Political appointees rejected efforts to search for additional evidence investigators believed might provide answers, then closed the case.
Democracy Dies in Darkness
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30 min
By Aaron C. Davis
and
Carol D. Leonnig
August 2, 2024 at 6:00 a.m. EDT
This story is based partly on research that Davis and Leonnig conducted for their forthcoming book about the Justice Department. The two previously re...more
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. 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.
Federal investigators learned of the withdrawal, which has not been previously reported, early in 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.
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. 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.
Those questions, at least in the view of several investigators on the case, would never be answered, The Post found.
Within months of learning of the withdrawal, prosecutors and FBI agents were blocked by top Justice Department officials from obtaining bank records they believed might hold critical evidence, according to interviews with people familiar with the case as well as documents and contemporaneous notes of the investigation. The case 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.
The behind-the-scenes drama played out during an especially tense time for the Justice Department, with Trump accusing the agency of pursuing a politically biased “witch hunt” against him in its probe of Russian election interference, his appointees seeking to rein in investigators they saw as partisan, and some career supervisors growing wary of plunging the agency into yet another legal battle with the president.
Barr directed Jessie Liu, the Trump-appointed U.S. attorney in D.C., to personally examine the classified intelligence to evaluate if further investigation was warranted. Barr later instructed FBI Director Christopher A. Wray to impose “adult supervision” on FBI agents Barr described as “hell-bent” on pursuing Trump’s records, according to people familiar with the exchange. It is unclear what if any actions Wray, who was also appointed by Trump, took in response.
In June of 2020, the prosecutor Barr appointed to take over the office leading the case closed the probe, citing “a lack of sufficient evidence to prove this case beyond a reasonable doubt.”
That conclusion belied the months of internal disagreements over whether investigators had been allowed to go far enough in seeking that evidence.
“Every American should be concerned about how this case ended,” said one of the people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the internal dissension. “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."
A spokesman for Trump’s presidential campaign did not answer a list of questions from The Post, instead referring to this story as “textbook Fake News.”
“The investigation referenced found no wrongdoing and was closed,” spokesman Steven Cheung said by email. “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.”
An Egyptian government spokesman declined to answer detailed questions sent by The Post. “It is inappropriate to comment or refer to rulings issued by the judiciary system or procedures and reports taken by Justice Departments” in other countries, wrote Ayman Walash, the director of the Egyptian government’s Foreign Press Center. In his email, Walash also emphasized that the Justice Department had closed the investigation without charges.
Democracy Dies in Darkness
Advertisement
Exclusive
Political appointees rejected efforts to search for additional evidence investigators believed might provide answers, then closed the case.30 min
By Aaron C. Davis
and
Carol D. Leonnig
August 2, 2024 at 6:00 a.m. EDT
This story is based partly on research that Davis and Leonnig conducted for their forthcoming book about the Justice Department. The two previously re...more
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. 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.
Federal investigators learned of the withdrawal, which has not been previously reported, early in 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.
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. 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.
Those questions, at least in the view of several investigators on the case, would never be answered, The Post found.
Within months of learning of the withdrawal, prosecutors and FBI agents were blocked by top Justice Department officials from obtaining bank records they believed might hold critical evidence, according to interviews with people familiar with the case as well as documents and contemporaneous notes of the investigation. The case 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.
The behind-the-scenes drama played out during an especially tense time for the Justice Department, with Trump accusing the agency of pursuing a politically biased “witch hunt” against him in its probe of Russian election interference, his appointees seeking to rein in investigators they saw as partisan, and some career supervisors growing wary of plunging the agency into yet another legal battle with the president.
Barr directed Jessie Liu, the Trump-appointed U.S. attorney in D.C., to personally examine the classified intelligence to evaluate if further investigation was warranted. Barr later instructed FBI Director Christopher A. Wray to impose “adult supervision” on FBI agents Barr described as “hell-bent” on pursuing Trump’s records, according to people familiar with the exchange. It is unclear what if any actions Wray, who was also appointed by Trump, took in response.
In June of 2020, the prosecutor Barr appointed to take over the office leading the case closed the probe, citing “a lack of sufficient evidence to prove this case beyond a reasonable doubt.”
That conclusion belied the months of internal disagreements over whether investigators had been allowed to go far enough in seeking that evidence.
“Every American should be concerned about how this case ended,” said one of the people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the internal dissension. “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."
A spokesman for Trump’s presidential campaign did not answer a list of questions from The Post, instead referring to this story as “textbook Fake News.”
“The investigation referenced found no wrongdoing and was closed,” spokesman Steven Cheung said by email. “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.”
An Egyptian government spokesman declined to answer detailed questions sent by The Post. “It is inappropriate to comment or refer to rulings issued by the judiciary system or procedures and reports taken by Justice Departments” in other countries, wrote Ayman Walash, the director of the Egyptian government’s Foreign Press Center. In his email, Walash also emphasized that the Justice Department had closed the investigation without charges.
