NBC reported recently that a focus of the House intelligence committee’s investigation into Trump and Russia involves the president’s finances:

Among the House lines of inquiry, one official familiar with the investigation told NBC News, is to what extent Russian money bailed out Trump’s real estate empire after the 2008 real estate crash.

Richard Dearlove, the former head of Britain’s MI6 made the same point in an interview with Prospect magazine:

As for the president’s personal position, he said, “What lingers for Trump may be what deals—on what terms—he did after the financial crisis of 2008 to borrow Russian money when others in the west apparently would not lend to him.”

I’m wondering: Was Dearlove speaking from insider knowledge?

The Trump Organization did lay claim to having a substantial amount of cash ready to deploy in the 2008 financial crisis.  And it planned to invest that money in Great Britain.

Was MI6 tracking the source of this funding?

In the fall of 2008, the Scottish government was considering whether to grant approval for Trump’s golf resort on the coast of northeast Scotland. Questions were mounting over whether the future US president had the £1 billion he had promised to spend to build “the greatest golf course in the world.” Lehman Brothers’ spectacular collapse had triggered a global financial crisis and lending on projects like Trump’s golf course had ground to a halt.

Throughout that fall, George Sorial, managing director of international development and assistant general counsel at the Trump Organization, insisted that Trump had a huge sum of cash at his disposal earmarked for what became Trump International Golf Links near Aberdeen, Scotland.

In November 2008, Sorial told The Scotsman of Edinburgh that Trump had the cash on hand to fund the Aberdeenshire course.

Mr Sorial said: “The money is there, ready to be wired at any time. I am not discussing where it is, whether it is in a Scottish bank or what, but it is earmarked for this project. If we needed to put the development up tomorrow, we have the cash to do that. It is sitting there in the bank and is ready to go.”

He added: “As we have said all along, Aberdeen is a project we have chosen to fund with cash. Mr Trump has recently increased his cash position and we have no need for a bank loan in respect of the Aberdeenshire project.”

This is most likely Trumpian bluster. Trump was claiming he would spend £1 billion on the project and never came close to that sum. He promised vacation homes that were never built, jobs that never materialized and a huge hotel that was never built.

While Sorial was boasting about money in the bank, his boss was suing a group of lenders led by Deutsche Bank to extend payment on a $640 million construction loan for a tower in Chicago. Deutsche Bank would use Sorial’s comments in court filing to argue that Trump had the funds to pay up.

It wasn’t Trump’s bluster, per se, it was Sorial speaking. And his refusal to discuss the source of the money — “whether it is in a Scottish bank or what” — and his assertion that Trump had “recently increased his cash position” is interesting, given the interest in Trump’s funding sources during the 2008 financial crisis.

Trump’s International Golf Links opened in 2012.  The course is owned through Trump International Golf Club Scotland Ltd. (TIGCS), a British company registered in 2005. The company is controlled by Donald Trump, with Sorial serving as corporate secretary.

This Russian funding source, if it ever existed, flowed through Donald Trump. The 1,400-acre grounds were purchased with what Sorial described to Scottish Parliament in 2008 as “Mr Trump’s personal money, with no financing, and we have carried all the associated costs, again out of Mr Trump’s personal expenses.” In its latest corporate filing available here, TIGCS reported that Trump had loaned the company more than £39 million.

After Trump’s election, Sorial, a British citizen, was named chief compliance officer of the Trump Organization. He manages potential conflicts of interest that may emerge between the presidency and private business.

Before joining the Trump Organization in 2007, Sorial was a partner at Day Pitney and New Jersey’s DeCotiis, FitzPatrick, Cole & Wisler. His name turns up as co-owner of Interlink Sun Homes, which sold vacation homes in Bulgaria to UK citizens.

In September 2007, Sorial was named a “Global Scot,” a network of executives with strong ties to Scotland. Trump’s inclusion on that list was revoked after his harsh comments about Muslims during the 2016 election campaign.

James Dodson, author of several books on golfing, recounts an interesting exchange he had a few years back at one of Donald Trump’s golf courses with the president’s son, Eric. According to Eric, Trump had several Russian investors who were big on golf.

“So when I got in the cart with Eric,” Dodson says, “as we were setting off, I said, ‘Eric, who’s funding? I know no banks — because of the recession, the Great Recession — have touched a golf course. You know, no one’s funding any kind of golf construction. It’s dead in the water the last four or five years.’ And this is what he said. He said, ‘Well, we don’t rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia.’ I said, ‘Really?’ And he said, ‘Oh, yeah. We’ve got some guys that really, really love golf, and they’re really invested in our programs. We just go there all the time.’ Now that was three years ago, so it was pretty interesting.”

The whole article posted on WBUR’s website is well worth reading, but the little snippet above is the one getting some attention on Twitter. This conversation allegedly took place in 2014 at the Trump National Golf Club Charlotte. The club is actually located in Mooresville, North Carolina about 30 miles outside Charlotte.

Eric Trump on Twitter called Dodson’s story made up.