How could a $10M Egyptian cash withdrawal upend Trump's campaign?

A scuttled Justice Department investigation into alleged foreign election interference returns to complicate the 2024 presidential election

Illustration of Bill Barr, Donald Trump and Abdel Fattah el-Sisi
This is the 'most serious allegation of a bribe in White House history'
(Image credit: Illustration by Stephen Kelly / Getty Images / AP)

"Russia, Russia, Russia." Such has been former President Donald Trump's dismissive assessment of the various, often intersecting scandals that defined a large portion of his first term in office. But while investigations into Moscow's alleged efforts to penetrate the innermost corridors of American political power have produced compelling — albeit not legally conclusive — narratives in support of Trump's Russian susceptibility, claims of an entirely different national influence operation have surfaced in the closing weeks of the 2024 presidential election, adding another layer of international intrigue to Trump's political ascendency.

At the heart of these separate allegations are a series of suspicious transactions at Cairo's state-run National Bank of Egypt. There, just days before Trump took the oath of office in 2017, some $10 million USD was withdrawn from an account associated with Egypt's national security apparatus — an amount which corresponded to a separate donation made by Trump into his own campaign in the waning days of the 2016 race. The move, which corresponded with a CIA inquiry into claims that Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has sought ways to bolster and align himself with Trump's candidacy, accelerated an ongoing Justice Department investigation into this vector of potential foreign influence peddling.

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Rafi Schwartz, The Week US

Rafi Schwartz has worked as a politics writer at The Week since 2022, where he covers elections, Congress and the White House. He was previously a contributing writer with Mic focusing largely on politics, a senior writer with Splinter News, a staff writer for Fusion's news lab, and the managing editor of Heeb Magazine, a Jewish life and culture publication. Rafi's work has appeared in Rolling Stone, GOOD and The Forward, among others.