Having spent months flogging the New Black Panther Party scandal as evidence that President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder are sympathetic to black separatists, only to see their complaints discredited, conservatives have latched onto the idea that the administration prevented the Council on American Islamic Relations from being indicted in connection with the Holy Land terrorism financing case. Pajamas Media declared that "indictments were scuttled last year at the direction of top-level political appointees within the Department of Justice (DOJ) — and possibly even the White House."
The piece, though, doesn't actually offer any evidence to back up that claim, beyond the speculation of a source purported to be from the Department of Justice that speculates that "this decision must have come from the top down." The rationale is that the Obama administration was so worried about its outreach efforts to the Muslim community that it would avoid prosecuting people who had funneled money to terrorist groups.
Josh Gerstein reports that a decision not to move forward with an indictment of CAIR was actually made by the Bush administration:
Under President George W. Bush, the Justice Department considered and rejected criminal charges against the Council on American-Islamic Relations for alleged support of Hamas, a knowledgeable source told POLITICO Monday.
The decision not to indict CAIR came in 2004 as prosecutors in Dallas were preparing to seek an indictment of the Holy Land Foundation and five of its officials, the source said. Some prosecutors wanted to include CAIR and others in the case at that time. However, senior Justice Department officials elected not to, the source said. (The Attorney General at the time was John Ashcroft.)
Last Friday, Homeland Security Committee Chairman Rep. Peter King sent a letter to the Department of Justice stating that he had "been reliably informed" that the decision not to prosecute 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 prosecutors at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Dallas, who had investigated and successfully prosecuted the Holy Land Foundation case."
Much of King's hearings on Muslim radicalization focused on CAIR, with Rep. Chip Cravaack accusing Los Angeles Sheriff Lee Baca of "dealing with a terrorist organization." A number of CAIR associates have been indicted on terrorism-related charges, although the organization itself has spoken out against terrorism.
The notion that the Obama administration would nix a terrorism financing case because it was worried about "outreach" fits a conservative narrative that the administration "goes easy" on terrorists. But it seems far-fetched given the administration's actual approach to domestic terrorism, which has been conciliatory rhetoric combined with aggressive surveillance of the American Muslim community, including the use of sting operations that have prompted protests from civil liberties and Muslim advocacy groups.
