Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), speaking at a Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing on Wednesday that he organized to examine Muslim Brotherhood networks and affiliates in the United States, suggested that Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed was tied to such networks and that his Democratic primary win represented a victory for them.

“[Democrats’] campaign is now openly embracing terrorist organizations waging war on America. Behind El-Sayed’s political rise sits a much older and more entrenched institutional network,” Cruz asserted.

Kyle Shideler, a senior analyst for homeland security and counterterrorism at the Center for Security Policy, testified under questioning from Cruz that El-Sayed’s win concerned him given the nominee’s father-in-law’s ties to Muslim Brotherhood-linked groups and El-Sayed’s own relationship with groups connected to the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

“It shows the success of the Muslim Brotherhood network over multiple decades. It achieved what they said they were going to achieve, which was to normalize support for Hamas and normalize support for terrorism,” Shideler said.

He also said that Muslim Brotherhood-connected groups have partnered with organizations including the Democratic Socialists of America, united around a “shared revolutionary objective of advocating for the overthrow of the U.S. Constitution.”

El-Sayed, who did not respond to a request for comment, has accused opponents of using Islamophobia to attack him because they lack responses to his policy proposals.

The hearing — which was not attended by any lawmakers other than Cruz — focused primarily on CAIR and other groups that Cruz and witnesses said were linked to a Muslim Brotherhood network in the United States, as part of a long-running plan to infiltrate and usurp Western civilization from within and offer support for Hamas and other terrorist organizations, including by working with and co-opting other groups.

Cruz and the witnesses emphasized that CAIR leaders were part of a 1993 meeting of Muslim Brotherhood-linked anti-Israel activists, captured on an FBI wiretap, in which the activists plotted to undermine the Oslo accords and support Hamas through a range of spinoff and front organizations, including the Holy Land Foundation and Islamic Association for Palestine, which have been shuttered for funneling support to Hamas.

“The Holy Land Foundation prosecution revealed that these organizations do not operate in isolation; they function as part of a broader Muslim Brotherhood ecosystem,” Cruz said. “The events we witnessed on college campuses after Oct. 7 [2023] did not emerge from nowhere. They were not spontaneous. They were not organic. They were the product of an organized network that has spent decades building influence inside the United States.”

Shideler described CAIR as so central to the Muslim Brotherhood’s plans that it received explicit approval and support from Muslim Brotherhood leaders in Egypt. 

Lara Burns, a retired FBI special agent and senior research fellow at the George Washington University Program on Extremism, said that the wiretapped meeting indicated that CAIR was created “to defend and protect the other elements of the Hamas support network and to pressure others to adopt its narratives or remain quiet.”

Burns was a lead investigator in the Holy Land Foundation case and later supervised national security and counterterrorism investigations and prosecutions.

She emphasized that CAIR has never disavowed the Holy Land Foundation and that it warrants further investigation, also noting that the group had sought to thwart the seizure of documents during the Holy Land Foundation investigation that proved the existence of Hamas and Muslim Brotherhood support networks domestically.

Burns emphasized that terrorist infrastructure has existed in the United States for decades, under the guise of charity, advocacy and activism. The network, she said, seeks to funnel support to and rally public support for Hamas; infiltrate universities, media and politics; and reshape American curricula. She said groups in the Muslim Brotherhood network continue to carry on the same agenda and some individuals and groups are still likely providing material support for terrorism. 

Arielle Klepach, senior counsel at the National Jewish Advocacy Center, described CAIR and its affiliates as “a foreign terror-supporting movement on American soil, targeting our Constitution and our founding principles.” 

“I would ask you to remember three things: these organizations are dangerous, they are in our schools and they hide by abusing the very legal system they are working to dismantle,” she continued.

Klepach said that the federal government should work to enforce existing laws to counter this network, arguing for imposing sanctions and prosecuting Muslim Brotherhood-connected groups for material support for terrorism and racketeering and reviewing their tax-exempt status. She said Congress should work to close loopholes that have allowed such groups to avoid legal accountability by shuttering and rebooting under new names with similar leadership.

She also warned that CAIR and other similar groups are receiving and distributing tens of millions of dollars in taxpayer funding.

Shideler said that the Holy Land Foundation case provided a trove of intelligence and evidence on the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood support network and its efforts to infiltrate and influence all areas of American life, but that the federal government had subsequently failed to pursue further action, and CAIR and other linked groups have obstructed and dodged efforts to seek justice.

Democrats announced in advance that they planned to boycott the hearing, describing it as Islamophobic and targeted at Muslims writ large, but ultimately none of Cruz’s Republican colleagues appeared to ask questions of witnesses either.