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Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed is facing renewed scrutiny from Republican critics over his mother’s questioning by federal investigators more than two decades ago as part of an investigation into an Islamic charity where she worked.
El-Sayed’s Republican opponent, former Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., accused the Democratic candidate of misleading Michigan voters about his views on the Muslim Brotherhood, pointing to reported associations involving members of El-Sayed’s family.
El-Sayed previously told Fox News that he has “never been” and will “never be” a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. Fox News Digital is not aware of any direct ties between El-Sayed and the organization.
El-Sayed’s campaign did not respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
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“Michiganders cannot trust Abdul El-Sayed. He lies about his physician credentials, his family life, and about how much his disastrous policies will cost Michigan’s families,” a spokesperson for Rogers told Fox News Digital. “Tell the truth, Abdul.”
El-Sayed has not publicly addressed the details of his mother’s questioning by federal investigators or the raid on the offices of the Islamic charity where she worked since the Washington Free Beacon resurfaced the reports last month.
Federal authorities raided the Missouri office of the Islamic American Relief Agency (IARA), where El-Sayed’s mother, Fatten Elkomy, worked in 2004, according to the Columbia Daily Tribune. The newspaper reported that federal agents questioned Elkomy for approximately three hours during the investigation.
In 2008, IARA was shut down by the federal government in connection with alleged violations of federal sanctions and terrorism-related financing restrictions, including allegations involving funding for Islamic militants in Afghanistan and terrorist groups such as the Taliban and al Qaeda.
Elkomy was not charged in connection with the investigation, according to multiple reports. Fox News Digital has found no evidence that she facilitated transfers of funds to terrorist organizations.
The U.S. Treasury Department did not respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment about the government’s findings concerning IARA’s alleged connections to the Muslim Brotherhood or why Elkomy was questioned by federal investigators.
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During his Senate campaign, El-Sayed has sought to distance himself from his mother’s reported political associations, emphasizing that she did not raise him.
El-Sayed was raised in Michigan by his father and stepmother after his parents divorced when he was 3.
“I have no ties. We have no ties,” El-Sayed told NBC’s Tom Llamas in October. “I have never had these conversations with my mother, I wasn’t raised by my mother.”
The scrutiny of El-Sayed extended to the candidate’s fundraisers and campaign events with Islamic leaders, some of whom have reported ties to the Muslim Brotherhood or have been accused of making antisemitic or hateful remarks. The controversy has also included El-Sayed’s campaign appearances with left-wing streamer Hasan Piker.
His former Democratic primary opponent, Rep. Haley Stevens, D-Mich., endorsed Rogers on Sunday, citing concerns about El-Sayed’s approach to the safety of Michigan’s Jewish community and his repeated campaign appearances with Piker, who previously said, “America deserved 9/11.”
“I don’t like a democratic nominee for U.S. senate campaigning and standing with someone who’s saying that America deserved 9/11,” Stevens said during a CNN interview Sunday night.
El-Sayed declined to comment on Piker’s remarks during an April interview with POLITICO but later disavowed them during an August appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
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Amy Mek, founder of the RAIR Foundation, a nonprofit organization focused on investigating groups it identifies as connected to terrorism, echoed Rogers’ concerns about national security and El-Sayed’s silence in a statement to Fox News Digital.
Mek, who previously testified before Congress about terrorism-related threats in the United States, told Fox News Digital that she believes El-Sayed’s silence on his mother’s questioning reflects political considerations.
She also pointed to social media posts by El-Sayed’s half-sister, Eman Abdelhadi, who wrote on X in 2012 that members of their family have “long been” members of the Muslim Brotherhood.
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In a separate 2013 post that remains publicly available on her account, Abdelhadi said she was “praying for all my family that supports the #MB.”
Abdelhadi later recalled her family’s fear of FBI surveillance in a 2016 article titled, “Queer, Muslim, and Unwelcome at the ‘New Stonewall.'”
El-Sayed has not publicly addressed his half-sister’s statements in detail but called the tweets “not serious” during his NBC interview, accusing Llamas of “using hearsay evidence from a tweet” to question him about his family’s reported connections to the Muslim Brotherhood.
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