In the summer of 2017, as the special counsel Robert S. #Mueller III was starting his investigation, his agents and prosecutors were chasing potentially explosive allegations about foreign influence over Donald J. #Trump and his campaign.
C.I.A. intelligence relayed to the special counsel’s office suggested that senior leaders of a foreign adversary had signed off on ♦️secretly funneling millions of dollars
— with the help of a Trump campaign adviser acting as “a bag man”
— to Mr. Trump in the final days of the 2016 election.♦️
Interviews and other evidence obtained by the special counsel’s office showed that indeed 💥Mr. Trump had lent his campaign a similar amount of money in the final days of the race
— and, after beating Hillary Clinton, Mr. 🔥Trump immediately struck a far more favorable tone toward the country than his predecessors.
The country in question, however, was not Russia. It was #Egypt.
Seven years after Mr. Mueller’s team dug in on those allegations, people familiar with the investigation acknowledged that while much of the country’s attention was focused on ties between Mr. Trump’s campaign and Russia,
the most concrete lead Mr. Mueller’s team initially had about potential foreign influence over Mr. Trump involved Egypt.
The Egypt investigation would outlast Mr. Mueller’s inquiry, which shut down in 2019.
It was picked up by career prosecutors in the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, who closed it out in the summer of 2020 without pursuing any charges.
Details about the depth and breadth of the investigation have trickled out over the years.
CNN laid out major elements of the investigation in October 2020, including that there was a secret legal fight between the Justice Department and an Egyptian bank.
The Washington Post on Friday disclosed further details, reporting that
five days before Mr. Trump took office in 2017
👉an organization linked to Egyptian intelligence withdrew $10 million in cash
from a bank in Cairo
— the same amount that the C.I.A. had been told was given to Mr. Trump in the final days of his campaign.
The report about the withdrawal was confirmed to The New York Times by a person briefed on the investigation.
The investigation started in the days after the 2016 election when the C.I.A. learned from a trusted confidential source that senior Egyptian leaders — 🔸including President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi — had signed off on
💥sending $10 million to Mr. Trump’s cash strapped campaign.
The Egyptian leaders, investigators would be told, had in mind someone in Mr. Trump’s orbit to move the money:
a Trump campaign foreign policy adviser named #Walid #Phares, who had frequently appeared on Fox News.
The F.B.I. opened an investigation into Mr. Phares, with investigators trying to understand whether he was “a #bag #man.”
Mr. Trump’s first C.I.A. director, Mike #Pompeo, was briefed on the details of the agency’s intelligence.
In May 2017, Mr. Mueller was appointed special counsel after questions were raised about Mr. Trump’s attempts to interfere in F.B.I. investigations into his ties to Russia.
Mr. Mueller was given a mandate to investigate Russia’s effort to influence the 2016 election -- and ties that four Trump campaign advisers had to Russia.
What the public did not know at the time was that Mr. Mueller had also been given the job of investigating Mr. Phares -- and the intelligence suggesting that Egypt had sought to funnel money to Mr. Trump.
Throughout the investigation, Mr. Mueller’s team was confronted with a range of allegations about Mr. Trump’s ties to Russia.
But, in the eyes of some agents and prosecutors working on Mr. Mueller’s team, the intelligence about Egypt was far firmer than anything they had related to Mr. Trump and Russia.
At the time,
👉Mr. Trump was threatening to fire Mr. Mueller, drawing a red line around his personal finances.
Mr. Mueller’s investigators did devote significant resources to looking at Mr. Phares,
who had told Trump campaign advisers that he could broker meetings between the Egyptian government and the campaign.
Mr. Phares also took credit for arranging a September 2016 meeting between Mr. Trump and Mr. el-Sisi, which investigators later examined.
American intelligence agencies had learned what agents and analysts thought was potentially corroborating evidence:
🌟that there were questions atop the Egyptian government whether Mr. Phares could be trusted to deliver the money.
When Mr. Mueller’s Russia inquiry wound down, he referred the still-open Egyptian case to Justice Department prosecutors, who picked up where he left off.
It was around that same time that U.S. officials learned of the $10 million bank withdrawal in Cairo by the group linked to Egyptian intelligence agencies, sparking more suspicions among investigators.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/02/us/politics/trump-mueller-egypt.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
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