Diana West, a columnist whose articles appear in the Washington Examiner, wrote a piece about Huma Abedin, as well as the concerns expressed by Reps. Bachmann, Franks, Gohmert, Rooney, and Westmoreland about Abedin’s background and access to State secrets as Hillary Clinton’s Deputy Chief of Staff.
Her editor (David Freddoso) refused to publish it and issued a rather weak explanation as to why.
From West’s website (h/t Cliff):
Here’s how Examiner editorial page editor David Freddoso explained why the column didn’t appear:
“We opted not to use it this week. We also passed over other syndicated columnists’ offerings about the insinuations against Huma Abedin. The reason is simply that there is no hint of proof that she has done anything improper.”
Regular readers to our site – which apparently don’t include Freddoso – know that West is right and her editor is very, very wrong, primarily because he’s avoiding the argument put forth by Bachmann, et. al. and has, instead, decided to build a straw man to justify his ill-advised decision. Freddoso is either in denial or he is not informed. As an editor, there’s no excuse for either.
Moreover, Freddoso risks leaving his book, The Case Against Barack Obama: The Unlikely Rise and Unexamined Agenda of the Media’s Favorite Candidate, open to very legitimate charges of hypocrisy. At about the time that book was released in 2008, the author wrote the following in an article for National Review about why Obama’s relationship with Bill Ayers mattered:
One example is the defense of Obama’s relationship to William Ayers and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn — two unrepentant former members of the domestic left-wing terror movement known as the Weathermen.
Amazingly, instead of disowning Ayers — which would make a lot more sense — Obama’s rebuttal document defends the man who implicated himself in terror bombings in his own 2001 memoir, Fugitive Days. The document calls it a “lie” that Ayers is an “unrepentant domestic terrorist” and that “the impression of Ayers’s good citizenship is incorrect.” It attempts, with endorsements from Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley and two university professors, to make the case that Ayers is really a model citizen.
Mr. Freddoso, do you not seem interested in learning why Huma Abedin hasn’t disowned the Muslim Brotherhood affiliations of her family?
We have documented that Huma Abedin has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood through her father, her mother (leader in the Muslim Sisterhood), and her brother, who served as a fellow at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies, when the Brotherhood’s spiritual leader Yusuf Al-Qaradawi was on the Board. So, Mr. Freddoso, why does Obama’s relationship with Ayers matter and Huma’s relationship with Muslim Brotherhood members not?
A little later in that piece, Freddoso wrote the following:
It would be irresponsible and wrong to assert that Sen. Obama is somehow “guilty by association” of anything Ayers or Dohrn have done, or that he has any sympathy toward terrorism. He does not. Obama was only a child when these events occurred.
But the senator’s choice to associate with domestic terrorists evinces an appalling lack of personal judgment that is part of a broad pattern in his adult life.
Again, Huma Abedin has chosen to associate with several people – evidenced by her many years on the Board of the Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs – which is very well connected to the Muslim Brotherhood. Again, Mr. Freddoso, why doesn’t that matter?
In any event, here’s the West column that didn’t appear on the Examiner’s site; she’s posted it to her own:
Outing the Muslim Brotherhood
Be alarmed: The U.S. government continues to be “advised by organizations and individuals that the U.S. government itself has identified in federal courts as fronts for the international Muslim Brotherhood.”
So wrote Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., in a lengthy, heavily footnoted answer to a query last week from Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn. He was seeking more information about the reasons Bachmann plus four other House Republicans – Louis Gohmert (Texas), Trent Franks (Ariz.), Lynn Westmoreland (Ga.) and Thomas Rooney (Fla.) – requested Inspector General investigations into “potential Muslim Brotherhood infiltration” of the government. (See all of the letters here.)
Yes, that would be the same Muslim Brotherhood whose leaders are sweeping to power in the Middle East – most recently in Egypt. There, the new president, Mohamed Morsi, fired up voters this spring by declaring: “The Koran is our constitution. The Prophet Muhammad is our leader. Jihad is our path. And death for the sake of Allah is our most lofty aspiration.” That, by the way, is the Muslim Brotherhood’s motto.
Brotherhood-linked groups in the U.S. still take a low-key approach, at least publicly. Thanks to the FBI discovery of a key Muslim Brotherhood document, we know what they’re up to, even who some of them are. The document, entered into evidence during the landmark Holy Land Foundation terrorism finance trial, presents the Brotherhood plan for “civilization-jihad” against the U.S. It describes the group’s “grand jihad” to destroy “the Western civilization from within … so that it is eliminated and (Islam) is made victorious over all religions.” Further, it declares Brotherhood support for “the global Islamic state wherever it is.” It also lists 29 of “our organization and the organizations of our friends” – i.e., front groups. Among them are such well-known Islamic organizations as the Islamic Society of North America, or ISNA, and the Council on American Islamic Relations, or CAIR, both of which remain unindicted co-conspirators.
What is beyond shocking – beyond reason – is that such anti-American Brotherhood-linked groups and individuals have variously engaged, particularly since 9/11, with the U.S. government. Is it a coincidence that U.S. policy has since become receptive to, if not openly supportive of the Muslim Brotherhood? This is the serious question these House Republicans want answered.
“Influence” can be an intangible thing, but sometimes there are signs. For example, someone, something, somehow managed to convince Director of National Intelligence James Clapper to testify before the House Intelligence Committee in 2011 that the Muslim Brotherhood was a “largely secular organization” without “an overarching agenda.”
This is a laughable statement – unless spoken in earnest by the DNI. Then the question becomes: Is it possible that in Clapper’s chain of information there is, in fact, disinformation? Other questions Bachmann and her colleagues have concern the Homeland Security Department, where, for example, Mohamed Magid, head of ISNA, the largest Brotherhood front group, according to the U.S. government itself, also serves as a member of Homeland Security’s Countering Violent Extremism Working Group.
Are there national security implications in the influence of Brotherhood front groups on Justice Department and FBI policies on terrorism? Bachmann & Co. want to find out. How about the ongoing relationship between domestic Brotherhood front groups and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, or OIC? As Bachmann notes, this foreign bloc of 57 Muslim nations “claims jurisdiction over Muslims in non-Muslim lands, defines human rights as Shariah, and advocates that Muslims not assimilate into the cultures of non-Muslims.” What of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s decision to team up with the OIC to pass a U.N. resolution to restrict free speech deemed to be “defamation” of Islam? Such an effort flouts the First Amendment and also reverses U.S. policy. Could malign influence be a factor?
These five Republicans have also expressed concern over media reports that Clinton’s longtime top aide Huma Abedin has family relations (late father, mother, brother) with ties to Muslim Brotherhood groups. Her mother, for example, reportedly belongs to the Muslim Sisterhood, a group the new first lady of Egypt also reportedly belongs to. Are such reports true? Do they have security implications? These are questions Americans have a right to know.