This story is laced with multiple levels of irony. First of all, if the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) had a daily mantra, it’d be that anyone who raises questions about its agenda must be Islamophobic. Enter David Yerushalmi, a Jewish attorney whom Mother Jones refers to as a ‘White Supremacist’ who is leading a right-wing ‘Anti-Sharia Crusade’. CAIR is quoted by MJ as saying that an organization Yerushalmi founded is a ‘hate group’.
Fast forward to this month; Yerushalmi and his Law Center filed a legal brief in a lawsuit against CAIR on behalf of five defendants who are alleging that CAIR has committed fraud.
Via Right Side News:
The brief and supporting evidence were filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in two companion cases, Saiyed v. CAIR and Lopez v. CAIR, in which David Yerushalmi is lead counsel. The brief and supporting evidence overwhelmingly demonstrate that CAIR was involved in a massive criminal fraud and cover-up that injured numerous client-victims who had looked to CAIR for legal assistance, yet the CAIR “attorney” allegedly handling their cases was in fact not an attorney.
Yerushalmi, who is also Co-Founder and Senior Counsel of AFLC, commented, “The evidence has long suggested that CAIR is an organization set up by the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas to further its aims of stealth Jihad in the United States,” referring to the fact that CAIR was named by the federal government as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism financing trial. “According to the facts that are carefully laid out in our legal brief and fully supported by the record evidence,” Yerushalmi explained, “CAIR has engaged in a massive criminal fraud in which numerous CAIR clients have been victimized, and because of the CAIR cover-up many still don’t realize it. The fact that CAIR has victimized Muslims and non-Muslims alike demonstrates that it is only looking out for itself and its ongoing efforts to bilk donors out of millions of dollars of charitable donations thinking they are supporting a legitimate organization.”
Well, how about the veracity of the claims made in Yerushalmi’s legal brief?
The supporting evidence, which was compiled after more than a year and a half of contentious discovery that involved numerous document requests, motions to compel the production of documents that CAIR was concealing, and multiple depositions of high-ranking CAIR officials, shows that Morris Days, the “Resident Attorney” and “Civil Rights Manager” at the now defunct CAIR-MD/VA chapter in Herndon, Virginia, was in fact not an attorney and that he failed to provide legal services for clients who came to CAIR for legal representation.
Well now, it that’s true, it smacks of fraud. Then again, perhaps Yerushalmi’s anti-Islamic bigotry is blinding him to the facts and he’s just unfairly targeting CAIR because it’s a Muslim group, right?
Uh, well… How ’bout some of that irony now? Three of the five plaintiffs represented by the right-wing, Islamophobic, bigoted, anti-Sharia crusader Yerushalmi are… Muslims:
The evidence also shows that CAIR knew of this fraud and purposefully conspired with Days to keep the CAIR clients from discovering that their legal matters were being mishandled or not handled at all. While Yerushalmi and AFLC represent the five plaintiffs in these two lawsuits, three of whom are Muslim Americans, according to CAIR’s internal documents, there were many more victims of the CAIR fraud scheme.
Just so we have this straight before moving on. Yerushalmi, a Jew whom CAIR has targeted as an anti-Islamic bigot, is representing Muslims in a lawsuit against CAIR. Paging CNN… Got any interest in this story yet?
CAIR’s attempts at a defense relative to Days are indeed curious:
As set forth in the court filings, CAIR knew or should have known that Days was not a lawyer when it hired him. But, like many organizations accused of wrongdoing, things got worse when CAIR officials were confronted with clear evidence of Days’ fraudulent conduct. Rather than come clean and attempt to rectify past wrongs, CAIR conspired with Days to conceal and further the fraud. To this end, CAIR officials purposefully concealed the truth about Days from the clients, law enforcement, and the media. When CAIR did receive calls from irate clients about Days’ failure to provide competent legal services, CAIR fraudulently deceived them about Days’ relationship with CAIR, suggesting that he was never actually employed by CAIR.
More irony? CNN infamously accused Walid of fraud in 2011 without any evidence, at the behest of CAIR, according to an unimpeachable source who declined to be named.
Remember this?
CNN’s silence in light of these latest developments involving CAIR is telling when coupled with what we have been told is CAIR’s complicity in the hatchet job done on Walid. It would seem much easier to investigate Yerushalmi’s charges while sticking a microphone in the faces of Ibrahim Hooper and Nihad Awad than it would be to fly to Jerusalem and Bethlehem for the purpose of finding a bank that no longer exists and getting prison records Israel will not relinquish.
There’s another aspect to this worth considering and it has to do with CAIR’s involvement in lawsuits as defendants instead of as plaintiffs. In 2004, CAIR filed a lawsuit against Andrew Whitehead, the proprietor of the Anti-CAIR website, for posts he made that were critical of the group. Ultimately, the case was dismissed after Whitehead’s attorney made discovery requests. It is believed that CAIR dropped its suit because it didn’t want to go through discovery, allegedly because of what it would reveal about the group.
What’s that saying about the best defense is a good offense?