Democratic members of the Senate Judiciary Committee sent the Justice Department’s inspector general a letter Monday asking him to investigate whether Trump appointees “interfered with and, ultimately, blocked” a criminal probe into U.S. intelligence that the Egyptian government sought to give Donald Trump $10 million to boost his 2016 presidential campaign.
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The request for DOJ’s watchdog to review how the case ended comes after a Washington Post article in August revealed details of a secret Justice Department investigation that was closed, despite prosecutors and agents having sought to take additional investigative steps.
The Post reported that, five days before Trump took office, an amount nearly identical to the $10 million described in the intelligence about Egyptian President Abdel Fatah El-Sisi was withdrawn at a bank in Cairo, in U.S. $100 bills, from an account linked to the Egyptian General Intelligence Service. The discovery of the withdrawal, early in 2019, intensified the secret investigation.
But Attorney General William P. Barr later personally involved himself in the case, urging FBI leaders to impose “adult supervision” on agents seeking to obtain Trump’s bank records to see whether they could find evidence that the money had made its way to Trump, The Post reported.
Michael Sherwin, the then-acting U.S. attorney who closed the case in 2020, told The Post he did so for lack of evidence.
Four members of the Senate Judiciary Committee — Sens. Richard Blumenthal (Conn.), Mazie Hirono (Hawaii), Alex Padilla (Calif.) and Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I.) — signed a letter asking DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz to investigate “a pattern of conduct that includes improper political interference, ignoring standards for recusal, and abrogating Attorney General guidelines, among other improper considerations.”
The four wrote that if the case was improperly cut short, “such meddling is cause for grave concern to the integrity of the Department of Justice under then-President Trump and to our democratic processes more broadly.”
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 senators of trying to “meddle” in the upcoming election.
Barr did not respond to a request for comment.
Last month, top Democrats on the House Oversight Committee sent Trump a letter asking whether he ever illegally received money from the government of Egypt. Trump did not respond to the letter, according to a spokeswoman for Jamie Raskin (D-Md.).
Making their case for Horowitz to investigate, the four senators wrote that foreign interference in U.S. elections is a major national security concern and that the acceptance of foreign campaign contributions, if true, would constitute a federal crime.
“Moreover, interference into a sensitive investigation of the then-president by senior DOJ officials appointed by that President would constitute an egregious breach of the Department’s rules and procedures, as well as a severe threat to the impartial administration of justice,” they wrote. “Accordingly, we urge you to conduct a full and comprehensive investigation into these deeply troubling reports.”
Under DOJ guidelines, the inspector general’s office may have to seek authority from the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility to conduct parts of such an investigation. A spokeswoman for Horowitz declined to comment.
