The Egyptian government may have given $10 million to Donald Trump in 2017, violating U.S. law—but the investigation into the payment was squashed by Attorney General William Barr.
The Washington Post reports, citing unnamed sources, that an investigation began in 2017 that Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El Sisi was seeking to give Trump $10 million to boost his 2016 election campaign. Federal investigators discovered in 2019 that, only five days before Trump was sworn into office, nearly $10 million in cash was withdrawn on behalf of an organization linked to Egyptian intelligence.
In the U.S., receiving funds from overseas is a federal crime. Federal investigators were trying to prove if any money actually moved from Egypt to Trump, and if that had anything to do with Trump’s decision to boost his campaign in its final days with $10 million of his own money.
But the investigation was halted by Trump’s Justice Department, which blocked FBI agents and prosecutors from accessing bank records that could provide the evidence. In the fall of 2019, Barr questioned whether there were sufficient grounds for the investigation to continue.
Barr directed the Trump-appointed U.S. attorney in D.C., Jessie Liu, to examine the intelligence herself, and instructed FBI Director Christopher Wray to provide “adult supervision” on FBI agents Barr said were “hell-bent” on pursuing Trump’s records. Whether Wray (also appointed by Trump) did anything in response isn’t known, but in June 2020, the prosecutor Barr chose to oversee the investigation, Michael Sherwin, closed it down, citing insufficient evidence.
“Every American should be concerned about how this case ended,” said one of the Post’s sources. “The Justice Department is supposed to follow evidence wherever it leads—it does so all the time to determine if a crime occurred or not.”
The Post reviewed thousands of pages of government records, including sealed court filings and exhibits, and spoke to more than two dozen people who knew about the investigation. It’s a startling report, considering that Trump had faced a special counsel probe into his relationship with the Russian government, but not Egypt.
In recent months, Senator Bob Menendez was convicted of taking bribes of cash and gold bars while acting as a middleman between New Jersey businessmen and foreign governments, including Egypt. If Trump actually took money from Egypt, it would show a much higher level of corruption from the country as well as from Trump, who has yet to face any criminal sentences from the legal cases against him. But, thanks to the Supreme Court’s ruling granting presidents immunity from “official acts,” if Trump actually took money illegally, can anything be done about it?
