$10M from Egypt

New reporting from the Washington Post recalls reporting from 2020 about a possible payment from Egypt to the Trump campaign for $10M in 2016. Mike Sherwin kills another investigation.

Greetings! I just got finished reading new reporting from Carol Leonnig and Aaron Davis at The Washington Post about Mueller’s investigation into a $10M payment that might have been made to the Trump campaign from Egypt. You can read that story here.

It all sounded eerily familiar, so I went back and listened to The Daily Beans podcast from October 15th, 2020. The episode is called “The Secret Company from Country A”, and was the final installment of a saga that the Mueller, She Wrote podcast had followed for years.

Below, I offer you our story on The Daily Beans citing Katelyn Polantz at CNN from way back in 2020. So far as I can tell, the new bombshell information in today’s reporting in the Washington Post is this:

Garland, senior members of his team, and Biden’s new U.S. attorney in D.C. were never briefed on the Egypt investigation.

It would have been Michael Sherwin’s job to brief them, but he never did. Sherwin - a Barr and Trump shill - also refused to brief Merrick Garland on the investigation into Trump for January 6th being conducted by JP Cooney - who is now on Jack Smith’s team.

Sherwin also blocked Garland’s investigation into Trump’s coup at every turn. Garland began investigating Trump the week he arrived at DoJ in March 2021, but Sherwin thwarted it. He blocked subpoenas to the Willard Hotel when Garland wanted to look into ties between Trump and the Oath Keepers.

Later on, Sherwin - with the help of D’Antuono at the FBI - would block Garland’s efforts to seize the phones of Eastman and Clark, forcing Garland to use Inspector General and Post Office cops to execute the search warrants.

AND Sherwin would block the search of Mar-a-Lago for classified documents, so they went with a subpoena at first.

So I’m not surprised that Trump lackey Mike Sherwin closed the investigation into the $10M payment from Egypt and then refused to brief Garland or the new Biden US Attorney on it.

Anyhow, here’s a transcript of The Daily Beans from October 15th, 2020. Forgive any typos or grammatical errors. You can listen to the episode here.

TRANSCRIPT::DAILY BEANS::OCTOBER 15, 2020:

All right, lead story for me today. I don't know if this is gonna be the lead story for any other news organization, but it is for me. This is huge. Uh, I feel like we should have maybe played the Mueller, She wrote introduction music today because of what we have just found out, what we've just learned from CNN in their FOIA suit, along with Buzzfeed. I'm just gonna go through this with you. 

This is from Katelyn Polantz, Evan Perez and Jeremy Herb. And they say for more than three years, federal prosecutors investigated whether money flowing through an Egyptian state owned bank could have backed millions of dollars Donald Trump donated to his own campaign days before he won the 2016 election. And this is according to multiple sources familiar with the investigation who talked to CNN. 

The investigation, which both pre-dated and outlasted special counsel Robert Mueller's probe, examined whether there was an illegal foreign campaign contribution. It represents one of the most prolonged efforts by federal investigators to understand the president's foreign financial ties and became a significant but hidden part of the special counsel's pursuits. 

The investigation was kept so secret, at one point, investigators locked down an entire floor of a federal courthouse in Washington, DC so Mueller's team could fight for the Egyptian bank's records in a closed door court proceeding following a grand jury subpoena. The probe, which closed this summer with no charges filed, has never before been described publicly. 

We have been following the secret company from country A for forever here on The Daily Beans and Mueller, She Wrote. We were trying to see what could have been behind the redaction bars. We thought it was the Qatar investment Authority. It's not. It is Egypt. So there's a lot more news that comes out of this story, by the way. 

Prosecutors suspected there could be a link between the Egyptian bank and Trump's campaign contribution, according to several of the sources, but they could never prove it. It is not clear that investigators ever had concrete evidence or relevant bank transfer from the Egyptian bank, but multiple sources said there was sufficient information to justify the subpoena and keep the criminal campaign finance investigation open. 

After the Mueller probe ended. CNN learned from the Egypt investigation from more than a dozen sources familiar with the effort, as well as through hints in public records, including newly released court documents in the Mueller witness interview summaries, that CNN and BuzzFeed got through their FOIA lawsuits. 

In a court filing last month, the Justice Department confirmed that when the special counsel's office was shut down in 2019, Mueller transferred an ongoing foreign campaign contribution investigation to prosecutors in Washington. At the US attorney's office there, some CNN’s sources have confirmed that the case, which Mueller cryptically called a foreign campaign contribution probe, was in fact the Egypt investigation. 

So we are also learning now Mueller handed this off in appendix D of the Mueller Report, and it was one of the eleven redacted investigations. He just referred to it as a foreign campaign contribution probe. The probe was confirmed this week by a Justice Department senior official who responded to CNN’s questions. 

