US senators seek answers on 'thwarted' probe into Egypt-Trump bribery case

US Senate Democrats demanded an official probe into the alleged interference in an investigation into whether the Egyptian government had reportedly offered Donald Trump a multi-million-dollar bribe to boost his electoral campaign in 2016.   

On Monday, four Democratic members of the Senate Judiciary Committee had sent the US Justice Department's inspector general an official letter, urging him to investigate whether Trump appointees "interfered with and, ultimately, blocked" a criminal probe into the allegations in question, The Washington Post reported.

Investigation thwarted

The Washington Post reported in August that a $10 million cash-withdrawal was allegedly made from a bank in the Egyptian capital, Cairo, that has links to an Egyptian intelligence entity, just five days before Trump’s inauguration, which later fuelled a probe into whether he had accepted the alleged bribe.

The report further claimed that Trump had in October 2016 injected $10 million into his campaign, which came following a meeting with Egypt's President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi during his visit to New York.

In the US, candidates for federal office are prohibited from accepting foreign donations, which would make the withdrawal unlawful.

According to the paper's August report, the official investigation was allegedly thwarted even before agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) were able to gather the evidence they needed for the case after Trump's Attorney General William P. Barr questioned if there was sufficient proof to carry out the inquiry.

Trump's Justice Department also reportedly blocked the FBI agents and the prosecutors from accessing bank records which would have provided evidence, The Washington Post claimed in August.

Neither has the investigation been reopened under Attorney General Merrick Garland, the Monday report added.

Asked for comment, the Trump campaign called reporting about Trump and Egypt "textbook Fake News."

The Justice Department investigation "found no wrongdoing and was closed," spokesman Steven Cheung said, accusing the four senators of trying to "meddle" in the upcoming election. Barr did not respond to a request for comment.

The Egyptian government has yet to comment on the accusations.

A 'loyal friend'

Two months before the US election day, Trump met with Egypt's President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi behind closed doors, on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in Manhattan, with Trump later calling him a "fantastic guy" during an interview on Fox News.

Directly after the meeting, the Trump campaign also said that he promised Sisi that the US planned to be a "loyal friend" to Egypt, despite the Arab country's alarming human rights record.  

In 2019, Trump sparked controversy after yelling out: "Where's my favourite dictator" in reference to Sisi during the G7 summit held in France as he waited for him to arrive at a meeting.

At that time, Trump applauded Sisi and his leadership for being "a very tough man."

"But he's also a good man, and he's done a fantastic job in Egypt. Not easy," Trump said on the sidelines of the event.

The former president had, nonetheless, satirised his Egyptian counterpart a year earlier, allegedly, making news headlines back then, over, allegedly, referring to him as "a f****** killer" as claimed by Bob Woodward in his tell-all biography on the US president, Fear: Trump in the White House.

Woodward alleged that Trump mocked Sisi after a telephone conversation during which he told his lawyer, John Dowd, that the former Egyptian military chief "made him sweat," following a phone conversation.

Last month, the Biden administration notified the US Congress that it would provide Egypt with $1.3 billion worth of military aid, despite major concerns frequently raised over the human rights situation in the Arab World's most populous country.  

Observers, however, attributed the US decision to Egypt's strategic role in the region in brokering peace talks between the Palestinian Hamas faction ruling the war-ravaged Gaza Strip and Israel during the ongoing genocidal war.