House Democrats have launched a probe into former President Trump’s alleged acceptance of $10 million from the Egyptian government during his 2016 presidential campaign, as well as whether allies quashed a subsequent investigation into the matter.
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), the top Democrat on the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, sent a letter following reporting from The Washington Post that found the Egyptian government withdrew $10 million in funds shortly after Trump made a last-minute injection of the same amount of his funds to his campaign in the last few days of the 2016 election.
The Post reported that soon after the Justice Department began an investigation into whether Trump may have accepted the funds in violation of laws prohibiting foreign campaign contributions, the probe ground to a halt amid concerns from then-Attorney General William Barr.
Raskin wrote that the article “renewed suspicion that you collected a $10 million cash bribe from Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi. This detailed news report has also triggered serious speculation that your handpicked political appointees at the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), including Attorney General William Barr, subsequently blocked efforts by career prosecutors and agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to investigate the political and financial corruption that has been described.”
“Surely you would agree that the American people deserve to know whether a former president—and a current candidate for president—took an illegal campaign contribution from a brutal foreign dictator,” Raskin wrote.
According to the Post, the Justice Department began to investigate the matter after learning of a withdrawal from an organization with ties to the Egyptian intelligence service five days ahead of Trump’s 2017 inauguration.
Barr had asked a Trump-appointed U.S. attorney to review classified intelligence collected on the matter, determining there was insufficient evidence to pursue the case. That conclusion followed months of internal disagreement and an apparent ask by Barr for FBI Director Christopher Wray to supervise agents “hell bent” on tracking down Trump records.
Raskin is now seeking some of the records investigators likely sought, asking Trump to turn over documentation about the source of his campaign loan and whether it was repaid. He also asks Trump point-blank if he “directly or indirectly received money from the Egyptian President or government.”
The Trump campaign has denied any wrongdoing since the Post first reported the withdrawal last month.
“This is textbook Fake News. The investigation referenced found no wrongdoing and was closed. None of the allegations or insinuations being reported on have any basis in fact. The Washington Post is consistently played for suckers by Deep State Trump-haters and bad faith actors peddling hoaxes and shams,” the campaign said in a statement.
Raskin said the timing of Trump’s loan to his campaign was “especially notable because earlier that year Deutsche Bank, your long-time creditor and one of the few banks that had still been willing to extend you loans, emphatically declined your request for additional credit.”
Trump while in office has spoken positively about Sisi, calling him “my favorite dictator” and releasing military aid that had been withheld over human rights abuses.
The Egyptian government’s efforts to influence U.S. officials were laid bare by the recent prosecution of former Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), who was convicted in a corruption trial of accepting funds in a scheme that also involved Egyptian intelligence officials.
In a statement to the Post, an Egyptian official stressed the Trump investigation had been closed without charges.
“It is inappropriate to comment or refer to rulings issued by the judiciary system or procedures and reports taken by Justice Departments” of other countries, Ayman Walash, the director of the Egyptian government’s Foreign Press Center, told the outlet.