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Posted via Heather Cox Richardson | August 8, 2024
The Washington Post’s Aaron C. Davis and Carol D. Leonnig reported that there is an explanation for why when Trump’s 2016 crusade ran out of funds, Trump accepted a $10 million injection from Egyptian authoritarian leader Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.
It is illegal to accept direct or indirect money from foreign citizens or governments for a political crusade in the United States. In early 2017, CIA officials told Justice Department officials that a confidential informant had informed them about such a cash exchange.
Those officials referred the matter to Robert Mueller, the special counsel already investigating ties between Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russian operatives. FBI agents noted that on Sept. 16, Trump met with Sissi while he was Egyptian leader at the United Nations General Assembly in New York.
After the meeting, Trump broke with US policy by praising Sissi and calling him “a fantastic guy. ” Trump’s crusade had run into a budget shortage and his advisers had begged her to invest some of his own money. He refused until October 28, when he loaned the crusade $10 million.
It took years for an FBI investigation to download the records, however, Davis and Leonnig reported that in 2019 the FBI learned of a key withdrawal from an Egyptian bank. In January 2017, five days before Trump took office, an organization connected to Egyptian intelligence asked an official at a branch of the National Bank of Egypt to “please withdraw” $9,998,000 in U. S. currency. The $100 bundles of expenses filled two bags and weighed more than two hundred pounds.
Once in power, Trump welcomed Sisi into his arms and, in a shift in U. S. policy, invited him to be one of his first visitors to the White House. “I just need everyone to know, in case there’s any doubt, that they’re very much President al-Sisi,” Trump said.
Mueller had gone so far in tracing the Trump-Sissi connection as he wrapped up his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. He passed the Egypt investigation to the US attorney in Washington, DC, where Attorney General William Barr appears to have killed it.
CNBC’s Brian Schwartz also reported that Elon Musk and other tech executives are pouring their money into a social media advertising crusade for Trump and Vance and creating targeted classified ads in swing states by collecting voter data under false pretenses. According to Schwartz, his America PAC, or political action committee, says he is helping audiences register to vote. And, in fact, classified ads direct potential voters in non-swing states to voter registration sites.
But other people who respond to the ad in swing states send it to registration sites. Instead, they are presented with “a very detailed personal information form [and] asked to enter their address, mobile phone number, and age,” conveying “invaluable personal knowledge to a political operation” that can then create targeted classified ads on that person’s demographics and demographics. Address them non-publicly in door-to-door campaigns. After getting the settings, the site simply says “Thank you” without directing the viewer to a sign-up site. Forbes estimates Musk’s wealth at more than $235 billion.
In June, the Trump Organization announced a $500 million deal with Saudi real estate developer Dar Global to build a Trump International hotel in Oman. In January 2011, when he was director of the FBI, Robert Mueller gave a speech to the Citizens Crime Commission in New York. He explained that globalization and the generation of fashion had replaced the nature of organized crime.
Instead of being regional networks with a transparent structure, he said, organized crime has an international character, fluid and sophisticated, with billions of dollars at stake. Its operators pollinate countries, religions and political affiliations, sharing only their greed. worry about ideology; They cared about money. They would do anything for a price.
These criminals “can be former members of the governments of the geographical region, of security or of the army,” he explained. “They are capitalists and businessmen. But they are also experienced criminals who move seamlessly between the licit and illicit worlds. And in some cases, those organizations are as forward-thinking as Fortune 500 companies. “
To capture foreign markets, Mueller said, those criminal companies “could infiltrate our businesses. They can supply logistics to hostile foreign powers. They would possibly attempt to manipulate the highest levels of government. Indeed, the so-called “iron triangles,” composed of organized criminals, corrupt officials and business leaders, pose a significant risk to national security.
In a new book titled “Autocracy, Inc. : The Dictators Who Want to Rule the World,” journalist Anne Applebaum brings this story into the present and examines how today’s autocrats act together to undermine democracy. She says that “the language of the democratic world, i. e. , rights, laws, the rule of law, justice, accountability [and] transparency. . . [is] negative for them,” especially since those are the words used through their internal conversations. opposition. ” So they will have to weaken those who use it and, if they can, discredit it. “
These people, Applebaum says, “believe that they should be powered, that they deserve it. “When they lose elections, “they come back for a second term and say, okay, this time I’m not going to make this mistake again, and. . . then they replace their electoral formula, or. . . They replace the Constitution, they replace the judicial formula. “Willing that they never lose.
Almost exactly one year ago, on August 1, 2023, a grand jury in Washington, D. C. charged former President Donald J. Trump with conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to disenfranchise the electorate, and conspiracy and attempted obstruction of an official proceeding. The fees arise from Trump’s attempt to overturn the effects of the 2020 election. A grand jury is made up of 23 citizens who compare evidence of criminal activity and present an indictment if 12 or more of them vote in favor.
The grand jury indicted Trump on “conspiracy to defraud the United States by dishonesty, fraud, and deception to harm, obstruct, and defeat the legitimate service of the federal government through which the effects of presidential elections are collected, counted, and qualified. “through the government”; “conspiracy to obstruct and obstruct through corruption the actions of the Congress of January 6 in which the effects of the presidential elections are computed and qualified”; and “conspiracy against the right to vote and to have the vote counted. “
“Each of those conspiracies,” the indictment states, “targeted a basic service of the federal government of the United States: the national procedure for collecting, counting, and certifying the results of presidential elections. “”This function of the federal government . . . it is fundamental to the democratic functioning of the United States and, as of 2021, has functioned peacefully and orderly for more than 130 years. »
The case of United States of America v. Donald J. Trump was randomly assigned to Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, who nominated President Obama in 2014 and ran by a vote of 95 to 0 in the Senate. Trump pleaded not guilty on August 1, 2014. 3.
His lawyers then continually delayed his pretrial motions until, on December 7, Trump asked the Court of Appeals in Washington, DC, whether he was immune from prosecution. Chutkan had to postpone his original trial date, set for March 4, 2024, and said he would not postpone it until the court had ruled on the factor of Trump’s immunity.
In February, the appeals court ruled that he was not immune. Trump appealed to the Supreme Court, which waited until July 1, 2024, to rule that he has broad immunity from prosecution for crimes committed during his official actions. On August 3, the Washington D. C. Court of Appeals sent the case back to Chutkan, almost exactly one year after it was first filed.
Heather Cox Richardson
Alex Brandon (AP)
Letters from an American is a newsletter written through Heather Cox Richardson and covering the history of current politics.