EuroNews: German police have raided 190 sites in 10 states in a massive operation against Salafist activists who have been distributing Korans along with their own propaganda.
The organising group, the TWR True Religion has been banned.It is thought to have several hundred members, and is believed to have recruited some 140 young people to fight in Syria.
Its leader, the Palestinian-born Ibrahim Abou-Nagie who lived in Germany for 30 years, is now believed to be based in Malaysia and setting up a new group there. Germany tried to prosecute him in 2012, but failed.
The raids were on mosques, offices and private homes, and was the biggest operation of its type since the 2001 shutdown of the Kalifatstaat extremist group.
“With today’s ban we are giving a clear signal. There is no place in our society for radical extremists who are willing to use violence. Here, we are drawing a clear line to also be able to protect the peaceful Islam in Germany,” said Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere.
Germany has banned five other organisations accused of having Islamic extremist-jihadi aspirations since 2012, but De Maiziere stressed the ban was on the group and its propaganda, not the distribution of the Koran in general or translations of it.
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Thomas de Maizière, the German interior minister, said the government had banned the True Religion organization, which is also known as Read (as in the instruction to read the Quran), because it acted as a “collecting pool” for would-be Islamist fighters.
Starting on Tuesday morning, officers raided 190 premises in more than half of Germany’s 16 states. Materials were secured, but there were no detentions, Mr. de Maizière said.
“The organization brings Islamic jihadists together under the pretext of the harmless distribution of the Quran,” Mr. de Maizière told reporters in Berlin, stressing that the authorities were acting against the group because of its work to foster violence, not because of its faith. “A systematic curtailment of our rule of law has nothing to do with the alleged freedom of religion,” he said.
The move comes after months of surveillance of the organization, whose bushy-bearded members have become a common sight in pedestrian shopping areas in major German cities. Mr. de Maizière said that 140 of the group’s supporters are known to have traveled to Syria or Iraq to fight on behalf of the Islamic State.
The move comes a week after the authorities arrested five men who were accused of aiding the Islamic State in Germany by recruiting members and providing financial and logistical help.
The True Religion is the sixth Islamist organization to be banned in Germany since 2012, under an effort to ensure domestic security and to prevent radicalized young people from leaving the country to fight for extremists abroad.
Germany has been gripped by a wave of small-scale terrorist attacks this year, including three that were claimed by the Islamic State: the knifing of a policeman in February, an ax attack by a young refugee, and a suicide bombing, both in July. (The only deaths in those assaults were those of the attackers.)
Most of the nearly one million migrants and refugees who arrived in Germany last year were Muslims. Security officials have been concerned that those who become frustrated or disillusioned at the difficulty of starting a new life in Europe could provide fertile ground for radical Islamists seeking to recruit members.
The campaign to hand out the Qurans to passers-by was the idea of Ibrahim Abou-Nagie, a Palestinian who preaches a conservative brand of Islam known as Salafism. German security officials said he was not in Germany at the time of the raids. Mr. de Maizière declined to comment on Mr. Abou-Nagie’s possible whereabouts.
Mr. Abou-Nagie, who has lived in Germany for more than 30 years, has been on the radar of German security officials since 2005, when he set up a website that officials say spreads extremist propaganda. An attempt to prosecute Mr. Abou-Nagie in 2012 on charges of incitement of religious hatred failed.
Even as they are carrying out a sweeping effort to prevent radical Muslims from committing terrorist acts, the German authorities are also working to stop violence by far-right extremists. There was a 42 percent increase in the number of violent acts committed by the far right in 2015, according to the country’s domestic intelligence service, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution.
“The aim of the organization was to carry out explosive attacks on shelters for asylum seekers, as well as homes, offices and automobiles of political dissidents,” the prosecutors said in a statement. “Through these actions, the suspects wanted to create an atmosphere of fear and repression.”
Others from the group are already facing charges, including attempted murder, carrying out an explosion and vandalism, over a series of attacks that began in late July 2015 and continued through November of that year. Those assaults involved lobbing explosives at the offices of the Left Party and at a refugee shelter in Freital.
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Soros 3 Day Secret Huddle in DC Underway
Full the 3 day agenda is packed full of communists, Marxists and progressives and is found here.
Soros bands with donors to resist Trump, ‘take back power’
Major liberal funders huddle behind closed doors with Pelosi, Warren, Ellison, and union bosses to lick wounds, retrench.
