Attorney General Bill Barr Shut Down the DOJ’s Investigation into Donald Trump’s $10M Quid-Pro-Quo with Egypt
Plus updates on Trump's NY election interference case and federal election interference case, and more
Attorney General Bill Barr Shut Down the DOJ’s Investigation into Donald Trump’s $10M Quid-Pro-Quo with Egypt
In a Summer Friday news dump, The Washington Post reported on some damning new details of a DOJ investigation into Trump’s $10M deal with Egypt to help elect him in 2016 in exchange for U.S. policy benefits. The scheme wasn’t the worst part of the story either. It was Attorney General Bill Barr’s role in interfering with the Department of Justice with the explicit purpose of shutting down all investigations into Trump, as well as key Trump allies.
Barr has escaped close scrutiny for his politicization of the Justice Department and has not been held accountable for serving as Trump’s attack dog to spare him from legal trouble. The new revelations about the Trump-Egypt investigation underscores how corrupt Barr is and how much damage he did to American Democracy.
The $10M Quid-Pro-Quo between Egypt and Donald Trump in 2016
In early 2019, federal investigators received intelligence from a confidential CIA informant about a strange transfer of cash from Egypt to Donald Trump that was exchanged 5 days before Trump’s inauguration in 2017. The Department of Justice had already begun a secret criminal investigation in early 2017 into an alleged effort by Egyptian President Abdel Fatah El-Sisi to financially assist Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign in violation of campaign finance law prohibiting contributions from foreign nationals and governments.
The Washington Post reported on Friday that the DOJ learned that the state-run National Bank of Egypt, which is based in Cairo, processed a request by the Egyptian intelligence service to withdraw nearly $10M in cash from its account. Investigators hoped to determine if the cash from President El-Sisi was a factor in Trump’s personal transfer of $10M into his campaign in the final days before the 2016 election.
But the investigation would go nowhere thanks to Trump’s Roy Cohn, U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr. By fall of 2019, prosecutors and FBI agents were blocked by top DOJ officials from obtaining bank records. It was Barr who directed the then-U.S. Attorney in Washington, D.C., Jessie Liu—a Trump appointee who previously served as deputy general counsel at the Treasury Department in 2017 after serving in his President-elect transition team—and FBI Director Christopher Wray to intervene in and obstruct the case.
One big red flag that the investigation found was that before receiving the $10M from Egypt, Trump’s campaign was strapped for cash. In interviews with Trump’s closest advisers, investigators found out that campaign officials tried and failed to convince Trump to write a check to his campaign for some final TV ads. Suddenly, on October 28, Trump funded $10M into the campaign.
Investigators found that that was the same amount he received from El-Sisi 5 days before his inauguration and then discovered that Trump secretly met with the Egyptian president on September 19, 2016 during the U.N. General Assembly in New York. It’s also worth noting that following that meeting, Trump began praising Egypt’s dictator.
Aside from Barr’s cover-up, the $10M quid-pro-quo paid off for Egypt. Once Trump took office, he shifted U.S. policy on Egypt to specifically benefit El-Sisi. In 2018, Trump’s State Department released $195M in military aid that the United States had sanctioned over human rights abuses. It later released another $1.2B in military aid.
Special Counsel Bob Mueller’s Team Found Evidence of Money Laundering
Before Barr took aggressive action to shut down the investigation, special counsel Robert Mueller, who was appointed in 2019 to investigate an alleged connection between the Trump campaign and Russia, was leading the case. The case landed on Mueller’s desk after Justice Department officials developed a theory that the Egypt allegations dovetailed with a broader issue surrounding Donald Trump’s campaign, possible foreign election interference.
Mueller’s team was particularly interested in the discrepencies between Trump’s campaign finance reporting of the $10M as a contribution and Trump’s campaign finance chairman structuring the transaction as a loan to be repaid. It appears investigators suspected there was money laundering going on.
In early 2018, investigators obtained bank records from some of Trump’s most frequented accounts. They focused on large transfers between May and November of 2016 and considered subpoenaing additional bank records to examine Trump’s activity after he was elected.
Mueller’s team also subpoenaed the National Bank of Egypt in July 2018 to examine transactions of approximately $10M. The bank sued the DOJ over the subpoena. In the weeks leading into the 2020 election, CNN reported that a secret 2019 courthouse hearing involved an Egyptian bank. The bank appealed the case to the Supreme Court and lost—the high court ordered the bank to turn over the requested records. Despite the high court ruling, the bank did not comply and by early 2019, the bank had begun accruing daily $50K contempt fines for failing to turn over the subpoenaed records.
