Yesterday The Middle East Forum reported that in October, the Trump administration handed out $100,000 of federal government money to the terror-tied Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Middle East Forum has found.
The article reports:
To fund CAIR, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) first awarded monies to the Washington D.C. government, which then selected CAIR and a number of other extremist organizations as suitable sub-recipients. The federal government would likely have been aware, however, that CAIR was a grantee – according to government documentation, it seems sub-grantees must be approved by DHS before funds are distributed.
The administration’s funding of CAIR was the product of the DHS’s Nonprofit Security Grant Program. As my colleague David Swindle recently wrote in the Daily Wire, Congress’s current proposed expansion of the program’s budget, however “well-meaning,” carries enormous “potential for abuse” and will end up providing “millions of taxpayer dollars” to “pro-jihadist Islamist groups.”
CAIR was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation Trial in 2008. The Holy Land Foundation was convicted of providing material support to terrorists.
The article notes:
In 2014, the United Arab Emirates designated CAIR as a terrorist organization. And today, its officials continue to promote and excuse violently anti-American and anti-Semitic rhetoric.
The article concludes:
Surprisingly, under the Trump administration, grants to extremist organizations have actually increased. As we noted last year, “between 2017 and 2018, the amount of taxpayers’ money given to organizations either influenced or controlled by Islamist activists more than tripled from $4 million to $13.5 million. Under the Obama administration, the amount given to Islamist-linked organizations averaged a mere $1.7 million each year.”
In August 2019, the U.S. Census Bureau quickly cancelled a proposed partnership with CAIR after a number of Conservative media outlets started investigating the decision. But why this was not enough to stop the federal government from subsequently funding the very group it had previously conceded was beyond the pale?
Over the last few months, some supporters of the administration have reacted to our research into public subsidy and political support for these theocratic groups by acknowledging the problem but arguing that, in many instances, the federal government’s embrace of Islamists and its failure to work instead with moderate Muslims, is an enduring legacy of extant Obama administration policies.
Given the long-standing programs behind many of these grants, this may well be true. If only there were someone to drain the swamp.
President Trump will need four more years to get to the bottom of the seemingly endless swamp that is Washington, D.C.