Middle East Dictators Are Allowed To Root For Trump— But Sending Him Bags Of Cash Is Too Much

In 1969 I spent a month driving around Morocco. I took a ferry across from Algeciras in Spain to Tétouan, still part of Spain but on the coast of North Africa, a gateway to Morocco. It was a different world, one that runs on endemic corruption, in any many ways centered on a Farsi-Arabic word: baksheesh— a tip or, in politics, a bribe. After Morocco I drove though Asia: Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Ceylon, Nepal… and back. I became used to baksheesh until it was no more exotic than breathing. Literally. And when I was arrested at the Afghan border with 50 kilos of the best Mazar-i-Sharif hash, baksheesh got me out of the hole-in-the-ground “jail” I was tossed into— and the next day got me back my VW van and hash. Whew!

Like in all Arab countries, corruption in Egypt in woven into the fabric of society and  is pervasive in both the public and private sectors, with baksheesh being a common way to expedite services and secure favorable outcomes. Their kind of corruption has been interacting with Western kinds of corruption for a thousand years. Enter: Donald Trump, themes corrupt leader of any country in contemporary history.

Is the Bob Menendez jury disbanded yet? They quickly and unanimously found Menendez guilty of all counts, basically taking bribes that originated Arab countries, especially in Egypt. It would be great if our society were able to apply their expertise to the aforementioned other high-level official and scumbag who took bribes from Egypt. Early this morning, Aaron Davis and Carol Leonnig reported on another Trump scandal— and how William Barr shut down the investigation.

Their story began after Trump had been elected but just before he had been sworn in. The Egyptian intelligence service withdrew $10 million in two-hundred pounds of $100 bills from a Cairo branch of the state-run National Bank of Egypt. Egypt’s dictator, Abdel Fatah El-Sisi, transferred the cash to Trump— baksheesh, and a factor in Trump’s decision to inject $10 million of his own into the last week of the campaign (knowing he would be getting it back from El-Sisi.

Trump was already president when the FBI discovered the transfer and soon their investigation was “blocked by top Justice Department officials” who prevented them from obtaining bank records they believed might hold critical evidence. “The case,” wrote Davis and Leonnig, “ground to a halt by the fall of 2019 as Trump’s then-attorney general, William 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 [smeared] 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 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.’”

“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.”

… Over the course of his presidency, Trump shifted U.S. policy in ways that benefited the Egyptian leader, a man he once called “my favorite dictator.” In 2018, Trump’s State Department released $195 million in military aid that the United States had been withholding over human rights abuses— a move that had been opposed by his first secretary of state— followed by the release of $1.2 billion more in such assistance.

…In the final weeks of the 2020 presidential race, CNN… reported that special counsel Robert Mueller had led the case, which centered on an informant’s tip that money had flowed through the bank to help fund Trump’s campaign. CNN also reported that, in the end stages of the probe, some prosecutors proposed subpoenaing Trump’s financial records, before “top officials” ultimately concluded that the case had reached a dead-end.

At the time, Trump spokesman Jason Miller rejected the allegation of money flowing to the campaign, saying: “President Trump has never received a penny from Egypt.”

…One official called it “jaw dropping.” In early 2017, Justice Department officials were briefed on initial reports from the Central Intelligence Agency that Sisi had sought to send money to Trump.

The intelligence had come partly from a confidential informant who had previously provided useful information, according to people familiar with the matter. Intelligence the CIA gathered in other operations corroborated parts of the individual’s account, The Post learned.

…Mueller organized his investigators into teams with intentionally bland code names, like Team R for Russia. The team investigating Egypt was dubbed Team 10, as in $10 million, people familiar with the investigation said.

By the early summer of 2017, prosecutors and FBI agents began sizing up the sensitive intelligence, taking stock of publicly available information and pursuing other leads.

They noticed that on Sept. 19, 2016, less than two months before Election Day, then-candidate Trump had met with Sisi on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in New York. The campaign’s account of the closed-door meeting gave no indication that Trump had held the Egyptian leader at arm’s length, as U.S. officials typically had done since Sisi seized power in a military coup three years earlier and swept aside the country’s first democratically elected president. After the meeting, the campaign said Trump had told Sisi the United States would be a “loyal friend” to Egypt if he was elected president, and on Fox News, Trump praised him as a “fantastic guy.” 

Investigators also viewed it as potentially meaningful that, after he assumed office, Trump quickly embraced Sisi, the people said. Breaking with U.S. policy under President Barack Obama, Trump invited the Egyptian leader to be one of his first guests at the White House and met with him again, among other Arab leaders, on his first trip abroad.

As the Mueller team got going, investigators focused on how at the time candidate Trump met with Sisi in 2016, Trump’s campaign had been running low on funds. They learned through interviews with the candidate’s closest advisers that they had pleaded with Trump to write a check to his campaign for a final blitz of television ads. Trump repeatedly declined— until Oct. 28, roughly five weeks after the meeting with Sisi, when he announced the $10 million infusion. In the context of the Egypt intelligence, investigators considered the amount a point of interest, people familiar with the probe said. Though the infusion was recorded in campaign finance reports as a contribution, Trump’s campaign finance chairman had structured the transaction as a loan that could be repaid to Trump to convince him to approve the deal, according to FBI interview notes of a key Trump adviser.

…Since seizing the presidency in 2013, Sisi has greatly expanded the powers of the General Intelligence Service and increasingly relied on the spy agency to maintain his political stronghold at home as well as to press his agenda abroad. In 2018, his eldest son became the service’s deputy director.

Top leaders of the GIS figured prominently in the trial that led last month to the conviction of Menendez on charges of accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes and acting as an unregistered agent of the Egyptian government.

