Democrats are claiming they are one big happy family.
But there is a quiet civil war raging inside the party.
And Chuck Schumer hit Abdul El-Sayed like a freight train with this sucker punch.
Chuck Schumer Throws El-Sayed Under the Bus
Chuck Schumer and AIPAC dumped $60 million in the Michigan Democrat Senate primary to defeat Abdul El-Sayed, believing him to be unelectable.
Schumer’s main disagreement with El-Sayed was over Israel, as El-Sayed wouldn’t say Israel had a right to exist and supported banning weapons shipments to Israel.\
After El-Sayed won the primary, the two tried to make up.
“I think he makes an effort to fight antisemitism even though his views on Israel are much different than mine,” Schumer told reporters.
“Though Senator Schumer and I may have deep disagreement on a number of important issues, we both understand how critical it is to win Michigan and defeat Mike Rogers,” a statement from El-Sayed to The Washington Post read. “I appreciate his pragmatism.”
Democrats need to flip four Republican seats to install Schumer as majority leader.
Michigan is a potential Republican pickup as Democrat incumbent Gary Peters retired.
Schumer’s fears about El-Sayed’s electability came true when the first major post-primary poll showed Republican Mike Rogers leading El-Sayed 51-47.
In response to the poll, Schumer claimed Michigan wasn’t crucial to the Democrats’ path to the majority, a statement that raised eyebrows as it was interpreted as Schumer writing off El-Sayed as a loser.
“A path to winning back the Senate clearly goes through Michigan, but we have a whole bunch of different paths,” Schumer stated.
El-Sayed’s Latest Scandal
Republicans are dumping a mountain of opposition research on El-Sayed, the exact scenario Schumer sought to avoid when he tried to defeat El-Sayed in the primary.
El-Sayed is now facing questions about his mother working for a charity that the Treasury Department accused of funding Osama bin Laden.
“El-Sayed’s birth mother, Fatten Fathy Elkomy, worked for the Islamic American Relief Agency (IARA) from 1999 until at least 2004, when the US Department of the Treasury linked the group to terrorism,” the New York Post reported.
“Information available to the U.S. shows that the overseas branches IARA provided hundreds of thousands of dollars to UBL in 1999,” the Treasury Department wrote in 2004 of the group’s potential links to bin Laden.
The organization also faced allegations of funding Hamas, the Taliban, and terrorism in Iraq,
“The global group also allegedly supported Hamas and other terrorist groups like the Taliban fighters.
IARA-US was charged in March 2007 by the Department of Justice for illegally transferring funds to Iraq,” the New York Post reported.
Prosecutors charged the Islamic American Relief Agency with illegally funneling money to Iraq, and the group folded in 2016.
“But the IARA-USA pleaded guilty to conspiring to violate sanctions by illegally funneling nearly $1.4 million to Iraq and agreed to dissolve in 2016,” the Post report went on to read.
Even Barack Obama prosecutors bragged that the group was a “specially designated global terrorist.”
“The plea agreement acknowledges that, due to its designation as a specially designated global terrorist and the subsequent blocking of all its property, IARA has no funds readily available to it to pay any fine,” the US Attorney’s Office of the Western District of Missouri wrote in a July 20, 2016 press release.
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