POST HI-LITE: Gohmert recalled his questioning of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano about the issue.
“In front of our committee, I asked her how many members of her advisory committee were members of the Muslim Brotherhood, she said she didn’t know,” Gohmert told KLTV.
Outspoken Republican congressman Louie Gohmert is continuing to press for investigation of the Muslim Brotherhood’s influence on the federal government, contending in an interview that a probe is necessary because of the Obama administration’s “horrendous decisions” in backing the so-called “Arab Spring” revolutions in the Middle East.
The East Texas lawmaker was one of five Republican Congress members who stirred bipartisan controversy in June by raising concern about Muslim Brotherhood infiltration in the nation’s capital.
In an interview Tuesday on Gohmert charged that the administration was taking advice from the Muslim Brotherhood, the Egypt-based movement formed after the demise of the Ottoman Turkish empire with the intent of helping establish Islamic rule worldwide.
“You look at the decisions [the Obama administration] made, especially in the last two years, in going through the revolutions in Northern Africa and across the Middle East and to the Far East,” said Gohmert, “and the only way you can explain the horrendous decisions that were so completely wrongheaded would be if the administration had a bunch of Muslim Brotherhood members giving them advice.”
In July, Gohmert, along with Rep. Michele Bachmann, R, Minn., and three other Republican House members, pointed to Hillary Clinton’s top aide, Huma Abedin, as a possible Muslim Brotherhood influence on U.S. policy. The lawmakers asked the inspector generals at the departments of Homeland Security, Justice and State to investigate, prompting Democrats and Republicans to rush to Abedin’s defense.
However, as WND reported, Abedin worked for an organization founded by her family that is effectively at the forefront of a grand Saudi plan to mobilize U.S. Muslim minorities to transform America into a strict Wahhabi-style Islamic state, according to an Arabic-language manifesto issued by the Saudi monarchy. Abedin also was a member of the executive board of the Muslim Student Association, which was identified as a Muslim Brotherhood front group in a 1991 document introduced into evidence during the terror-financing trial of the Texas-based Holy Land Foundation trial.
The internal memo said Muslim Brotherhood members “must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and by the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and Allah’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.”
The Muslim Brotherhood is the parent of most of the top Sunni terrorist organizations in the world, including al-Qaida and Hamas.
Gohmert and other advocates for an investigation of the Muslim Brotherhood’s influence on the U.S. government argue a simple reading of security clearance guidelines in reference to Huma Abedin’s family would warrant investigation.
Gaffeny’s Center for Security Policy, where he serves as president, notes that security clearance guidelines for federal employees state a “security risk may exist when an individual’s immediate family, including cohabitants and other persons to whom he or she may be bound by affection, influence, or obligation are not citizens of the United States or may be subject to duress.”
The guidelines express concern for any “association or sympathy with persons or organizations that advocate the overthrow of the United States Government, or any state or subdivision, by force or violence or by other unconstitutional means.”
Nevertheless, Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank suggested researchers and lawmakers who have presented evidence of the Muslim Brotherhood ties of Abedin and her family are motivated by racism. He commented it’s “hard to escape the suspicion” that the charges have “something to do with the way she looks and how she worships.”
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., called the request for an investigation of Abedin and her family a “sinister” and “nothing less than an unwarranted and unfounded attack on an honorable woman, a dedicated American and a loyal public servant.”
After the Gaffney interview Tuesday, Gohmert told KLTV-TV in Tyler, Texas, that there’s “no question there’s (Muslim Brotherhood) influence, the question is how much is there.”
Gohmert recalled his questioning of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano about the issue.
“In front of our committee, I asked her how many members of her advisory committee were members of the Muslim Brotherhood, she said she didn’t know,” Gohmert told KLTV.
Gaffney asked Gohmert if the Muslim Brotherhood infiltration issue should be “raised anew and much more aggressively” as Congress investigates the Sept. 11 Benghazi attack and developments in Egypt, where the Muslim Brotherhood president is asserting authoritarian powers
“Absolutely,” Gohmert said.”I think it almost makes a prima facie case when you look at the decisions made by this administration over the last couple of years, or actually all four years.”
