House Democrats — borrowing a page from their Republican colleagues — say they are launching an investigation into allegations that President Trump received a $10 million bribe from the Egyptian government in 2016, and that the Department of Justice covered it up at the time. The probe was announced by the top Democrat on the Oversight Committee, Congressman Jamie Raskin. 

The allegation stems from a report in the Washington Post that American intelligence officials received information that Trump shortly before the 2016 election was given the $10 million in cash, which was then injected into the campaign. Shortly after Trump met with President El-Sisi of Egypt in September 2016, the then-candidate announced he would be contributing $10 million of his own money to the election effort. 

“A recent report from the Washington Post has created renewed suspicion that you collected a $10 million cash bribe from Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi. … Surely you would agree that the American people deserve to know whether a former president — and a current candidate for president — took an illegal campaign contribution from a brutal foreign dictator,” Mr. Raskin wrote to the former president. He notes that in 2017, nearly $10 million was withdrawn by Egyptian intelligence services from a state-affiliated bank. 

He and the top Democrat on one of the panel’s subcommittees are demanding that Trump hand over all “information and documents necessary” to look into the allegations. 

Mr. Raskin says that it is possible Trump and his officials at the justice department moved to shut down any investigation into the allegations, which were passed from the intelligence community to law enforcement investigators. The ranking member writes that the United States attorney for the District of Columbia at the time, Jessie Liu, was prepared to issue subpoenas as part of the investigation, but then changed her mind after meeting with Trump’s attorney general, William Barr.

Just months later, Ms. Liu was forced out of government by the Trump administration after being labeled insufficiently loyal to the 45th president. Specifically, according to Axios, administration officials were angry that she failed to indict a former deputy director of the FBI, Andrew McCabe. 

“The serious and specific allegations raised by the Washington Post’s report — both that you received a $10 million cash bribe from Egypt’s President and that your political appointees at the DOJ blocked an ongoing investigation into this potential bribe — now compel our Committee to seek more information to clear this matter up,” Mr. Raskin writes to Trump. 

Mr. Raskin says that the Egyptian government was heavily invested in Trump because he was seen as more likely to have a favorable view of Mr. El-Sisi, who seized power in a military coup after the Arab Spring. Mr. Raskin points out that Trump released nearly $200 million in military aid to Egypt even though its government had been accused of human rights abuses. 

Egypt has already been embroiled in one Washington bribery scandal over the last several months, with the indictment and conviction of Senator Menendez. The longtime New Jersey politician was found guilty by a Manhattan jury in July of taking bribes in the form of gold bars, cash, and a luxury car in exchange for favorable treatment of Mr. El-Sisi’s government from his perch as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. 

The Oversight Committee has become the go-to panel for corruption investigations over the last two years, with Republicans on the committee using their subpoena power to uncover what they said was at least $20 million being sent to members of President Biden’s family from foreign individuals and business interests.

The panel also has been leading an impeachment probe into Mr. Biden since September 2023. The inquiry has mostly petered out after the committee chairman, Congressman James Comer, issued criminal referrals to the justice department for what he called the Biden family’s “influence-peddling scheme.”