Slighty related, but Senator Bob Menendez was just indicted for taking bribes from people connected with the Egyptian military [0]. Gotta say, the Egyptian intelligence services are definitely punching above their weight by regional power standards.
> Senator Bob Menendez was just indicted for taking bribes from people connected with the Egyptian military
At a federal level law/power is continually traded for cash/favors. Heck, DoJ itself gets deployed in response to lobbyist demands (eg:copyright enforcement).
From what I see this case was egregious and involved a non-favored foreign state. Maybe that's the bar at which DoJ begins to care about political ethics.
I worked on the Hill and that's not how it works. Yes, lobbying happens, but the what Menendez is indicted for goes well beyond anything a lobbyist would do legally. On top of that, foreign lobbyists need to formally register with the DoJ, which obviously didn't happen, but that's just the icing on the cake.
>> law/power is continually traded for cash/favors
> I worked on the Hill and that's not how it works.
Your are asserting that law/power is not continually traded for cash/favors. That's a pretty clear assertion and I appreciate it.
To follow, you would also assert that this chain doesn't exist in any meaningful way:
Major campaign donations are used by legislator -> Legislator benefiting from funds is critical to creation of law/regulation or to enactment of federal action taken that is favorable to donor -> Influential/lucrative, positions that benefit the legislator (or their interest) are made available to the legislator (during/after the elected term) by the donor.
recap: You are asserting that what I describe above is not occurring on an ongoing basis, correct?
If a legislator agrees with you, you want to keep them in the legislature, not retiring into industry.
Also, campaign donations are capped at like $5000 and most of what people think is corruption is them recklessly misreading the donation reports.
Similarly, it's Bernie and similar people who get the most donations these days because of ActBlue, and it doesn't help them win elections, because voters actually like the legislators you think are owned by corporations and actually vote for them.
Former Members Dick Armey. Tom Daschle. Tom Foley. Trent Lott.
Once, these politicos ranked among Congress' most powerful members. Today, they share another distinction: They're lobbyists (or "senior advisors" performing very similar work). And they're hardly alone. Dozens of former members of Congress now receive handsome compensation from corporations and special interests as they attempt to influence the very federal government in which they used to serve.
This is an incomplete list of just one body of lawmakers who went to work for just one industry. It's a very limited reference to the much, much larger whole.
>If a legislator agrees with you, you want to keep them
Although I included people tied to legislators (and their interests) you opted to limit your response to just legislators and even that seemed more platitude than substance.
> Also, campaign donations are capped at like $5000
So what? This falsely implies no donor can get more than $5k into any one campaign fund. Tossing it out there as primarily defining detail seems disingenuous. It omits non-cash contributions. It omits donations to traditional PACs, Super PACs, 527s, political parties, 501(c)4,5 & 6.
It omits all the possible avenues of getting money to candidates that someone with a CapHill political background almost certainly knows.
It does dovetail nicely with an alternate narrative about revolving doors not existing, however.
> This is an incomplete list of just one body of lawmakers who went to work for just one industry. It's a very limited reference to the much, much larger whole.
Those people are a combination of 1. really old and 2. lost an election. You can't keep people around forever, even if you might want to. (It also implies they're effective as lobbyists, which I don't think is necessarily true.)
> This falsely implies no donor can get more than $5k into any one campaign fund.
Those other things aren't the campaign fund, they're largely separate funds running separate campaigns and not controlled by the candidate. So they can't be used to directly pay the candidate.
Also, as I said, 1. money doesn't actually win elections and 2. if it did, it's Bernie and fellow non-corporate-Dem candidates who'd actually be winning, because small donor fundraising is more effective than this stuff is.
There are some straight up bribery scandals, but I think Bob Menendez is an exception that proves the rule and is going to lose his office based on his literal piles of gold bars bribery.
It is, however, actually the case with SCOTUS judges that they straight up take bribes and nobody can stop them.
The WTO sets the MFN list and Egypt isn't on it so strictly speaking you aren't correct.
Besides incurring WTO favor, the US also bestows it's own preferential treatments to those same nations. Egypt has long received many of those preferences so you're right in the ways that are most relevant.
That said, I wouldn't place Egypt on US's BFFs! Top partners in crime list - the one that includes 5/8 eyes nations and Israel.
From the Google disclosure I can't tell what Egypt has to do with this though. Intellexa is a Greek firm founded by an ex-IDF (aka Israeli) guy. In general, while Egypt has definitely been caught using tech like this, it rarely has the sophistication to develop it itself.
[0] - https://www.politico.com/news/2023/09/22/egypt-guns-money-me...