The case was first looked at by the special counsel investigators who failed to bring a case. Then it was looked at by the US attorney's office and career prosecutors in the national security section, who also were unable to bring a case based upon really, really driving it home that they were unable to bring a case. Mhm. 

Based upon the recommendations of both the FBI and those career prosecutors. Michael Sherwin, the acting US attorney, formally closed the case in July. We know who Sherwin is. He was brought in after Tim Shea, who was brought in after Jesse Liu, who was surreptitiously removed from her position by being promised a position at the treasury and as she's walking over to the Treasury Department, she had her nomination to that post withdrawn. 

Interesting part of what drew investigators' initial interest in the matter was intel, including from an informant that suggested there could have been money from an Egyptian bank that ended up backing Trump's last minute injection of $10 million in his 2016 campaign. That's according to two of the sources. 

Among the chief questions prosecutors sought to answer, and apparently never did, was whether Trump was supported by or was indebted to a foreign power. The investigation even went as far as the US Supreme Court. Remember that? It was the only time during the two year Mueller investigation a dispute went to the high court and the justices declined to hear the case. Yet neither the special counsel's office nor prosecutors who carried on the case after Mueller got a complete picture of the president's financial entanglements, prosecutors in Washington even proposed subpoenaing financial records tied to Trump before top officials finally concluded this summer, they had reached a dead end. A stalemate. 

I'll tell you about that in a minute. It goes into that later in the article. As aggressive as Mueller's office was charging multiple Trump advisors for obstruction, gaining cooperators, uh, indicting Russians for election related malfeasance, and documenting attempts by the president to obstruct justice, the special counsel has faced criticism, including from one of its own prosecutors. 

They're referring to Andrew Weissman for not taking bold enough investigative steps to gain access to the president's finances. Jason Miller, a senior advisor to Trump, said in response to CNN's questions that President Trump has never received a penny from Egypt. A spokesman for the Egyptian president declined to comment. And after Trump's election win, the FBI began working with prosecutors in DC, in the US attorneys office there to investigate the Egypt matter. It was something that looked interesting, the person said. We really didn't do much work on it before turning it loose. 

In May 2017, after Trump fired FBI director Comey, Robert Mueller was appointed special counsel and he took the case. Mueller's primary task was to investigate the Russian government in attempts to interfere in the 2016 election, which had consumed the political and investigative conversations in the early days of Trump's presidency. But the Mueller mandate allowed him to take on related criminal investigations, which in this case included another probe of potential foreign influence connected to the campaign. 

Interestingly, Rod Rosenstein swooped in and, uh, sort of cornered the investigation into Papadopoulos. Papadopoulos is the one who set up the meeting between Trump and the Egyptian president weeks before the election. But Rod Rosenstein said, you can only look at Papadopoulos as far as Russian stuff and Israel, so kind of closed it, you know, shut that down. 

But according to the recent book by Andrew Weissman, one of Mueller's senior prosecutors, the special counsel's office consisted of three principal teams. One focused on former Trump campaign Manafort, another on Russia's election interference, and a third on Trump's attempts to obstruct justice. But there was a fourth team. That is something we're learning today, one partly dedicated to investigating the Egypt matter. Partly dedicated to investigating the Egypt matter. 

Zainab Ahmad, former international terrorism prosecutor, and Brandon van Grack, national security and counterintel specialist, co-led that team. Do you remember? I remember when we reported when Ahmad was brought onto the team and she was an expert in middle eastern affairs, spoke the language, spoke Arabic. 

Wonder what she's doing there. In a Russia probe, she was handling this, this team, which partially was looking into Egypt. What else? Qatar, Saudi, Mbs. Mbz. Public records also show they focused on cases separate from other trial attorneys in the special counsel's office and had senior titles equivalent to other Mueller team leaders. Van Grack largely focused on the case against Flynn. Ahmad assisted van Grack on Flynn and then devoted herself to the Egypt investigation. Ahmad, when reached by CNN, wouldn't speak about her work on the special counsel investigation. She's now a lawyer in private practice. Van Grack is, as we know, a Justice Department prosecutor overseeing foreign lobbying investigations heading up the new FARA unit. He also did not respond. 

Mueller's team tried to understand both the $10 million contribution Trump gave to his campaign eleven days before the 2016 election and the Trump's campaign ties to the Egyptian president. And this is according to sources and redacted interview records released from the Mueller investigation that CNN got in their FOIA case in the closing weeks of 2016. 

