Thursday, April 21, 2011

Obama Justice Department Saves Brotherhood Fronts


Ryan Mauro

Investigative journalist Patrick Poole has broken a blockbuster story about how the Obama Administration’s Justice Department blocked plans to prosecute a co-founder of the Council on American-Islamic Relations and others labeled “unindicted co-conspirators” in the Holy Land Foundation trial. Rep. Peter King, the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, has written a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder and is requesting answers by April 25. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT) were all designated by the federal government as “unindicted co-conspirators” in the trial of the Holy Land Foundation, a Muslim Brotherhood front found guilty of covertly financing Hamas. A total of 246 organizations and individuals received the label but have yet to face prosecution. Now, a high-level Justice Department source has informed Patrick Poole that this is because of a decision by the Obama Administration, in what the source called “a political decision from the get-go.” A second Justice Department source substantiated the tip.

A March 31, 2010 report titled “Declination of Prosecution of Omar Ahmad,” referring to one of the co-founders of CAIR, was sent from Assistant Attorney General David Kris to Acting Deputy Attorney General Gary Grindler. The document claims that Ahmad would not be prosecuted because of fears that jury nullification would result. The source of the information rejects this and says it is just an excuse to not move forward.

Rep. Peter King has confirmed the story and is now putting Attorney General Eric Holder in the hot seat. King writes that he has been “reliably informed” that the decision to not prosecute the unindicted co-conspirators “was usurped by high-ranking officials at Department of Justice headquarters over the vehement and stated objections of special agents and supervisors of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, as well as the prosecution at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Dallas, who had investigated and successfully prosecuted the Holy Land Foundation case.”

King requests a reply by April 25 but it is unclear what will follow if the response is unsatisfactory. David Rusin, the director of Islamist Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum, told FrontPage that “if Congress subpoenas Justice Department files on the organizations, incriminating details go public.” Such an investigation would be “a nightmare in the making for groups like CAIR and ISNA, whose very lifeblood has been the ability to camouflage their radicalism with the aid of gullible dupes in government and the press.”

However, Politico reports that the Bush Administration originally decided against prosecuting CAIR in 2004. Poole told the website that this is not necessarily a contradiction, as it just means that “They decided to get the bigger fish after they convicted the smaller fish.”

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