One of those records was the January 15, 2017 letter asking the bank for the $10M cash withdrawal and it came from an organization called the Research and Studies Center near the Cairo airport. During the court battle over the bank’s records, a bank manager confirmed in an April 4, 2019 court filing that the organization is connected to Egypt’s General Intelligence Agency. According to the bank records, employees made the withdrawal the day of the request and two men associated with Egypt’s spy agency picked up the cash.
Investigators also discovered an international money-laundering operation as it examined how funds were transfered into and through the Research and Studies Center accounts leading up to the $10M withdrawal. Records show that the center opened an account at the Heliopolis branch of Egypt’s state-run bank in November 2015.
In August 2016, the center opened another account in the bank’s Shanghai branch. 5 days later, a company owned by an Egyptian oligarch initiated a transfer of $10M into the Shanghai account. When the transfer was cleared in December, it was then transferred from the company’s account to the center’s account in Egypt shortly before the withdrawal was made. 3 days later, on January 18, 2017, the center closed its account in Shanghai and by April 2017 it closed its other account at the Heliopolis branch. It’s unclear if the Research and Studies Center still exists.
How Barr leaned on allies to end DOJ investigations into Trump and others
In April 2019, after Liu took over for Mueller’s unfinished investigation, FBI agents and supervisors lobbied her to approve getting a subpoena to obtain Trump’s banking records. At first, Liu indicated in meetings with investigators that she was open to a narrow subpoena, but she told them she would need to run it by the attorney general first.
This worried investigators as they were aware that Barr had issued a misleading and inaccurate summary of Mueller’s investigative report on Russian election interference in February. They worried he might attempt to derail their investigation too. And rightfully so after Barr had suggested that there was insufficient evidence to proceed with the investigation. What investigators may not have known was that Barr tasked Liu with examining the classified intelligence to determine if further investigation was warranted.
As Liu kept the investigation going and more aggressively pursued bank records from Egypt’s state-run bank, Barr got nervous his appointed lackey wasn’t taking care of business. So he turned to FBI director Wray and distorted how Liu’s handling of the investigation.
Barr told Wray that Liu appeared apprehensive to make necessary decisions in the case and that she felt pressured by agents to approve some aspects of the investigation. He also shared Liu’s concerns that blocking parts of the investigation may appear to the team that senior officials were impeding an investigation that had political consequences.
In a big tell that he was in Trump’s corner, Barr also shared his own suspicions about FBI agents on the case who worked under special counsel Bob Mueller, saying they were “hell-bent” on investigating Trump and instructed Wray to impose “adult supervision.”
Despite Liu doing a 180 and aligning with Barr on the investigation, including refusing to approve her team’s request to subpoena Trump’s bank records, Barr was not happy that she didn’t do enough to grind the investigation to a halt. So, Barr sought a way to push Liu out.
In late 2019, Liu’s office was preparing to issue sentencing recommendations for Trump advisors Michael Flynn and Roger Stone. Conveniently, Donald Trump nominated Liu to be an assistant secretary of the Treasury Department in December. The next month, Barr broke the rules by forcing Liu to step down from her position as her confirmation process was proceeding and appointed a friend, Timothy Shea.
Even though Shea put the investigation on ice, Barr did not like that his new prosecutor recommended a long prison sentence for Stone. So, less than 4 months after appointing him, Barr replaced him with another friend and advisor, Michael Sherwin, who shut the investigation down in June 2020. He conveniently found that Barr was right that there was “a lack of sufficient evidence to prove this case beyond a reasonable doubt.” Sherwin also left Trump allies alone as Barr asked.
A former and current government official told The Post that now-Attorney General Merrick Garland and U.S. Attorney Matthew Graves were never briefed on the Egypt investigation. They also noted that Sherwin closed the investigation without prejudice so the DOJ could have revived the case, but the statute of limitations expired on January 15, 2022.
Donald Trump attempted to bully Black journalists into dropping and concealing live fact-check
On Wednesday, Donald Trump made a mockery of himself and U.S. journalism at the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) annual convention in Chicago. Axios reported that the GOP nominee caused a more than one-hour delay for his scheduled Q&A for the sole reason that he refused to be fact-checked live and threatened to not make an appearance unless organizers dropped it. As NABJ leaders prepared a statement to explain to the audience of nearly 2,000 individuals why the Q&A with Trump was cancelled, Trump took the stage to speak with ABC News correspondent Rachel Scott, Fox News anchor Harris Faulkner, and Semafor reporter Kadia Goba.
NABJ president Ken Lemon told Axios that Trump’s team asked organizers to conceal that there would be fact-checking by not allowing the moderator to disclose the process or not posting them on NABJ’s social media. He added that Scott mentioned that the Q&A would feature a live fact check online by Politifact, which partnered with the convention, and that NABJ publicized the fact-checking feature in advance of the event.
