Rep. Keith Ellison wants Rep. Michele Bachmann and four other representatives to back up claims they made in calling for investigations into the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood within five federal agencies.
In a letter to Bachmann dated today that was obtained by the St. Cloud Times, Ellison calls on Bachmann and her cosigners to produce a list of sources for information included in their letters calling for the probe.
Ellison asks specifically for Bachmann to substantiate information about individuals named in the letters to the federal agencies, including Huma Abedin, a deputy chief of staff to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
One of the Bachmann letters says three members of Abedin’s family have ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, an international Islamist movement whose candidate, Mohamed Morsi, was recently elected president of Egypt. The letter also notes that Abedin’s position affords her access to Clinton, and claims the State Department has taken recent actions “that have been enormously favorable to the Muslim Brotherhood and its interests.”
Ellison says Bachmann needs to produce more evidence or retract her comments about Abedin and others people and organizations named in the letters.
“If there is not credible, substantial evidence for your allegations, I sincerely hope that you will publicly clear their names,” Ellison writes.
Bachmann, R-Stillwater, wrote the letters last month to the departments of Defense, Homeland Security, Justice, State and the Office of Director of National Intelligence. They ask inspectors general in those agencies to investigate whether the Brotherhood is exerting influence within them.
The letters were cosigned by Reps. Trent Franks, R-Ariz., Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, Thomas Rooney, R-Fla., and Lynn Westmoreland, R-Ga.
In Ellison’s letter, the Minneapolis DFLer asks Bachmann to provide more evidence that the Islamic Society of North America, an umbrella association of Muslim groups in the U.S. and Canada, is “the largest Muslim Brotherhood front in America.”
Ellison also sharply criticizes the founder of a think tank cited in the letters. The think tank, the Center for Security Policy, was founded by Frank Gaffney, a conservative columnist, radio host and former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense.
Ellison, who in 2006 became the first Muslim elected to the U.S. Congress, writes that Gaffney “has a long history of making unsubstantiated anti-Muslim allegations.”
Ellison cites Gaffney’s past battles with high-profile Republicans, including Gaffney’s criticism of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie for appointing a Muslim judge and his comments that anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist is “enabling and empowering Muslim Brotherhood influence operations against our movement and our country.”
The Muslim Brotherhood is an international movement founded in Egypt which, according to the Council on Foreign Relations, “aims to establish an Islamic state based on sharia” in Egypt and other Middle Eastern nations.
The group has a history of militarism but is believed to have shifted its Egyptian operations into politics and away from violence in recent decades, according to the council. Some allege members of the Brotherhood have ties to Hamas, the Palestinian militant group listed as a terrorist organization by the U.S. government.