$10m bank withdrawal fueled DOJ probe of Trump’s Egypt connection: report

02 August 2024

When MAGA Republicans attack Hunter Biden over his connection to Ukraine, Democrats often point out that former President Donald Trump has openly expressed his admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin. And some Democrats note former Trump White House senior adviser Jared Kushner's activities in Saudi Arabia.

According to reporting in the Washington Post, a 2017 bank withdrawal of almost $10 million raises questions about Trump's connection to Egypt.

In an article published on August 2, Post reporters Aaron C. Davis and Carol D. Leonnig explain, "Five days before Donald Trump became president in January 2017, 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. Inside the state-run National Bank of Egypt, employees were soon busy placing bundles of $100 bills into two large bags, according to records from the bank."

The reporters continue, "Four men arrived and carried away the bags, which U.S. officials later described in sealed court filings as weighing a combined 200 pounds and containing what was then a sizable share of Egypt's reserve of U.S. currency."

According to Davis and Leonnig, federal investigators for the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) found out about that withdrawal in early 2019.

"The discovery intensified a secret criminal investigation that had begun two years earlier with classified U.S. intelligence indicating that Egyptian President Abdel Fatah El-Sisi sought to give Trump $10 million to boost his 2016 presidential campaign, a Washington Post investigation has found," Davis and Leonnig report. "Since receiving the intelligence about Sisi, the Justice Department had been examining whether money moved from Cairo to Trump, potentially violating federal law that bans U.S. candidates from taking foreign funds."

The Post reporters add, "Investigators had also sought to learn if money from Sisi might have factored into Trump's decision in the final days of his run for the White House to inject his campaign with $10 million of his own money."

But that probe, according to Davis and Leonnig, "ground to a halt by the fall of 2019 as Trump's then-attorney general, William P. Barr, raised doubts about whether there was sufficient evidence to continue the probe of Trump."

A Post source, interviewed on condition of anonymity, told the publication, "Every American should be concerned about how this case ended. 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."

Read the full Washington Post report at this link (subscription required).

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