, they probably go down as the best investors of our lifetime. And the reason being, they made a investment so early in Bitcoin when it was, you know, very, very unpopular, no one really knew about it, they put millions of dollars into this thing, and then the amount of Bitcoin that they own could be eventually, I mean, they could be the first trillionaires.
1:15:10 Speaker 02 Yep.
1:15:10 Anthony Pompliano? Right? Now, there's a lot of what ifs that have to occur to get to there, etc. But to me, there's a lot of people who I think take that perspective, oh, if I had $50 million, I would put, you know, $10 million, whatever.
1:15:22 Speaker 02 100%.
1:15:23 Anthony Pompliano? And I'm like, if you had $50 million, you would spend it all, right? You wouldn't be investing in shit.
1:15:28 Speaker 02 No, and look, my critique of this is not a knock on them at all, it's that the, and look, who knows, either Bitcoin or digital currencies in general are going to become, they're going to take over the world, or they're kind of not, I feel like I-
1:15:42 Anthony Pompliano? You think it's pretty binary?
1:15:42 Speaker 02 Yeah, I do, and I say that from a non-expert standpoint.
1:15:45 Anthony Pompliano? I don't think that you're necessarily wrong in that thought process, at least in the sense of, the promise of it is very binary. So it's like, hey, look, either this becomes huge, or like, it's not important. Not important doesn't mean zero, it just means that it's kind of like every other asset and-
1:15:59 Speaker 02 Right, exactly. And look, blockchain is clearly a technology that is going to be ubiquitous, if it isn't already, but that's different, obviously, than saying the currencies will be. And, look, you know, they, if their bet is right, that's obviously going to make them, they'll be hailed as visionaries. Rightly so.
1:16:19 Anthony Pompliano? And so when you're doing a lot of the investigations, etc., into a lot of the banks and financial organizations, etc., does any of this come up? Like, do any of the employees or anybody talk about any of this stuff? Or is it really, there's like, a Bitcoin crypto world, and like, it's a very much eco-chamber versus the Wall Street world?
1:16:37 Speaker 02 It's, yeah, I mean, you get executives on Wall Street paying lip service to it occasionally, but it's, look, there's a great fascination with blockchain, obviously, but-
1:16:47 Anthony Pompliano? They're the blockchain, not Bitcoin crowd, which they get made fun of by the Bitcoin-
1:16:52 Speaker 02 Crowd is the
1:16:53 Anthony Pompliano? That's like a 2015 narrative.
1:16:55 Speaker 02 But also, that's kind of just the way like I would imagine.
1:16:58 Anthony Pompliano? Super low risk.
1:16:59 Speaker 02 Well, it's low risk and it's helpful, right? It's a great like it's that is great social value. And it may turn out that Bitcoin and other digital currencies have great value as well. I don't think it's that surprising that the mainstream world, the mainstream finance world is not embracing it because it's kind of an existential critique of the mainstream finance world, right? And and I think.
1:17:21 Anthony Pompliano? You get it better than you're letting on.
1:17:23 Speaker 02 Well, no, I mean, there's and I respect that also. It's I don't have any problem like I, you know, I don't understand it well enough.
1:17:31 Anthony Pompliano? No, but you nailed it, right? It's this idea that there's an existing system and there was this creation that really is the anti thesis to the existing system, right? It says, hey, the existing system has flaws. We're going to correct those flaws. He, she, they, whoever created it, right? And you get this weird world in the future of either the existing system wins and this new thing goes away. The new thing wins and the existing system goes away, or there's coexistence. So basically you've got three outcomes and I actually think, you know, if you ask somebody like an Andrew Ross Sorkin or something, right? He would say that it's one of the most polarizing things he's ever seen where you bring a bunch of, you know, let's say 10 financial executives into a room. They're all intelligent, all respect each other.
1:18:15 Anthony Pompliano? And you ask them, what do you think about Bitcoin? And you leave, come back in 20 minutes, five are on one side, five are on the other side, and they literally think the other side is stupid.
1:18:23 Speaker 02 Some black eyes, fat lips.
1:18:26 Anthony Pompliano? It's just super, super polarizing, which I think drives more of the fascination, right? It's because you have all these really smart people who so vehemently disagree on this one thing. And it's like, well, what ends up happening?
1:18:37 Speaker 02 And based on my very limited experience in this world, I think a lot of the Bitcoin enthusiasts kind of revel in their outsiderism, right? And there's, I think, again.