Trump and the Egyptian president met in New York during the UN General assembly. The republican presidential candidate hit it off with a dictator. El-Sisi said afterward that Trump would no doubt be a strong president, while Trump called the Egyptian leader a fantastic guy with whom he had good chemistry. A notable difference from Obama and his administration policy, which reflected in Hillary Clinton's focus on Egypt's human rights record. During her own meeting with el-Sisi at the general Assembly, el-Sisi became the first foreign leader to call and congratulate Trump after he won the election. And at the 2019 G7 summit, Trump called out, where's my favorite dictator? As he was awaiting the Egyptian president.

By summer 2017, Mueller's office was handling the Egypt investigation gingerly, with a team of prosecutors and FBI personnel, often working without sharing full details with the other teams in the office. That's according to multiple accounts of office dynamics. CNN sent Mueller detailed questions about the Egypt investigation for this story. He declined to comment. 

One official familiar with the work said some investigators believed the Egypt inquiry presented a more direct avenue for Mueller's team to examine Trump's finances, in part because it did not have ties to Russia. But diving into Trump's finances was highly sensitive, so much so that Mueller suspected the president would fire him. They were working under that Sword of Damocles, right? They would fire him if the White House learned if his finances were being probed. That's the so-called red line Trump set early on in the Mueller investigation. 

Yet understanding Trump's finances was crucial to the Egypt investigation, especially regarding the $10 million he gave himself. Needing a final push before Election day. As the polls were tightening, the Trump campaign was running low on cash. We know that from the Trump tax stuff that we just found out from the New York Times. He got that $21 million infusion from Ruffin, his buddy in Vegas, right around the same time. Right? 

And so Trump's top campaign officials scrambled to convince Trump to inject money. According to memos of witnesses from the investigation and also some contemporaneous news reports, Trump lagged well behind a pledge he made to spend $100 million of his own money, probably because he didn't have $100 million. 

In less than two weeks before Election Day, Trump wrote his campaign a $10 million check, publicly calling it a loan. Campaign finance records show it is the single largest political contribution by far, and not one the campaign would reimburse him for. Federal law enforcement officials suspected in part because of intelligence information that there was money moving through the Egyptian bank that could connect to Trump's donation. And that's according to the sources yet untangling the web of Trump's complex business interests ultimately remained out of reach. Not for not trying. 

Campaign finance law prohibits foreign political contributions to campaigns for public office. A financial tie between a sitting president and a foreign country could have explosive national security consequences. You think? 

Mueller's office pressed witnesses to explain how the Trump and el-Sisi meeting in late 2016 came about. Ahmad, whose aims in the investigation were cloaked in secrecy, was repeatedly present in interviews touching on both Trump's $10 million contribution to his campaign and the campaign's ties to Egypt. For instance, in one witness interview in November 2017, Ahmad and the FBI pressed an unnamed former staffer on the Trump campaign transition and National Security Council about Trump's meeting with el-Sisi and her interactions with Egyptian nationals. 

Another witness, according to the interviews and memo, spoke to investigators in August 2018 about the Trump el-Sisi meeting in Egypt's stance on the US presidential elections. Mueller's team repeatedly asked witnesses questions about Trump's foreign policy campaign adviser Walid Phares and his ties to Egypt after intelligence pointed the FBI towards him. And the New York Times first reported in June about the special counsel's investigation into fares suspected role in Egyptian influence. It led to no charges. 

The FBI has not made public records that show Mueller's team interviewing Phares, though the former Trump advisor has said he spoke to investigators. He declined to comment for this story. 

In an initial interview with the special counsel's office, senior campaign official and White House advisor Steve Bannon discussed his role in setting up the meeting between Trump and el-Sisi. In a session months later, Bannon was asked about Trump's $10 million contribution. That's according to another Mueller memo. Bannon explained to Mueller's investigators how Trump initially resisted cutting the campaign such a large check, and that Trump's son in law, Jared Kushner doubted that Trump would do so, saying that was not going to happen. 

But Trump was talked into providing the last minute money. Bannon said Kushner and Steve talked him into it. Mnuchin described the money as a cash advance. He's gonna get it back somewhere. Bannon said that Mnuchin called it a cash advance and convinced Trump to wire the money. 

A spokesperson for Mnuchin to the Treasury Department confirmed Bannon's description of convincing Trump to make the loan. She said Mnuchin had no knowledge of how Trump had $10 million available to him. Mm hmm. Records. Mhm. Of the special counsel's office interviews, which remain heavily redacted, don't make it clear whether witnesses were asked directly about the money. And at the same time, investigators may have sought not to tip off their suspicions to witnesses, especially those like Bannon. Representatives for Bannon didn't respond for comment either. Trump himself never had to answer the question directly about his $10 million campaign contribution because of the broadness of questions submitted to his lawyers. In his written questions, Mueller asked trump whether any person or entity informed you during the campaign that any foreign government or foreign leader other than Russia or Vladimir Putin had provided, wished to provide, or offered to provide tangible support to your campaign? Trump wrote back. No recollection of being told during the campaign of support from a foreign government. 

