A Richmond, Va., judge has issued a new court order ruling that a pro-Palestinian advocacy group with alleged ties to Hamas must finally turn over closely guarded financial documents sought in an ongoing investigation brought by Virginia’s attorney general.

The decision, issued on Friday, is a major blow for American Muslims for Palestine, a Virginia-based nonprofit group that has drawn a growing number of legal challenges in the aftermath of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, terror attacks and Israel’s ensuing war in Gaza.

Jason Miyares, the Republican attorney general of Virginia probing AMP’s fundraising operations over alleged links to terror groups, had filed a petition in January to enforce a previous order compelling the organization to produce sensitive records that could shed light on its widely scrutinized but closely held donor network.

His office noted at the time that AMP had “refused to comply” with a court-approved civil investigative demand for documents the group long shielded from public view.

The judge’s decision on Friday upheld the court order issued last summer, rejecting AMP’s request to set the petition aside as it seeks an appeal of the July ruling.

The group is now required to comply with the demand for records, notwithstanding its pending appeal before the court, the new ruling states. “To rule otherwise would render the statute practically inoperable and gut the attorney general’s authority to engage in pre-enforcement civil investigations and promote the public interest,” Judge Devika E. Davis of the Richmond Circuit Court explained in the decision. 

More broadly, the new ruling indicates that AMP has now exhausted all of the available legal delay tactics it has used to resist the attorney general’s efforts to procure documents as part of a winding investigation launched weeks after the Oct. 7 attacks.

“My office has a legal obligation to ensure that charitable organizations operating in Virginia are following the law,” Miyares said in a statement to Jewish Insider on Monday. “I will continue to enforce state law without exception or delay to protect Virginians.”

Christina Jump, an attorney for AMP, vowed that the group “will continue to pursue all legal options available within Virginia law, which include pursuing our existing appeal on the merits and filing an additional appeal, if necessary, in the duplicative matter.”

“AMP is now and has been for some time in full compliance with the laws of the Commonwealth of Virginia that Attorney General Miyares claims prompted this inquiry in the first place,” Jump said in a statement to JI on Monday. “And the vague accusations that AMP has anything to do with Hamas or Oct. 7 just got thrown out completely by a federal court judge,” she added, referring to a lawsuit filed in Nevada, “because no facts support that defamatory smear.”

Despite that recent victory, AMP continues to face an array of civil lawsuits as well as state and federal probes threatening to dismantle one of the nation’s top pro-Palestinian advocacy organizations as it has taken a leading role in anti-Israel protests on college campuses across the country.

In March, the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee launched an investigation into AMP over its engagement on college campuses and its sponsorship of Students for Justice in Palestine, a loosely organized student advocacy group that has voiced support for Hamas.

Meanwhile, in Illinois, a long-gestating lawsuit nearing a possible trial is working to establish that AMP is an “alter ego” of a now-defunct group, the Islamic Association for Palestine, found liable for aiding Hamas. The suit is seeking to collect a $156 million judgment that IAP never paid to the family members of David Boim, an American murdered by Hamas in a 1996 terrorist attack in the West Bank.

Top officials at AMP, many of whom have ties to Hamas, were affiliated with IAP, which shuttered in 2004. Legal documents recently obtained by JI also suggest that AMP has obscured its links to IAP, and further highlight how some of its leaders have been closely tied to Hamas.

Daniel Schlessinger, the lead attorney in the Illinois case, has said that his team has already successfully obtained some of AMP’s donor records, even as they remain confidential. 

He is planning to challenge that designation in an effort to bring them to the public.