Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) are urging the Trump administration to investigate the Council on American-Islamic Relations for possible links to Hamas and other terrorist groups.
The Congress members wrote to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, asking him to look into whether CAIR, a decades-old organization that says it advocates for Muslim civil rights, is providing material support for terrorism, based on its history and its conduct following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre in southern Israel.
The Treasury Department houses the Office of Foreign Assets Control, which develops and enforces U.S. sanctions on designated terrorist groups, and holds the authority to investigate CAIR for sanctions violations.
Cotton and Stefanik point to CAIR being named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism financing trial. HLF, which was the largest U.S. Muslim charity, was shut down and designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, and its founders were convicted of funneling millions of dollars to Hamas.
“Evidence showed direct financial interactions between CAIR and the now-defunct Hamas-linked charity,” the letter to Bessent said.
Cotton and Stefanik point to more recent issues, including CAIR officials making statements “appearing to justify or celebrate Hamas’s actions.”
The pair also state that “CAIR has focused its efforts on supporting anti-Israel protests” since Oct. 7, providing “legal and organizational support to protest leaders,” including former Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil, whose deportation was ordered last month by an immigration judge for substantial and deliberate omissions on Khalil’s green card application.
Many of those anti-Israel protests “have led to incidents of antisemitic hatred and violence,” they wrote in the letter.
CAIR has said consistently that it “does not support any foreign organization or government,” labeling accusations as “false and Islamophobic.”
A bill filed in June by Rep. Randy Fine (R-Fla.) would direct the secretary of state to review whether CAIR “meets the criteria for designation as a foreign terrorist organization, and for other purposes.”
Cotton wrote a letter in August to then-IRS Commissioner Billy Long, asking the agency to consider revoking CAIR’s tax-exempt status due to its “deep ties to terrorist organizations.”
CAIR is not required to publish its funding sources or recipients of its donations.
