Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) said Tuesday night that he believes Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate in Michigan, is a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, and warned that El-Sayed could pass classified intelligence to the group if elected.
"I believe this man is Muslim Brotherhood," Cruz said in an interview on Fox News' "Hannity."
Cruz accused El-Sayed of having "flat-out lied" during a recent appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press," where El-Sayed denied that he or his family had any connection to the Islamist movement. Cruz said the evidence of those ties was overwhelming.
The Texas senator pointed to op-eds El-Sayed wrote during Egypt's 2011 uprising that, according to Cruz, defended the Muslim Brotherhood, as well as a 2012 open letter El-Sayed signed supporting the government of Mohamed Morsi, the Brotherhood figure who served briefly as Egypt's president before being ousted in 2013. Cruz also cited social media posts by El-Sayed's half-sister, Eman Abdelhadi, including a 2012 post describing their mother's activism in the Muslim Brotherhood as a college student in Egypt in the early 1970s.
Cruz further noted that El-Sayed's father-in-law, Tayeb Jukaku, sits on the board of the Islamic Society of North America, which was named an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation case, the largest terror-financing prosecution in U.S. history, involving the funneling of money to Hamas.
"El-Sayed is not complicated; he hates Israel, he hates Jews," Cruz said.
Cruz argued that the stakes extend to national security. Because senators are not subject to a security clearance process, he said, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer could place El-Sayed on the Senate Intelligence Committee, giving him access to the most sensitive classified material. Cruz said that would create an unacceptably high risk to American service members and covert intelligence assets.
