Key details remain mystery in bombshell Trump-Egypt report: legal expert

The Washington Post advanced bombshell reporting about a suspected $10 million payment from Egypt to Donald Trump Friday — but a legal expert highlighted that some key details remain mysteries.

The Justice Department in 2017 began investigating a tip received by the CIA that Egyptian President Abdel Fatah El-Sisi had sought to send money to Trump, then the 2016 Republican nominee for president, the Post reported. The case was handed off to special counsel Robert Mueller's team until then-Attorney General William Barr smothered the probe.

"According to people with knowledge of the Trump probe, investigators believed that only Sisi or a government operative acting on his orders could have arranged for the $10 million cash withdrawal," the Post reported.

"They also saw hallmarks of an international money-laundering operation in the way funds moved into and through [an organization called] the Research and Studies Center accounts ahead of that cash withdrawal, indications of a potential crime that may or may not have been related to an effort to help Trump."

"Investigators tried to connect the dots before the dramatic withdrawal involving bags of cash," the newspaper added. "They noticed that separate transactions in China and Egypt over a 14-month period suggested a possible path for the $10 million."

Mueller's team noticed that substantial sums matched up exactly with the amount of money that Trump injected into his campaign in the final days before the 2016 election, and so did the timing, the report claimed.

"As the Mueller team got going, investigators focused on how at the time candidate Trump met with Sisi in 2016, Trump’s campaign had been running low on funds," the Post reported. "They learned through interviews with the candidate’s closest advisers that they had pleaded with Trump to write a check to his campaign for a final blitz of television ads."

"Trump repeatedly declined — until Oct. 28, roughly five weeks after the meeting with Sisi, when he announced the $10 million infusion," the report added.

Investigators also noticed that Trump had met behind closed doors with the Egyptian president on Sept. 19, 2016, and his campaign said afterward that he had promised Sisi the U.S. would be a "loyal friend" to Egypt if elected, according to the Post.

But national security lawyer Marcy Wheeler said the Mueller report issued in March 2019 suggested the possible conspiracy went back even further.

"The money was deposited in Shanghai in August 2016," Wheeler wrote. "That’s before the September meeting between El-Sisi and Trump. Though at a time when Trump’s people — including both George Papadopoulos, who played a key role in setting up the meeting with El-Sisi, and Walid Phares, who was investigated for ties to Middle Eastern intelligence — were negotiating a meeting with Russia, in London, in September 2016."

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The Mueller report shows Papadopoulos, a Trump campaign adviser who later pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI, attended the Transatlantic Parliamentary Group on Counterterrorism on July 16, 2016, with Phares and Trump campaign adviser Sam Clovis.

Wheeler pointed out that the special counsel found evidence that Papadopolous was setting up an "exploratory meeting" in September that would be crucial to Trump's campaign that involved Russia and Israel policy, and she said the Post's report had not connected the dots to that apparent scheme.

"This was a plan, made IN JULY, before WikiLeaks first released the DNC emails, to meet Russia in London in September," Wheeler wrote. "Papadopoulos -- who had a role setting up the El-Sisi meeting -- claimed to be unable to read these notes [found by Mueller's team]."

Ultimately, Barr imposed limits on the investigation that prevented Mueller's team from obtaining bank records and other evidence in the Egypt case, and the prosecutor he appointed to take over supervision of the investigation determined there wasn't enough evidence to prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt and closed the probe, the Post reported.