New York Judge bans former NRA Chief for 10 years, declines appointing independent monitor for gun lobbyist
On Monday, July 29, New York Supreme Court Justice Joel Cohen issued a split ruling in the civil trial against the National Rifle Association (NRA) and the gun lobbyist’s former CEO, Wayne LaPierre. Following a 10-day bench trial, the judge banned LaPierre from holding a paid position with the NRA for 10 years but rejected the New York Attorney General Letitia James’ request for a court-appointed independent monitor to babysit the organization. He reprimanded the NRA for its “stunning lack of accountability” and expressed his concerns that it “failed to fully acknowledge the jury’s verdict” issued in February. He also rebuked the organization’s leadership for its efforts to PR the verdict as a win for the NRA, calling it a “simply false” spin.
Earlier this year, during phase 1 of the civil trial, a Manhattan jury found that the NRA breached state whistleblower and tax laws by failing to hold its executives accountable for spending donor cash on a luxury lifestyle, including private flights, 5-star vacations, and designer suits. The jury ruled that LaPierre and the NRA’s retired CFO, Wilson “Woody” Phillips, misspent $7.4M of the NRA’s donations and ordered LaPierre to reimburse the NRA $4.35M and Phillips to pay back $2M. Phillips is also banned from holding a paid position with the organization for 10 years.
Despite the NRA’s misappropriation of donor funds, the judge determined that the NYAG’s request for court oversight was not the correct remedy as it would be “time-consuming, disruptive and will impose significant costs on the NRA without corresponding benefits.” He added, “It should be, in my view, a last resort, not the first.” The judge proposed a list of relief, including rotating the NRA’s audit committee, retaining a compliance consultant, and voting on a bylaw to reduce the board, and ordered the parties to negotiate on a compliance solution post-trial.
New York Appeals Court upholds Trump’s gag order as Trump attacks Judge Juan Merchan’s daughter by proxy via Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan
On Thursday, a New York appeals court denied Donald Trump’s demand to lift his gag order, which bars him from making public comments about the prosecutors and court staff involved in the GOP nominee’s felony conviction, as well as their families. The 5-judge panel on the Appellate Division First Department wrote in its ruling that Judge Juan Merchan was correct in keeping the gag order in place through Trump’s sentencing, which is scheduled on September 18. In the 3-page order, the court expressed concerns about the ongoing threat that Donald Trump poses, writing, “Contrary to petitioner’s contentions, the People’s evidentiary submissions in opposition to his motion in Supreme Court demonstrate that threats received by District Attorney staff after the jury verdict continued to pose a significant and imminent threat.”
Since Trump is barred from attacking the judge’s daughter, he has outsourced that to his bootlickers in Congress. Following the NY appeals court decision, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) sent a letter to Loren Merchan, Judge Merchan’s daughter, demanding she turn over documents about Harris’ campaign, President Joe Biden’s now-defunct reelection campaign, and any discussions she or her firm may have had with her father about Trump’s NY election interference case.
Trump’s lawyer Todd Blanche also filed another motion asking Judge Merchan to recuse himself from the case, suggesting that he can’t be impartial because his daughter worked for Vice President Kamala Harris’ 2020 presidential campaign. Meanwhile, Judge Merchan plans to rule on a separate motion by the defense asking the court to overturn Trump’s conviction in light of the Supreme Court’s presidential immunity ruling. That decision is expected on September 6.
Federal Election Interference case handed back to Judge Chutkan
After the 32-day waiting period following the Supreme Court ruling that made Donald Trump above the law, the federal election interference case was finally handed back to the D.C. District Court on Friday. On Saturday, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan scheduled a status conference for August 16 to determine how to proceed with the case. In her order, Judge Chutkan gave an August 9 deadline for both parties to jointly file a proposal for pre-trial proceedings and denied Trump’s motion to dismiss the indictment without prejudice. She noted that Trump can refile the motion “once all issues of immunity have been resolved.”
She also denied Trump’s motion to dismiss the case based on selective and vindictive prosecution. In her 16-page order, Chutkan rejected Trump’s arguments, criticizing the defense’s "improper framing" and making it clear that "at this stage, the court cannot accept Defendant's alternate narrative.” She added, "After reviewing Defendant's evidence and arguments, the court cannot conclude that he has carried his burden to establish either actual vindictiveness or the presumption of it, and so finds no basis for dismissing this case on those grounds."
Georgia “voter integrity” vigilantes attempt to cancel registrations of state GOP officials
Over the weekend, the Secretary of State’s Office told ProPublica that it had identified multiple attempts by “voter integrity” vigilantes to cancel the voter registrations of Georgia voters. It also confirmed that Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene were two targets of the effort.