And the Egypt investigation led to one of the most secretive court proceedings in Washington in years. Until now, the case was only known to be a fight over a grand jury subpoena between Mueller and a foreign government owned company. But CNN has learned the case was a fight over records from the Egyptian National bank. In July of 2018, the Mueller team issued the secret grand jury subpoena for records to the egyptian bank, sparking a months long court fight that only gradually became public as it progressed through the court system. 

Soon enough, the bank was arguing it shouldn't have to give Mueller records because it was interchangeable with a foreign government that owned it. The us courts disagreed, repeatedly saying the company couldn't be immune from the Mueller team subpoena. And at the time, the courts and Mueller's team took extreme caution to keep the matter confidential. One judge, Beryl Howell of the DC district court, wrote that the case dealt with foreign interference in the 2016 presidential election and potential collusion in those efforts by American citizens. 

The fight was so closely guarded, it took months for the names of lawyers involved to emerge, only becoming public first through CNN reporting and confirmed by court records, attorneys who represented the bank in the subpoena fight and a representative from their law firm, Alston and Byrd, did not respond to inquiries either. 

We reported that when they dropped Alston and Byrd, and then when the federal appeals court in DC heard arguments in the case. In December 2018, security cleared journalists from the entire floor of the courthouse. CNN spotted the Mueller team prosecutors, including Ahmad, returning to the special counsel's office minutes after the hearing ended and her being a Middle east expert. That is why I was thinking it was the Qatar Investment Authority and the case even landed in the Supreme Court in early 2019. They declined to hear this case, and so the subpoena had to be enforced, but it ended in a stalemate. 

The bank handed over 1000 pages of documents, but there were huge gaps in it. They did not satisfy prosecutors, either in Mueller or the DC US attorney's office. The bank's lawyers professed it had gone to great lengths to find and voluntarily produce documents responsive to the subpoena. What more could special counsel want? They asked. 

Federal investigators told the court they believed there must be more. And even the judge acknowledged the gaps in the bank records. But in the end, it was the bank's word against the investigators’. The court proceedings ended with prosecutors getting nothing more than what the bank was willing to turn over, and the bank was excused from hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines that it had accrued for defying the subpoena. 

It appeared to be a dead end and not justification enough for Mueller to keep his office open to finish the case alone. But investigators faced a crossroads. When the Mueller report came out. Rod Rosenstein and Bill Barr oversaw the end of Mueller's probe. They were briefed on the investigation, still ongoing, but they left it up to Mueller's team and the FBI to determine which unresolved matters should be sent to the US attorney's offices so Mueller's office could close. And in late March 2019, shortly after it concluded, Judge Howell, overseeing final court proceedings in the Egyptian bank subpoena case, asked the prosecutor point blank if the investigation was over. “No, it's continuing. I can say it's continuing robustly”. And another prosecutor in the office told the judge the investigation, even after Mueller, was very much a live issue, requiring a great deal of resources, time, and attention by the government. 

For the past year and a half, the matter was kept quiet under Barr and three different US attorneys in Washington than it had been under Mueller. So when Mueller, when the Mueller probe ended, prosecutors said, this is robust and alive and we're watching it. 

And Jesse Liu went through it and prosecutors wanted to subpoena Trump's bank records. And the decision to approve the subpoena fell on Jesse Liu. And Liu spent weeks poring over the records before rejecting the request. Liu told prosecutors she didn't believe they had met the standard needed to seek the records, so the investigation stagnated, but she didn't close it, and she declined to comment. 

And it's unclear how much activity after Liu rejected the subpoena request happened. Prosecutors who disagreed with her decision believe it was now impossible to resolve questions about Trump's 2016 campaign contribution. Liu told people in her office that if the investigation had produced enough evidence, that Mueller would have made the decision to take additional steps. 

Liu's tenure, as we know, came to an abrupt end in February, and Michael Sherwin stepped in in May and reviewed the investigation and then closed it. And Mueller and the Justice Department have taken pains to keep quiet that the investigation ever existed. The Mueller report doesn't mention it, though some parts of the report are still redacted, but it doesn't look like the largely public table of contents outlines anything that resembles the case. 

But he dropped that one hint, listing among the eleven cases his investigation transferred to other offices when his shop closed. But it was redacted. And just last month, the Justice Department lifted the redaction on the 11th case and said it was closed, but it just said foreign campaign contribution. 

So that's what's going on with that. I think we should reopen the case.

Thanks to Mike Sherwin, the case when never reopened.

~AG