the bribery and Corruption charges against us Senator Bob Menendez include allegations that he used his influence on Capitol Hill to benefit the Egyptian government those charges have brought into Focus the billions in funding that the US provides to Egypt each year Ranna vosi sat down with former Congressman Tom malinowski who was co-chair of the Egypt human rights caucus in the house he gave his perspective on the impact of these allegations and how our government should handle its support of Egypt moving forward well thanks for joining me I I appreciate your time on this you know the details regarding Egypt may not have been the sexiest part of the indictment given the gold bars and cash uh but you were the house co-chair of Egypt human rights of the Egypt human rights caucus at the time allegedly that these meetings um and Arrangements were happening what struck you when you read the indictment you know Egypt is the number two recipient of foreign aid or was the number two recipient of foreign aid uh in the world uh $1.3 billion doll in military aid from the United States every year and it's a brutal corrupt dictatorship um I always felt that we don't get a great deal from this relationship that we have with the generals who run Egypt and and when I was in the house with a lot of other of my colleagues bipartisan we we tried to put restrictions on that money and otherwise hold the Egyptian government accountable so knowing now that number one the Egyptians may have been running a an influence operation targeting the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and that apparently the chairman of the committee was kind of running this side deal with them at the time that's really really troubling I mean Senator Menendez would have been in on those negotiations would he not regarding a Aid or withholding Aid Senator Mendez as the chairman of the foreign uh Relations Committee would have had um the ability single-handedly to block Aid to Egypt and to other countries and of course tremendous influence on on other decisions on legislation that would have been moving or not moving so um look I I don't know exactly what role he played at all times behind the scenes I can't tell you that the decisions that he made were influenced by these extracurricular activities that were described in the indictment but it does cast a cloud of Suspicion on the decisions that the Senate was making at the time does it also though do away with this notion that Egypt hasn't really um seen uh us assistance as a point of Leverage because it seems as though as alleged in the indictment that in fact uh this military aid and this other uh us assistance was quite valuable to them it's extremely valuable to them again 1.3 billion that's a lot of money uh particularly in a smaller country like Egypt and they've been getting it for decades they they see it as an entitlement uh which I think is a problem they don't do very much for us in exchange for this money and there have been many efforts led by human rights advocates in the United States to try to cut or restrict that Aid so having a powerful member of the Senate uh having their backs if that's indeed what happened here would be a very good get for them we've all come together to say senator Mendez should resign I think it speaks well of the democratic party I think it shows that we have at least one normal healthy political party in America one that will hold its own members accountable when um they violate the the standards the principles that uh that our party holds dear all right former Congressman Tom malinowski thanks for joining me thank you [music]