1:18:48 Anthony Pompliano? Long Bitcoin, short the bankers.
1:18:50 Speaker 02 Yeah. And I think there would be some of the fun maybe would be taken out of it if all of a sudden everyone was just like, okay, Bitcoin wins.
1:18:59 Speaker 02 You know, the point of it is to kind of give the finger to the banking world and if banks.
1:19:05 Anthony Pompliano? And there's some, I mean, look, fidelity and others now are starting to, I think, realize, hey, look, like, maybe this is important. Square is a great example, right? Where it's like 50% of their revenue now comes from Bitcoin.
1:19:16 Speaker 02 I didn't know that.
1:19:17 Anthony Pompliano? I'll call it Bitcoin related products. If I remember correctly.
1:19:21 Anthony Pompliano? It's like 50% of top line revenue comes from the Bitcoin related product, but they only did about $8 million in profits. So on a percentage basis, profit wise, there's still like less than 2% or 1% of profits come from it. But revenue basis, it's huge.
1:19:36 Speaker 02 Look, the way these things norm, again, not speaking about Bitcoin or currencies at all, and I'm even speaking about banks, but just in general, in my experience as a journalist, the way most of these kind of like hyper polarized, like seemingly binary issues actually work out in the end, is that they're not binary. It turns out that there's a lot of shades of gray and outcomes kind of merge as time passes. And again, I don't know enough about Bitcoin to say whether that's the case here. But there's, I mean, it's certainly not the kind of thing that is certainly like at the New York Times and the bankers I talked to, I don't think most of them view it as a fraud.
1:20:14 Speaker 02 They just like, they view it as like a kind of speculative device that is popular on the fringes, kind of. And that's, that may well-
1:20:24 Anthony Pompliano? The young people play with it.
1:20:25 Speaker 02 The young people and kind of the like the far right or the far left. I think it's kind of the perception, which again, I'm sure is not really accurate. And-
1:20:36 Anthony Pompliano? Well, definitely has like a libertarian bent to it, right? Kind of the self sovereignty and all this kind of stuff, for sure.
1:20:41 Speaker 02 I think, look, being dismissive of something that is as popular and increasingly common as Bitcoin is, that's a mistake. And it's very easy for people in their like, you know, big towers at a bank or in journalism or academia to kind of look down your nose at this upstart and just write it off as like idiots doing this. And that's almost always, you know, you get your comeuppance.
1:21:07 Anthony Pompliano? Yeah, for sure. People can go to Amazon or where else to buy the book?
1:21:13 Speaker 02 Just Google it, Dark Towers. Dark Towers, Deutsche Bank, Donald Trump, An Epic Trail of Destruction. And you'll find it and you should buy it.
1:21:20 Anthony Pompliano? What do you want people to take away from the book?
1:21:22 Speaker 02 That this is a story about how the decisions of human beings can have tragic consequences. And not just for a bank, but for companies, for economies, for humans.
1:21:41 Anthony Pompliano? So you can see this now, Joe over there has learned how to put the
1:21:47 Speaker 02 That's good.
1:21:47 Anthony Pompliano? The graphics over the
1:21:48 Speaker 02 That's really nice.
1:21:49 Anthony Pompliano? And all of a sudden now I see graphics just flying into the screen, book covers, everything.
1:21:54 Speaker 02 That must be very distracting.
1:21:56 Anthony Pompliano? No, I just know that he, I said on the last episode, he's, he's gonna be dangerous now that he has this ability. I'm waiting for him to start putting memes and everything else out there.
1:22:03 Speaker 02 Don't give him any ideas.
1:22:04 Anthony Pompliano? Um, all right. Uh, to finish up, I've got two questions for you and then you get to ask me one question to end. Uh, what's your favorite book that you've ever read? Can't be one of your own.
1:22:15 Speaker 02 It definitely would not be one of my own. Uh, my favorite book, fiction or nonfiction?
1:22:19 Anthony Pompliano? You choose.
1:22:21 Speaker 02 Wow. Um, I think my favorite not, my favorite fiction book is 100 Years of Solitude.
1:22:30 Anthony Pompliano? Okay, what's that about?
1:22:31 Speaker 02 It's a, it's a kind of
1:22:33 Anthony Pompliano? Sounds cool.
1:22:34 Speaker 02 It's by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Uh, it's a magical realism and it's about this village that is, it's kind of an isolated village and weird shit happens. It's
1:22:48 Anthony Pompliano? It's a fiction book.
