Top Democrats on the House Oversight Committee on Tuesday demanded to know in a letter to former President Donald Trump whether he illegally accepted $10 million from the Egyptian government.
The letter from Reps. Jamie Raskin of Maryland and Robert Garcia for California came after The Washington Post’s report on a secretive Justice Department investigation into whether Egyptian President Abdel Fatah el-Sisi sought to send Mr. Trump $10 million in 2016 in the waning days of his first presidential campaign and whether he accepted the cash.
The lawmakers wrote that the report spurred renewed suspicion that Mr. Trump collected the $10 million “cash bribe” from the Egyptian government and raised questions about whether his political appointees, like Attorney General William Barr, “blocked efforts by career prosecutors and agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation… to investigate the political and financial corruption that has been described.”
“Surely you would agree that the American people deserve to know whether a former president — and a current candidate for president — took an illegal campaign contribution from a brutal foreign dictator,” they wrote. “Accordingly, we request that you immediately provide the committee with information and documents necessary to assure the committee and the American public that you never, directly or indirectly, politically or personally, received any funds from the Egyptian president or government.”
Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung told The Washington Times that the Post’s report was “textbook Fake News” and that the investigation found no wrongdoing and was closed.
“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,” Mr. Cheung said in a statement. “Whether it’s an impeachment hoax, a Biden-Harris lawfare sham or a bogus smear, the once great Washington Post is always ready to play the role of loyal Democrat Party state media mouthpiece.”
He didn’t say whether Mr. Trump would comply with the request to hand over information to the lawmakers.
Because Mr. Raskin and Mr. Garcia are in the minority in the House and on the Oversight Committee, they can’t subpoena the trove of information they have demanded Mr. Trump hand over by Sept. 17.
The demands from Mr. Raskin and Mr. Garcia stemmed from an investigation initially led by special counsel Robert Mueller, who was leading the probe into 2016 election Russian interference, which was found to be bogus.
• Alex Miller can be reached at amiller@washingtontimes.com.
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