WASHINGTON — The new chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is weighing whether to pause some military aid to Egypt after his predecessor, Sen. Bob Menendez, was charged with using his office to secretly aid the Egyptian government.
Sen. Ben Cardin, a Democrat from Maryland, said Thursday he was “looking at [his] options” regarding $235 million in security assistance greenlit by Secretary of State Antony Blinken earlier this month. As Menendez’s replacement on the Senate Foreign Relations panel, Cardin has the authority to place a hold on certain foreign military sales and funding.
Cardin, who faces a Sept. 30 deadline to make a decision, told reporters during a roundtable briefing he expects to have one by Friday following meetings with the Biden administration and other lawmakers.
At $1.3 billion each year, Egypt ranks behind only Israel as the second-largest recipient of US military assistance. Congress since 2014 has put human rights-related conditions on a fraction of that aid to incentivize Egypt’s current president, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, to change course amid Cairo's dismal record on human rights, which includes the jailing of tens of thousands of political prisoners and the use of pretrial detention.
