Democracy dies if we drop the case of Trump, Egypt and $10 million in cash

Bribery is bad for democracy.

In fact, the impeachment clause of the U.S. Constitution spells out bribery as first on its list of things for which a corrupt president or other federal official can be removed from office, ahead of treason and other high crimes and misdemeanors. In case that was too ambiguous, the framers also wrote up the emoluments clause, using an anachronistic term to essentially bar the president and other officeholders from accepting gifts or payments from foreign countries or their rulers.

It seems pretty clear, yet over the course of the 21st century, something has gone awry. A corrupt U.S. Supreme Court, aided by a flawed system of criminal justice that gives every possible break to white-collar crooks while cracking down on the underprivileged, hasn’t quite legalized bribery but made it a lot easier to get away with.

The backsliding accelerated in 2016 when court threw out the corruption conviction of former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, who’d been lavished with gifts like Rolexes and a Ferrari from a businessman. The justices insisted it wasn’t proven that the governor had done anything in return for such largesse. This undermined other federal bribery cases, but it got worse. This year, the high court — in a stunning 6-3 verdict — tossed out the corruption conviction of an Indiana mayor who took $13,000 from a company he’d just awarded a city contract because this seeming bribe was given after the fact.

I’m sure you’ll be shocked — shocked — to learn that two of the Supreme Court justices who voted to legalize a cut-and-dried form of bribery have been accused of improperly accepting gifts from billionaires with an interest in what happens at the nation’s highest court. In the most extreme case, Justice Clarence Thomas has been pegged with accepting a whopping $4 million-plus in luxury vacations, a relative’s private school tuition, and even an RV — much of it initially undisclosed. The response to these domestic emoluments has largely been institutional silence from a toothless Congress and his fellow justices who refuse to adopt a meaningful code of ethics.

At this point, one has to wonder: Where is rock bottom?

We may have just found it.

Two weeks ago, The Washington Post broke a bombshell story about a credible allegation of bribery involving the 2016 election of Donald Trump, Egypt’s dictator Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, and a mysterious $10 million all-cash withdrawal from an Egyptian state-run bank just five days before Trump became president — and adopted a more friendly aid policy toward the Middle Eastern nation.

The rumors of such an investigation have kicked around for years although few details were known at the time. The new Post investigation revealed a stunning detail — that the Cairo bank had received a note from an agency believed to be Egyptian intelligence to “kindly withdraw” nearly $10 million in two, 100-pound bags full of U.S. $100 bills, five days before Trump became 45th president.

The case, which kicked off with a tip from a credible U.S. intelligence asset, remains a circumstantial one, lacking the smoking gun that could lie in Trump’s unexamined bank records. But what remarkable circumstances these are.

We know Trump — reluctantly, at the urging of aides — did inject $10 million into his campaign in its final days. The Post said a Trump campaign official later told the FBI the money was structured as a loan that could be repaid to Trump. We now know about the Egyptian withdrawal of nearly $10 million in American cash, in line with the intelligence tip. And we know Trump cozied up to Sisi and even called him “my favorite dictator” before releasing nearly $1.4 billion in military aid to Egypt that had been held up because of its human rights abuses.

The missing link in the probe was Trump’s bank records, which might have shown receipt of $10 million. But, as The Post chronicled in great detail, the case was handed off in 2019 from the former special counsel, Robert Mueller, who’d chased the tip aggressively, to political appointees in then-Attorney General William Barr’s Justice Department, including Barr himself. The Trump appointees refused to go after Trump’s bank records and President Joe Biden’s AG Merrick Garland didn’t restart the case before the statute of limitations expired in January 2022.

In many ways, the failed bribery probe is not an isolated incident. This is the third major case — in addition to the allegations of a Trump cover-up in Mueller’s probe of 2016 Russian election interference, and the 2016 hush money to Stormy Daniels that eventually led to Trump’s conviction on 34 state felony counts — in which Barr is alleged to have put his finger on the scales of justice in a case involving the president who appointed him. That alone is worthy of a congressional investigation.

Meanwhile, the recent, commendable conviction of Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., for accepting gold bars and cash bribes — tied to ... wait for it ... the government of Egypt — showed what happens when such cases can be brought before a jury of everyday Americans. But the Menendez case feels like the exception that proves the rule. Far too much blatant corruption — in both parties — that would have shocked the founders is met with a giant shrug.

I agree it was wrong and immoral (although probably not illegal in the current climate) when a Ukrainian energy company paid millions to the son of a then-vice president, Hunter Biden, for “expertise” he clearly did not have. I’d argue it looks far worse when a presidential son-in-law who became a White House aide heavily involved in Middle East policy leaves office with a $2 billion Saudi investment in his new fund (also, “expertise” he doesn’t really have) that means $80 million or so in fees. And yet, the Democrats who will investigate their own in Menendez or Hunter Biden have been shockingly weak in pursuing Jared Kushner’s Saudi Arabia dealings.

Before dropping out, President Biden kept telling us democracy is on the ballot in November. But what kind of democracy are we fighting for if bribery is becoming increasingly acceptable? The belief that everybody and everything is for sale in America has created a remarkable aura of cynicism that permeates our politics. One of the many ironies is that Trump, who may or may not have benefited from a $10 million bribe that makes the Watergate crimes of Richard Nixon look like jaywalking, also benefits from this nihilism, the notion that none of that jazz like facts or ethics actually matters.

And yet, the Post’s report of the most serious presidential bribery allegation in American history all but vanished from our wild political news cycle. It doesn’t have to be this way. If freedom is the new buzzword, America needs to be freed from bribery.

Do not let the matter of Trump, Egypt and the $10 million disappear. Although it’s tragic the criminal statute of limitations expired, any alleged bribe can still be pursued as a civil case. More importantly, Congress needs to open a full-blown investigation, with efforts to subpoena Barr and other Justice Department higher-ups to explain in public why the case was dropped.

What’s more, Democratic candidates running to retake control of both houses of Congress in 2025 need to pledge they will strengthen federal bribery laws in the face of these outrageous Supreme Court decisions.

The other wrinkle is the recent, abysmal Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity for so-called official acts that would have made Trump’s pro-Egypt policies — the quo in this alleged quid pro quo — off limits. The next Congress must pass legislation that spells out that a president is not above the law. Anyone can talk about making America great again, but that’s not really going to happen until we make bribery a crime again.

Will Bunch is a columnist for The Philadelphia Inquirer.