But a new report out by a national-security expert suggests maybe Kaine’s record isn’t so clean after all.
He has a history of embracing Islamists, writes Ryan Mauro in an article for the Clarion Project.
“He appointed a Hamas supporter to a state immigration commission; spoke at a dinner honoring a Muslim Brotherhood terror suspect and received donations from well-known Islamist groups,” says Mauro, a fellow with the Clarion Project and an adjunct professor of homeland security at Liberty University in Virginia.
Appointing Muslim leader who supports Hamas
In 2007, when Kaine was governor of Virginia, he appointed Muslim American Society President Esam Omeish to the state’s Immigration Commission. The MAS is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, as documented in a 2008 court filing in Dallas, Texas, during the Holy Land Foundation trial. The foundation was a conduit for sending money to Hamas, a Palestinian terror group dedicated to the destruction of the state of Israel.
In contrast to Mauro’s hard-hitting exposé, Clinton’s pick for vice president is getting the “kid-glove treatment” by the mainstream media, according to a Fox News report.
“The media are giving their official blessing to Hillary Clinton’s choice of Tim Kaine, praising him as a calm, experienced and slightly dull guy who can help her govern,” writes Howard Kurz for Fox.
“What they are not doing is picking the Virginia senator apart, and highlighting his disagreements with the nominee, which marked the coverage of Donald Trump’s selection of Mike Pence.”
Another, more moderate Muslim organization that opposes the extremist Brotherhood’s hardline Islamist agenda came out against the appointment saying it showed a reckless lack of vetting.
A Chicago Tribune investigation in 2004 also exposed the MAS as a Brotherhood front, as well as MAS’ crafty use of deceptive semantics to appear moderate, Mauro reported.
Convicted terrorist and admitted U.S. Muslim Brotherhood member Abdurrahman Alamoudi testified in 2012, “Everyone knows that MAS is the Muslim Brotherhood.”
Read Clarion’s fully-documented profile of MAS here.
According to Omeish’s website, he was also president of the National Muslim Students Association, another Brotherhood offshoot, and served for two years on the national board of yet another Brotherhood organization, the Islamic Society of North America or ISNA.
“His website says he was the vice president of Dar al-Hijrah Islamic Center, a radical mosque known for its history of terror ties, including having future Al-Qaeda operative Anwar Al-Awlaki as its imam and being frequented by two of the 9/11 hijackers and Nidal Hasan, the perpetrator of the Fort Hood shooting. Omeish’s website says he remains a board member,” Mauro writes.
Omeish’s website also says he was chairman of the board of Islamic American University, which had Hamas financier and Muslim Brotherhood spiritual leader Yousef Al-Qaradawi chairman of its board until at least 2006, Mauro reports.
Omeish was also chairman of the board for the Islamic Center of Passaic County, a New Jersey mosque with heavy terrorist ties and an imam that the Department of Homeland Security wants to deport for having links to Hamas.
Omeish directly expressed extremism before Kaine appointed him. He claimed the Brotherhood is “moderate” and admitted he and MAS are influenced by the Islamist movement. Islamism is the philosophy of political Islam, teaching the Shariah concept that Islam is to rule over all areas of society and is not separated from the reins of government power.
In 2004, Omeish praised the Hamas spiritual leader as “our beloved Sheikh Ahmed Yassin.”
Videotape from 2000 also surfaced where Omeish pledged to help Palestinians who understand “the jihad way is the way to liberate your land,” later denying this was an endorsement of violence.
When a state delegate wrote a letter to then-Governor Kaine warning him that the MAS has “questionable origins,” a Kaine spokesperson said the charge was bigotry.
“Kaine obviously failed to do any kind of basic background checking in Omeish,” Mauro writes.
Omeish resigned under heavy pressure, and Kaine acknowledged that his statements “concerned” him.
“But, apparently, they didn’t concern him enough to actually learn about the Muslim Brotherhood network in his state and to take greater precautions in the future,” concludes Mauro.
And the Islamist ties don’t stop there.
Kaine speaks at Islamist event
In September 2011, Kaine spoke at a “Candidates Night” dinner organized by the New Dominion PAC that presented a Lifetime Achievement Award for Jamal Barzinji, who the Global Muslim Brotherhood Watch describes as a “founding father of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood.”
He first came on to the FBI’s radar in 1987-1988 when an informant inside the Brotherhood identified Barzinji and his associated groups as being part of a network of Brotherhood fronts to “institute the Islamic Revolution in the United States.” The source said Barzinji and his colleagues were “organizing political support which involves influencing both public opinion in the United States as well as the United States Government” using “political action front groups with no traceable ties.”
Barzinji had his home searched as part of a terrorism investigation in 2003. U.S. Customs Service Senior Special Agent David Kane said in a sworn affidavit that Barzinji and the network of entities he led were investigated because he “is not only closely associated with PIJ [Palestinian Islamic Jihad]…but also with Hamas.” Counter-terrorism reporter Patrick Poole broke the story that Barzinji was nearly prosecuted but the Obama Justice Department dropped plans for indictment.
Barzinji played a major role in nearly every Brotherhood front in the U.S. and was vice president of the International Institute of Islamic Thought or IIIT, which also came under terrorism investigation, according to Mauro’s documented research.
The indictment of Al-Arian and his colleagues says they “would and did seek to obtain support from influential individuals in the United States under the guise of promoting and protecting Arab rights.”
Islamist financial support
Barzinji’s organization, IIIT, donated $10,000 in 2011 to the New Dominion PAC, the organization that held the event honoring Barzinji that Kaine spoke at. The Barzinji-tied New Dominion PAC donated $43,050 to Kaine’s gubernatorial campaign between 2003 and 2005.
That figure doesn’t even include other political recipients that assisted Kaine’s campaign.
The PAC has very strong ties to the Democratic Party in Virginia, according to Mauro, with the Virginia Public Access Project tallying almost $257,000 in donations. This may explain why Barzinji’s grandson served in Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s administration and then became the Obama Administration’s liaison to the Muslim-American community.
The Middle East Forum’s Islamist Money in Politics database shows another $4,300 donated to Kaine’s Senate campaign in 2011-2012 by officials from U.S. Muslim Brotherhood entities ISNA and the Council on American-Islamic Relations or CAIR, Mauro reports. Another $3,500 came from Hisham Al-Talib, a leader from Barzinji’s IIIT.
Barzinji’s IIIT donated $3,500 to Esam Omeish’s 2009 campaign delegate campaign, tying together the cadre of Muslim Brotherhood-linked leaders who got into Kaine’s orbit.
Conclusion
“Kaine has no excuse,” Mauro concluded. “If he has an Internet connection, then he and his staff should have known about their backgrounds. They were either extremely careless (something Kaine would have in common with the top of the ticket) or knew and looked the other way in the hopes of earning donations and votes.
“Clinton’s choice of Kaine is widely seen as a way of strengthening her campaign’s national security credentials. Yet, Clinton is asking us to trust a candidate on national security who appoints a Hamas supporter to an immigration commission and speaks at a dinner honoring a Muslim Brotherhood terror suspect.”
