Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed built his campaign on getting "money out of politics", but federal records show he took more than $115,000 from dozens of individuals tied to an organization with alleged links to Hamas.
A Fox News Digital review of Federal Election Commission filings identified at least 41 donors to El-Sayed's campaign who either work for, formerly worked for, or have held leadership positions with the Council on American-Islamic Relations. The donors span at least nine states, California, Arizona, Texas, Georgia, Washington, Illinois, Minnesota, Ohio, and Michigan, and include members of CAIR's national board, chapter-level governance boards, and its executive director.
El-Sayed defeated Democratic Rep. Haley Stevens in the Michigan Senate primary Tuesday night, in a race that was much closer than most observers expected. He will face Republican Mike Rogers in the November general election. The donation trail, and the candidate's broader associations, now become a general-election liability that Rogers can exploit in a state both parties consider a must-win.
The FEC records show donations from CAIR national Board Chair Manal Fakhoury, national Board Treasurer Eyas Abdeen, and national Vice Chair Emad Sabbah. Former CAIR National Board Chair Roula Allouch also contributed. On the chapter level, donors included CAIR-California Governance Board Chair Asaad Traina, Treasurer Rubina Alvi, and board members Atef Ibrahim and Dina Ezzeddine.
CAIR-Michigan board member Muzammil Ahmed contributed $11,600 to the campaign, one of the largest individual sums identified in the review.
Among the most notable names on the donor list is CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad, who appears in FEC filings under the name "Nehad Hammad." Awad drew national condemnation after he said he was "happy" to see Hamas break out of Gaza on October 7, 2023, and argued that Israel "does not have the right to self-defense" as an occupying power. He later published a December 2023 editorial in Religion News Service in which he said he agreed with his organization's condemnation of attacks on civilians.
Fox News Digital reached out to the El-Sayed campaign for comment. No response was reported.
CAIR presents itself as a Muslim civil rights organization and denies allegations of ties to terrorism. But the group carries a long trail of formal government designations that no press release can erase.
In 2007, federal prosecutors named CAIR an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation case, the largest terrorism financing prosecution in American history. CAIR was never charged with a crime in connection with that case. In 2014, the United Arab Emirates designated CAIR a terrorist organization, a move widely understood to stem from the UAE's view that CAIR has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. Florida and Texas have also formally designated or labeled CAIR a terrorist organization.
CAIR has pushed back against these characterizations. In a 2009 statement posted on its website, the organization said:
"We unequivocally condemn all acts of terrorism, whether carried out by al-Qa'ida, the Real IRA, FARC, Hamas, ETA, or any other group designated by the US Department of State as a 'Foreign Terrorist Organization.'"
A separate CAIR memorandum stated the group has "repeatedly condemned antisemitism throughout our 30 years of existence" and "for decades" condemned terrorist attacks by Hamas and other designated terrorist groups. CAIR's national board also issued a statement condemning antisemitism and the October 7 attacks.
Those written statements sit uneasily beside Awad's own words. The executive director's public expression of happiness at Hamas's breakout from Gaza came after three decades of official organizational denials, and it landed months before some of these same CAIR-affiliated officials wrote checks to El-Sayed's campaign.
The CAIR donor network extends into El-Sayed's own family. His father-in-law, Jukaku Tayeb, is a CAIR-Michigan board member and one of the largest financial backers of the super PAC supporting El-Sayed's Senate bid. The Washington Free Beacon first reported that Tayeb donated $200,000 to the Fighting for Michigan PAC, nearly half of its total $478,125.68 raised.
Tayeb is also part of the founding committee of the Islamic Society of North America, which federal prosecutors identified as an unindicted co-conspirator in the same Hamas financing trial that ensnared CAIR. Lorenzo Vidino, director of the Program on Extremism at George Washington University, told the Free Beacon that founding-committee membership carries weight:
"To be on the founding committee, this is the elders of the organization."
During the primary, Rep. Haley Stevens tried to make these connections a campaign issue. She challenged El-Sayed directly:
"He's great at covering up that his father-in-law is running his super PAC that's spending millions of dollars for him. Abdul, you talk about getting money out of politics and putting money in people's pockets. But who is putting money in yours? What are you hiding?"
Democratic primary voters in Michigan did not punish El-Sayed for the association. Whether general-election voters, including independents and moderate Democrats, feel the same way is a different question. Recent polling already showed Mike Rogers leading all three Democratic contenders in the Michigan Senate race before this primary concluded.
The donation trail is only one thread. El-Sayed appeared at a CAIR event in 2022 and was paid for a speaking engagement. At that event, he criticized Oklahoma's ban on Sharia law and compared it to the Trail of Tears, the forced relocation of Native Americans in the 1830s.
He also campaigned with Hasan Piker, a far-left online streamer. Just The News reported that Piker has said "America deserved 9/11" and has praised Hamas and Communist China. El-Sayed's ties to controversial activist Linda Sarsour, who has faced repeated allegations of antisemitism, stretch back nearly a decade. Sarsour endorsed El-Sayed on Instagram, writing: "It's very CLEAR to me and has been. @AbdulElSayed is THE CHOICE for U.S. Senate race in Michigan!"
El-Sayed has also drawn criticism from Republicans and pro-Israel advocates over his response to an attack targeting a Detroit synagogue and for reportedly telling campaign staff he did not want to comment on the U.S. killing of Iran's supreme leader because "there are a lot of people in Dearborn who are sad" about his death.
When asked directly whether he believes in Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state, El-Sayed gave an answer that stopped well short of a yes:
"I often struggle with the question that people ask in this particular scenario, because what they now ask is, Do you believe in the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state."
That is not a fringe question. It is a baseline test that most Senate candidates from both parties answer without hesitation. El-Sayed's inability, or unwillingness, to do so tells voters something about where his sympathies lie.
The broader pattern of dysfunction inside the Democratic Party's Senate efforts is not limited to Michigan. Democrats have already fled a Senate candidate in Maine after a rape allegation surfaced, and the party's internal divisions continue to widen.
The financial networks around El-Sayed's candidacy extend beyond CAIR. The Washington Examiner reported that Peter Sarasohn, a former Bernie Sanders 2020 budget director, simultaneously served as treasurer for both the Fighting for Michigan super PAC backing El-Sayed and Maine Democrat Troy Jackson's Senate campaign. After the Examiner inquired about the dual roles, Jackson's campaign replaced Sarasohn as treasurer the same day, with the new FEC filing timestamped at 4:05 p.m., more than four hours after the initial press inquiry at 11:51 a.m.
An FEC spokesperson noted that electronic filings typically appear on the commission's website "almost immediately," within "minutes or less." Sarasohn was also collecting $3,000 monthly from Jackson's gubernatorial committee for compliance consulting and continues receiving roughly $3,000 a month from Sanders's reelection committee. The overlapping financial relationships suggest a Sanders-aligned political network operating across multiple Democratic Senate campaigns.
Michigan's Democratic Senate field was already fractured before El-Sayed emerged as the nominee. Now the party owns a candidate whose donor base, family ties, and personal associations connect him to an organization that three U.S. states and a foreign government have labeled a terrorist group.
El-Sayed's central campaign promise was getting money out of politics. But the money that found its way into his campaign, from CAIR board members coast to coast, from an executive director who celebrated Hamas's October 7 breakout, from a father-in-law embedded in organizations named in the largest terrorism financing prosecution in U.S. history, raises a harder question: whose money, and toward what end?
Democratic leaders have been warned to define their party before its most radical elements do it for them. In Michigan, they may have waited too long.