One month after The Washington Post revealed that the Egyptian government may have illegally given Donald Trump $10 million in 2017, Democrats have announced they will be investigating the allegations.
Democrats on the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, led by ranking member Representative Jamie Raskin, announced in a press release Tuesday that they will be “demanding answers” from the Republican presidential nominee not only over the possible bribe from Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El Sisi, but also over evidence that the Justice Department, led at the time by Attorney General William Barr, covered it up.
“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,” said the statement, addressing Trump. “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.”
According to the Post’s report, the DOJ in 2017 was investigating Sisi’s efforts to donate$10 million to Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. Right before the 2016 election, Trump had announced that he was personally donating $10 million to his campaign, leading some to question where the money came from.
In 2019, federal investigators found that an organization linked to Egyptian intelligence withdrew nearly $10 million in cash just five days before Trump was sworn in as president. If Trump took such a payment, it would be a major violation of federal law. However, the investigation was closed down by Trump’s Justice Department in June 2020, with the supervising prosecutor claiming there was insufficient evidence.
“Every American should be concerned about how this case ended,” one of the Post’s sources said at the time. “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.”
In their statement, House Democrats noted that Trump met with Sisi in September 2016, before the election, and called him a “fantastic guy”—odd words to describe a dictator. Trump’s praise would only grow after he was elected president, as he would refer to Sisi as his “favorite dictator.”
Trump has seemingly escaped any scrutiny or questions over a serious accusation of bribery from a foreign government since the Post’s report at the beginning of August. Now, as the presidential race enters its final months, the convicted felon won’t want to deal with another allegation of foreign involvement in his campaign, especially since he still complains about being tied to Russia. Now he might be dogged by questions about Egypt until November—possibly with some stronger evidence this time.