1:22:49 Speaker 02 It's fiction. It's, uh,
1:22:51 Anthony Pompliano? 100 Years of Solitude?
1:22:52 Speaker 02 100 Years of Solitude. It has the best opening line, in my opinion, of any book ever written and I don't, I'm not gonna be able to recite it, but it's a wonderful book. Uh, I don't know, nonfiction wise, they're, you know, I, I can tell you the best couple of nonfiction books I've read recently are, uh, Midnight in Chernobyl. It's fantastic. Um, uh, Say Nothing by Patrick Rattenkeeffe is fantastic. Um, those are probably the two best books I read last year.
1:23:23 Anthony Pompliano? Awesome. Uh, I also asked everyone about aliens. Do you think, you think they're real? You believe?
1:23:30 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:23:31 Anthony Pompliano? Yeah?
1:23:31 Speaker 02 I mean,
1:23:31 Anthony Pompliano? Why?
1:23:32 Speaker 02 Why? Because the
1:23:34 Anthony Pompliano? I believe as well.
1:23:35 Speaker 02 Because the universe is huge and of course there's like, I don't know what form the aliens take or whether we'll ever see them, but like, how could there not be?
1:23:42 Anthony Pompliano? Yeah. There's a guy who, uh, who I had on the podcast and he basically said, there's two questions every human asks. What happens when we die, right? Like, is there an afterlife or not? And two, are we here alone? And ever since he asked me that question, or he said to me that framework, I'm like, those are the two questions that everyone's gonna ask.
1:23:58 Speaker 02 Are you gonna ask me what happens when we die?
1:24:01 Anthony Pompliano? I never asked, but what do you think? I have no idea.
1:24:04 Speaker 02 I have no idea.
1:24:05 Anthony Pompliano? You know what's actually scarier to me is not what happens when we die, but actually is there life here? And it's more of this thing of, you know, I've asked 230 plus people this now, so I've thought quite a bit about it, but like, we actually don't want the aliens to come here. We probably want to go find them because in at least human history, when somebody invades or discovers something, it usually doesn't turn out so good for the people who are there first.
1:24:29 Speaker 02 That's, that's true. On the other hand, you know, we've never encountered anyone from outside of Earth. And so maybe it would work differently.
1:24:38 Anthony Pompliano? In, uh, look, it's, it's so serious that Edward Snowden in his book, he literally says that when he got into the NSA databases and stuff, one of the things he searched for was any files on aliens and UFOs.
1:24:50 Speaker 02 And what did he find?
1:24:51 Anthony Pompliano? Nothing.
1:24:53 Speaker 02 Well, of course there'd be no files though.
1:24:54 Anthony Pompliano? Right? And so it's just super fascinating. And today, actually I saw a, a rendering in four billion years. They say that our galaxy is going to collide.
1:25:06 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:25:06 Anthony Pompliano? And you start thinking about just the size of this stuff, right? And another stat that, uh, somebody sent me was, uh, there's 10,000 planets, uh, or I'm sorry, I think it's 10,000 stars that are out there for every one grain of sand on Earth.
1:25:22 Speaker 02 Yeah, the universe is a big place.
1:25:24 Anthony Pompliano? We really don't matter.
1:25:26 Speaker 02 Yeah, well, we matter, but it's just, it's filled with other things that matter.
1:25:30 Anthony Pompliano? What one question you have for me to finish up?
1:25:34 Speaker 02 What happens when we die?
1:25:37 Anthony Pompliano? So I don't know, obviously. The one thing that I will say, uh, that I'm fascinated by is you ever read these accounts of people who pretty much like die and come back?
1:25:50 Anthony Pompliano? They all tend to be very similar, right? And it's almost like this, like rewinding of your life and there's a light and like all this kind of stuff. And I'm not somebody who's like, you know, super conspiracy theorist about any of it, but I do think that that cohort of people who have gotten the closest to death and, you know, even, uh, fortunately. Not died, probably have more to tell us than we give them credence. Because everyone else is frankly full of shit, right? Like, we're all reading books that, you know, some people think are factual. Some people think are complete fiction. Some people think they're fiction, but still read them because it puts them in a good, you know, mental state. Some people are like, you guys are all fucking crazy and like, science is real.
