Al-Jazeera is reporting on two tweets from a man named Shadi Hamid. The first tweet is a reference to an Egyptian newspaper that identifies Barack Obama as a member of the International Muslim Brotherhood:

Shadi Hamid: Tweets claims from Egyptian newspaper that Obama a Muslim Brotherhood member

Nine minutes later, Hamid tweeted an image of the newspaper article, which features a photo of Obama (Walid will be doing additional research on this in the coming days):

Hamid: Egyptian newspaper says Obama Muslim Brotherhood leader

Did you catch that part about the “son of MB leader threatened Obama w- release of ‘papers'”? That is an apparent reference to Saad al-Shater, the son of former Muslim Brotherhood presidential candidate, Khairat al-Shater. We direct you to Addendum F of our “Ironclad” report on Egypt’s involvement in the Benghazi attack. Multiple reports from Arabic sources indicated that Saad had said his father had documents that were incredibly damaging to Barack Obama.

A couple of weeks later, Saad was arrested. A Fox News / AP report indicated that one of the reasons for the younger al-Shater’s arrest had to do with Obama:

It was not immediately clear why police detained el-Shater’s 23-year-old son. Officials only said Wednesday that police had arrested Saad el-Shater and that he had threatened to release documents allegedly showing ties between his father and U.S. President Barack Obama. Officials did not elaborate.

Based on what we know about Shadi Hamid, it’s worth asking why he would so willingly pass along information that is damaging to President Obama. The Al-Jazeera article identifies him as a “Director of Research at the Brookings Doha Center”.

That in itself is interesting because in June of this year, Hamid was listed as a participant in the U.S.-Islamic World Forum (US-IWF) in Doha, Qatar.

Hamid: Attended Muslim Brotherhood forum in June.

As we have reported previously, this forum was a who’s who of Muslim Brotherhood members, apparatchiks, and sympathizers. This list included:

Thomas Pickering: Chairman of the Accountability Review Board (ARB) that investigated security lapses in Benghazi prior to the 9/11/12 attack.
Nihad Awad: National Executive Director of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Muslim Brotherhood group in America.
Rashad Hussain: Obama administration’s envoy to Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) with Muslim Brotherhood ties.
John Esposito: Georgetown University Professor and strong Muslim Brotherhood apologist.
Dalia Mogahed: Muslim and close colleague of Esposito. Also a Muslim Brotherhood apologist.
Mohamed Magid: President of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), a Muslim Brotherhood group.
Mouaz Moustafa: Executive Director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force (SETF); works in D.C. and lobbies Congress on behalf of Syrian (Muslim Brotherhood) rebels.
Josh Rogin: Daily Beast writer who referred to Abedin’s familial ties to the Muslim Brotherhood as a “conspiracy theor(y)”.
Rabbi David Saperstein: A purveyor of interfaith dialogue who vouched for both Abedin and Magid.

Of course, the question that needs to be answered is: Why would someone like Hamid – an apparent Muslim Brotherhood sympathizer – choose to help push a narrative that Barack Obama is a member of the Muslim Brotherhood?

Is he trying to get out in front of Saad’s claims or is there another motive?

It is indeed interesting that just days after Khairat Al-Shater’s son – who allegedly claimed his father had information on Obama that would land the U.S. President in jail – is arrested, an apparent friendly to the Obama administration is tweeting out this article.

More to follow…

h/t GWP