US lawmakers getting blowback for claims of Muslim government infiltration
Michele Bachman and four other Republicans are being condemned by some of their own party leaders for ‘unwarranted and unfounded attack’
WASHINGTON — The only Jewish Republican member of the US House of Representatives is refusing to join many of his colleagues in condemning Rep. Michele Bachman (R-Minn.) and four other GOP lawmakers for letters they wrote to federal agencies asking for an investigation into links between senior government officials and the Muslim Brotherhood.
In a television interview, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) was asked if Bachmann was “out of line” for suggesting that State Department official Huma Abedin is part of a Muslim Brotherhood conspiracy to infiltrate the American government.
“If you read some of the reports that have covered the story, I think that her concern was about the security of the country,” Cantor said. “So that’s all I know.”
Abedin is a long-time aide to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the wife of former Rep. Anthony Weiner, who is Jewish and staunchly pro-Israel.
‘I think that her concern was about the security of the country’
Cantor’s hedging is in marked contrast to the nearly universal condemnation of the five Republican co-signers by other Republicans, Democrats, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), and at least 42 religious and secular organizations organized under a group called Interfaith Alliance.
In addition to Bachmann, the letters were signed by Reps. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas), Trent Franks (R-Ariz.), Thomas Rooney (R-Fla.), and Lynn Westmoreland (R-Ga.).
The ADL said, “Absent clear evidence of direct ties between these individuals and the Muslim Brotherhood, such allegations foment fear and cast the kind of suspicion that undermines rather than advances American counterterrorism efforts.”
The strongest attack on erstwhile Republican presidential candidate Bachmann and her four colleagues came from Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who took to the Senate floor to excoriate the letter as “nothing less than an unwarranted and unfounded attack on an honorable woman, a dedicated American and a loyal public servant.”
“The letter alleges that three members of Huma’s family are ‘connected to Muslim Brotherhood operatives and/or organizations. Never mind that one of those individuals, Huma’s father, passed away two decades ago. The letter and the report offer not one instance of an action, a decision or a public position that Huma has taken while at the State Department that would lend credence to the charge that she is promoting anti-American activities within our government.”
McCain added that the attacks on Huma “have no logic, no basis, and no merit.”
“Ultimately, what is at stake in this matter is larger even than the reputation of one person. This is about who we are as a nation, and who we still aspire to be. When anyone, not least a member of Congress, launches specious and degrading attacks against fellow Americans on the basis of nothing more than fear of who they are and ignorance of what they stand for, it defames the spirit of our nation, and we all grow poorer because of it.”
Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-Texas) added to the chorus of condemnation by describing the letters as “pretty dangerous.”
‘Such allegations foment fear and cast the kind of suspicion that undermines rather than advances American counterterrorism efforts’ — ADL
Earlier in the week, Gohmert called his critics “numb nuts.” And Bachmann maintains that her concerns have been “distorted.”
The source of the letters appears to be Frank Gaffney, one of the country’s most prominent anti-Muslim conspiracy theorists, who is cited in each of the missives. Gaffney is a former Reagan-era defense official and head of the Center for Security Policy, a Washington, DC think tank that warns that America is facing a “civilizational jihad.”
On its website, the group calls the Muslim Brotherhood the “prime mover” behind this jihad, which it defines as a “toxic danger, a stealthy and pre-violent form of warfare aimed at destroying our constitutional form of democratic government and free society.”