1:26:33 Anthony Pompliano? I have no clue, but just for whatever reason, that cohort of people who, uh, you know, got very close to death and came back and say, this is what I experienced. Eh, they probably got something going on there.
1:26:43 Speaker 02 Yeah, it seems like, you know, they know more than anyone else.
1:26:47 Anthony Pompliano? Yeah.
1:26:47 Speaker 02 Anyone else who's alive.
1:26:49 Anthony Pompliano? Yeah, and also on top of it, uh, you start to get this, um, you know, we, we invested in a company, uh, years ago now. That, um, they won a bunch of awards for freezing, uh, it started out as animal brain. So I think they start with like a rabbit and then they froze like a pig's brain or something. And when you quote, quote, freeze the brain, the way that they do it, and I'm overgeneralizing is basically they take cryogenic freezing technology. And deliver it through an oxygenated process. But they're trying to freeze your brain with a hundred percent structural integrity. Which would in essence mean that they freeze the synapse connections. That's where your memories, your knowledge, etc.
1:27:25 Speaker 02 Why?
1:27:26 Anthony Pompliano? So their like, huge pie in the sky vision would be work your way up in size of brain, all the way to a human brain. If you could freeze a human's brain, then you could actually either do one of two things. You could basically download all of those memories, knowledge, etc. into a computer. So, you know, the, the, uh, kind of ideal state being, imagine if Einstein's brain was around, we could tell him our problems and use his brain power to help us solve whatever. Or two, you could do it for like research, right? Research is probably the more realistic one. But, uh, when you start getting into that world, as I was researching all this, then you find out like people are actually cryogenically getting frozen, you know, rich people.
1:28:03 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:28:04 Anthony Pompliano? Because they think in 30 years, we're going to have a technology that can live forever.
1:28:07 Speaker 02 And you say you're, you think aliens maybe are terrifying, and that is terrifying to me.
1:28:12 Anthony Pompliano? That terrifies you?
1:28:13 Speaker 02 The notion of people freezing brains and like being able to download, so yeah, that scares, that's like the scariest thing I've heard today.
1:28:21 Anthony Pompliano? So, look, it's a thing, though, that I'm actually of the belief like longevity, all the stuff will happen. You and I probably won't be around for it, but just the arc of human kind of advancement puts us in a place where, you know, I don't know, if you were born 100 years ago, what was the average expected life? Maybe 40, 45?
1:28:42 Speaker 02 I think probably more than that. I guess it depends where you live.
1:28:44 Anthony Pompliano? Right, but it's not like we went from 10 to now we're at, you know, 75 or whatever it is. It was, we've probably gained in 100 years, I don't know, 10 to 20 years probably. And so if you think of it that way, it's like in 300 years, could people be living to 120? Maybe. I don't know. But seems more realistic than, you know, you or I discovering aliens tomorrow, so.
1:29:08 Speaker 02 Unfortunately.
1:29:09 Anthony Pompliano? All right, guys, go get Dark Towers, Deutsche Bank, Donald Trump, and an epic trail of destruction. And you can follow David at David Enrich on Twitter.
1:29:19 Speaker 02 Enrich.
1:29:20 Anthony Pompliano? Enrich. Oh, man. See.
1:29:21 Speaker 02 It's okay.
1:29:22 Anthony Pompliano? The CH, all right, here's what I'm gonna say.
1:29:24 Speaker 02 I get this every day, so.
1:29:25 Anthony Pompliano? But because some people, when they pronounce their own name and it ends in CH, they say K.
1:29:30 Speaker 02 Yeah, no, I get it.
1:29:31 Anthony Pompliano? And you say Enrich.
1:29:32 Speaker 02 Yep.
1:29:33 Anthony Pompliano? Is that the right way to say it?
1:29:35 Speaker 02 I think so.
1:29:37 Anthony Pompliano? All right, go follow him on Twitter, go buy the book, and we'll have to do this again after you break a couple more stories.
1:29:43 Speaker 02 Thank you. I'll be back.
1:29:45 Anthony Pompliano? Hey, everyone. Pop here. If you liked this episode of Off the Chain and want to help us take crypto to the top of the Apple, Spotify, and other podcast charts, please do us a favor and rate, review, and subscribe. To review, simply go to the Off the Chain homepage, scroll down until you see the five blank stars. Taking 15 seconds to fill those stars in and leave a quick review goes a long way in helping us take the entire crypto ecosystem to the top of the charts. I appreciate you listening and see you next time on Off the Chain.
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