Mike Hassinger, a spokesperson for Raffensberger’s office, said the state is monitoring cancellation requests for abuse and that the online portal has safety features to prevent unwarranted cancellations. Those features include warnings on the portal about felony charges for abusing the site and blocking single users from submitting multiple cancellations. Hassinger also shared that county election workers review requests and send a postcard to voters whose registrations are canceled with the ability to contest the cancellation.
Ohio Republicans remove 155 thousand voters in mostly majority-minority counties from voter registration database
On Friday, Ohio Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose announced his office removed 155K “inactive and out-of-date voter registrations” from the state’s voter rolls, which he claimed was part of Ohio’s “voter registration integrity initiative.” He also claimed that non-U.S. citizens were removed, but non-citizens, including permanent legal residents, are ineligible to vote. In June, LaRose’s office posted a list of 158,857 inactive voter registrations that LaRose’s office identified as eligible for removal from the state’s database.
The Ohio Capital-Journal reported in late July that more than half of Ohio voters on that list are registered in majority-minority counties. This means that Ohio Republicans sought to disproportionately remove voters of color who vote for Democrats. Deidra Reese, a voter engagement director at the Ohio Organizing Collaborative, told the outlet that there has to be a better way to maintain Ohio’s voter roll. She added, “We just want people who are eligible to actually be able to vote and not have barriers and particularly not to disproportionately impact voters of color.”
Ohio voters can check their registration status at vote.org or at the Secretary of State’s website. For anyone affected by LaRose’s office’s mass voter disenfranchisement or who is not registered to vote, can register at vote.gov or at the Ohio Secretary of State’s website. The deadline to register to vote in the November 5 election is Monday, October 7.
Republicans for Harris relaunches as coalition against Trump and MAGA
On Sunday, Republicans for Biden relaunched as Republicans for Harris with more than 25 endorsements ahead of events in battleground states Arizona, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania. The group features prominent Republican Party members who aim to provide a “permission structure” for moderates, independents, and Republicans to vote for Vice President Kamala Harris. In addition to hosting events, Republicans for Harris will launch a digital ad campaign featuring testimonials from Republicans about why they are voting for her, what makes Trump unfit for office, and why MAGA does not represent GOP values. Republicans supporting Harris for President will also appear at key barnstorming events with Harris and her soon-to-be VP running mate to reach Republican voters nationwide.
Republicans who have endorsed Harris include former state governors Jim Edgar of Illinois, Bill Weld of Massachusetts, and Christine Todd Whitman of New Jersey; former Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan; former North Carolina Supreme Court Justice Bob Orr; former Trump press secretary Stephanie Grisham and former national security advisor to VP Mike Pence Olivia Troye; and former Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and former Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood.
Also, 16 former members of Congress, all Republicans, are supporting Harris, including CT rep. Christopher Shays; IL reps. Adam Kinzinger and Joe Walsh; ME rep. Dave Emery; MD rep. Wayne Gilchrest; MI rep. David Trott; MO rep. Tom Coleman; NY reps. Susan Molinari, John LeBoutillier, and Jack Quinn; PA rep. Jim Greenwood; RI rep. Claudine Schneider; TX rep. Alan Steelman; VA rep. Denver Riggleman; VT rep. Peter Smith; and WA rep. Rod Chandler.
DOJ Sues TikTok for violating online privacy protections for minors
On Friday, the Justice Department sued TikTok for failing to comply with a 2019 settlement with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in which the app and its parent company ByteDance were found to have violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). The lawsuit alleges that TikTok continued to collect data on millions of children under 13 years old without parental consent, failed to honor parents’ data deletion requests—even implementing barriers that made it more difficult to make such requests—and allowed minors to interact with adults and adult content not set to “Kids Mode” on the app. TikTok also shared “Kids Mode” data with third-party apps, which pushed ads that incentivized minors to remain in the app for longer. There are additional allegations that are redacted in the complaint—the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California is currently considering how much of the case to file under seal or make public.
In 2019, TikTok’s predecessor, Musical.ly, agreed to pay $5.7M in the largest civil penalty for a COPPA violation at the time. During a compliance review of that settlement, the FTC found the company violated the agreement after it went into effect and referred its investigation to the DOJ in June.
The complaint asks a jury to agree that damages are owed for each "collection, use, or disclosure of a child’s personal information" that violates COPPA,” claiming that it’s likely there are multiple violations for millions of children's accounts. It noted that the FTC Act authorizes civil penalties up to $51,744 "for each violation of the Rule assessed after January 10, 2024,” which could total tens of billions of dollars without reaching a subsequent settlement. The DOJ also asked the court for a permanent injunction “to prevent future violations of the COPPA Rule by Defendants.”
Wow. The crimes just won’t stop.