According to people with knowledge of the Trump probe, investigators believed that only Sisi or a government operative acting on his orders could have arranged for the $10 million cash withdrawal. They also saw hallmarks of an international money-laundering operation in the way funds moved into and through the Research and Studies Center accounts ahead of that cash withdrawal, indications of a potential crime that may or may not have been related to an effort to help Trump.

…Barr installed a longtime ally, Timothy Shea, who was then serving as a counselor to Barr and had previously worked with him in the George H.W. Bush administration. At one of Shea’s first meetings, the office’s senior leadership briefed him on major pending cases and outlined the Egypt probe and their proposed subpoenas for Trump bank and foreign bank records. Shea told them he was putting a hold on any investigative steps while he got up to speed, people with knowledge of Shea’s instruction said.

After the meeting, investigators discussed their feeling that Shea’s reaction to the Egypt case was so negative that it spelled the end of any forward movement, the people said; they did not return to press Shea for those subpoenas.

… Barr, however, grew disappointed with his handpicked chief prosecutor for a separate reason, according to people familiar with Barr’s thinking. Shea allowed attorneys in his office to recommend a lengthy prison sentence for Roger Stone, who had been convicted of multiple felonies.

Less than four months after appointing him, Barr replaced Shea with Michael Sherwin…[who then] sent an email to the head of the FBI’s Washington field office….“Based upon review of this investigation,” Sherwin began, his office would be “closing the above matter” because neither an indictment nor a conviction was likely.

Biden Attorney General Merrick Garland didn’t reopen the case and “on Jan. 15, 2022, five years after the money left the bank in Cairo, the deadline for bringing charges under the federal statute of limitations for illegal campaign contributions expired.”

Last week, the Arab Center Washington DC published an unrelated piece, Middle East Leaders Prefer Trump’s Victory.  The point is that endemically corrupt ruling elites in Saudi Arabia, other Gulf countries, Egypt and Israel were all pro-Trump. Trump’s disregard for issues involving human rights makes him popular with brutal  local dictators and authoritarians.

Gregory Aftandilian wrote Trump’s foreign policy in the region was entirely transactional and that much of it flowed through Jared Kushner. “In addition to the Saudis’ large investment gift to Kushner, the Trump family has been busy securing large business deals in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries. Trump’s son Eric recently told the Financial Times that not only will the Trump organization be involved in developing a Trump tower in Jeddah, it will also partner with the Saudi real estate firm Dar Global in building a luxury resort and golf course in Oman. Already, the Trump organization operates a luxury golf course in Dubai in the UAE. Eric Trump implied that these deals were not a conflict of interest because “I don’t really deal with foreign governments,” but this practice of mixing business with government is not new for Trump, nor for the Gulf states. The group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington reported that from December 2016 (soon after Trump was elected) to February 2017, Saudi lobbyists paid for about 500 rooms, worth $270,000, at Trump’s Washington, DC hotel, and that when MBS visited New York in 2018, his entourage stayed at the Trump International Hotel in Manhattan, spiking the venue’s revenue by 13 percent. As for the UAE, it spent up to $10,000 per night for rooms at the Trump Washington, DC hotel from late 2017 to mid-2018.

Several Arab countries that have longstanding ties to the United States, namely Egypt, the UAE, and Bahrain, have been more circumspect about the US presidential race, but are also likely quietly rooting for Trump. This is due in large part to the Democrats’ rare criticism of the human rights situation in Arab authoritarian states and to the punitive measures that Democratic administrations have sometimes imposed on such countries for their abuses of the opposition.

For example, during the 2020 campaign, Biden tweeted that there would be “no more blank checks for Trump’s favorite dictator,” Egypt’s ruler Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, and once in office, he held up a portion ($130 million) of military aid to Cairo partly in response to US congressional pressure (largely coming from Democrats) over human rights. By contrast, Trump called Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi a “fantastic guy” in 2016 and later received him in the White House, which Biden has not done. But because the United States needs Cairo’s help to resolve the war in Gaza, the Biden administration has dropped its public criticism of Egypt, and Biden himself has held several phone calls with Sisi on the Gaza situation. Nonetheless, Sisi and his government probably yearn for another Trump administration where their repression would not come under scrutiny. Similarly, Bahrain, ever since the 2011 crackdown, has occasionally been criticized by Democratic administrations, whereas Trump, in his last full day as president in January 2021, bestowed the Legion of Merit, Degree Chief Commander, on Bahraini King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa. And under Democratic administrations, the UAE has been subjected to criticism over allegations of “facilitating Russian economic activity” and its role in the Yemen war, whereas the country seems to be a favorite of Trump and his family’s business.

Let me offer a takeaway that isn’t about how corrupt Arab societies are— but is about how Trump's willingness to accept—if not solicit— bribes from Egypt exemplifies his deep-seated corruption and utter disregard for ethical governance, something that doesn't seem to bother the tens of millions of Americans who support him. Sure, the El-Sisi’s actions in withdrawing $10 million and transferring it to Trump are rooted in the endemic corruption of their system, but it was Trump who welcomed and facilitated such illicit transactions. What’s important for us as Americans is that Trump’s acceptance of this baksheesh compromised American values and policies, favoring a dictator known for human rights abuses in exchange for financial gain. This betrayal of public trust is not just a reflection of Trump's personal greed— although it is that— but a stark reminder of the dangers of having a leader who prioritizes personal enrichment over the nation's democratic principles. The suppression of the investigation by his allies, especially Barr, further underscores the lengths to which Trump and his MAGA movement go to cover up their misdeeds. As a result, critical evidence was buried, and accountability was evaded. In taking these bribes, Trump sold out our national integrity and reputation on the global stage. He transformed the presidency into a vehicle for personal profit, betraying the American people and undermining the very foundations of democracy.