Two months after the public first confronted questions about whether Donald Trump received money from the Egyptian government in 2016, the number of lawmakers taking the issue seriously continues to grow.
In early September, for example, two leading House Democrats — Maryland’s Jamie Raskin, the ranking Democrat on the Oversight Committee, and California’s Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on its subcommittee for national security, the border and foreign affairs — actually wrote to the former president, seeking information.
“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,” the congressmen’s letter read. “Accordingly, we request that you immediately provide the Committee with information and documents necessary to assure the Committee and the American public that you never, directly or indirectly, politically or personally, received any funds from the Egyptian president or government.”
A month later, the House members haven’t received an answer. It’s against that backdrop that Senate Democrats are also taking an interest in the simmering controversy. The Washington Post reported:
Democratic members of the Senate Judiciary Committee sent the Justice Department’s inspector general a letter Monday asking him to investigate whether Trump appointees ‘interfered with and, ultimately, blocked’ a criminal probe into U.S. intelligence that the Egyptian government sought to give Donald Trump $10 million to boost his 2016 presidential campaign.”
Four Democrats on the Senate panel — Connecticut’s Richard Blumenthal, Hawaii’s Mazie Hirono, California’s Alex Padilla and Rhode Island’s Sheldon Whitehouse — formally requested that Michael Horowitz, the Justice Department’s inspector general, investigate “a pattern of conduct that includes improper political interference, ignoring standards for recusal, and abrogating Attorney General guidelines, among other improper considerations.”
For those who might benefit from a refresher, let’s circle back to our earlier coverage and review how we arrived at this point.
In early August, the Washington Post first reported that five days before Trump’s inauguration, “a manager at a bank branch in Cairo received an unusual letter from an organization linked to the Egyptian intelligence service. It asked the bank to ‘kindly withdraw’ nearly $10 million from the organization’s account — all in cash.”
The Post’s August report, which has not been independently verified by MSNBC or NBC News, went on to note that records indicate that four men ultimately arrived at the state-run National Bank of Egypt and carried away bags containing nearly $10 million in bundles of $100 bills. The money represented “what was then a sizable share of Egypt’s reserve of U.S. currency.”
A variety of questions obviously came to the fore. Where’d the money go? What did officials linked to the Egyptian intelligence service want with roughly 200 pounds of $100 bills?
According to the reporting, some FBI agents were concerned that the money was intended to go to Trump. In fact, those agents reportedly opened an investigation into whether Egypt illegally funneled $10 million in cash to the Republican for his 2016 campaign.
And while that sounds like the basis for an incredible story, it didn’t end there.
U.S. investigators, relying on U.S. intelligence, reportedly came to believe that Egypt’s then-president wanted to give Trump $10 million to boost his 2016 candidacy. Around the same time, Trump met with Egypt’s then-president, praising him on Fox News soon after as a “fantastic guy.”
We don’t know whether Egypt gave Trump the money. We do know that a few weeks after Trump met with Egyptian President Abdel Fatah El-Sisi — the one who apparently wanted to give the Republican $10 million — Trump somehow produced $10 million of his own money for his campaign. It was, however, structured as a loan so Trump would get the money back.
The then-GOP candidate, of course, ultimately won the election. It was during that presidential transition period, shortly before Inauguration Day 2017, when an organization linked to the Egyptian intelligence service allegedly picked up 200 pounds of $100 bills from Egypt’s state-run national bank. Soon after, Egypt’s president became one of Trump’s first foreign guests at the White House — a generous diplomatic gesture — and the then-American president ultimately released over $1 billion in military aid for Egypt. U.S. investigators never proved that the cash from that Egyptian bank went to Trump. That would’ve required access to more of Trump’s financial records, which they didn’t get. Why not? According to the Post, because then-Attorney General Bill Barr intervened to prevent FBI agents from subpoenaing Trump’s financial records. What’s more, Barr removed the relevant prosecutor — and her replacement — until the controversial A.G. finally arrived at a prosecutor who shut down the investigation altogether. This detail was of particular interest to the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Democratic members, who wrote that if the case was improperly cut short, “such meddling is cause for grave concern to the integrity of the Department of Justice under then-President Trump and to our democratic processes more broadly.” Trump has denied wrongdoing — his campaign this week called the story “fake news” — though as Rachel Maddow Show viewers might recall, he has the wherewithal to simply shut down all questions by releasing relevant financial records, either to the public or to congressional investigators. To date, that hasn’t happened. A few months ago, Trump falsely accused President Joe Biden of “receiving money, for no apparent reason, from foreign countries.” Given this, it would appear that the former president shouldn’t be too surprised to receive some related questions from his recent past. This post updates our related earlier coverage.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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