Politico: George Soros and other rich liberals who spent tens of millions of dollars trying to elect Hillary Clinton are gathering in Washington for a three-day, closed door meeting to retool the big-money left to fight back against Donald Trump.
The conference, which kicked off Sunday night at Washington’s pricey Mandarin Oriental hotel, is sponsored by the influential Democracy Alliance donor club, and will include appearances by leaders of most leading unions and liberal groups, as well as darlings of the left such as House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Congressional Progressive Caucus co-chairman Keith Ellison, according to an agenda and other documents obtained by POLITICO.
The meeting is the first major gathering of the institutional left since Trump’s shocking victory over Hillary Clinton in last week’s presidential election, and, if the agenda is any indication, liberals plan full-on trench warfare against Trump from Day One. Some sessions deal with gearing up for 2017 and 2018 elections, while others focus on thwarting President-elect Trump’s 100-day plan, which the agenda calls “a terrifying assault on President Obama’s achievements — and our progressive vision for an equitable and just nation.”
Yet the meeting also comes as many liberals are reassessing their approach to politics — and the role of the Democracy Alliance, or DA, as the club is known in Democratic finance circles. The DA, its donors and beneficiary groups over the last decade have had a major hand in shaping the institutions of the left, including by orienting some of its key organizations around Clinton, and by basing their strategy around the idea that minorities and women constituted a so-called “rising American electorate” that could tip elections to Democrats.
That didn’t happen in the presidential election, where Trump won largely on the strength of his support from working-class whites. Additionally, exit polls suggested that issues like fighting climate change and the role of money in politics — which the DA’s beneficiary groups have used to try to turn out voters — didn’t resonate as much with the voters who carried Trump to victory.
“The DA itself should be called into question,” said one Democratic strategist who has been active in the group and is attending the meeting. “You can make a very good case it’s nothing more than a social club for a handful wealthy white donors and labor union officials to drink wine and read memos, as the Democratic Party burns down around them.”
Another liberal operative who has been active in the DA since its founding rejected the notion that the group — or the left, more generally — needed to completely retool its approach to politics.
“We should not learn the wrong lesson from this election,” said the operative, pointing out that Clinton is on track to win the popular vote and that Trump got fewer votes than the last GOP presidential nominee, Mitt Romney. “We need our people to vote in greater numbers. For that to happen, we need candidates who inspire them to go to the polls on Election Day.”
But Gara LaMarche, the president of the DA, on Sunday evening told donors gathered at the Mandarin for a welcome dinner that some reassessment was in order. According to prepared remarks he provided to POLITICO, he said, “You don’t lose an election you were supposed to win, with so much at stake, without making some big mistakes, in assumptions, strategy and tactics.”
LaMarche added that the reassessment “must take place without recrimination and finger-pointing, whatever frustration and anger some of us feel about our own allies in these efforts,” and he said “It is a process we should not rush, even as we gear up to resist the Trump administration.”
LaMarche emailed the donors last week that the meeting would begin the process of assessing “what steps we will take together to resist the assaults that are coming and take back power, beginning in the states in 2017 and 2018.”
In addition to sessions focusing on protecting Obamacare and other pillars of Obama’s legacy against dismantling by President-elect Trump, the agenda includes panels on rethinking polling and the left’s approach to winning the working-class vote, as well as sessions stressing the importance of channeling cash to state legislative policy battles and races, where Republicans won big victories last week.
Democrats need to invest more in training officials and developing policies in the states, argued Rep. Ellison (D-Minn.) on a Friday afternoon donor conference call, according to someone on the call. The call was organized by a DA-endorsed group called the State Innovation Exchange (or SiX), which Ellison urged the donors to support.
Ellison, who is scheduled to speak on a Monday afternoon panel at the DA meeting on the challenge Democrats face in winning working-class votes, has been a leading liberal voice for a form of economic populism that Trump at times channeled more than Clinton.
As liberals look to rebuild the post-Clinton Democratic Party on a more aggressively liberal bearing, Ellison has emerged as a top candidate to take over the Democratic National Committee, and he figures to be in high demand at the DA meeting. An Ellison spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Sunday evening. Nor did a Trump spokesman.
Raj Goyle, a New York Democratic activist who previously served in the Kansas state legislature and now sits on SiX’s board, argued that many liberal activists and donors are “disconnected from working class voters’ concerns” because they’re cluster in coastal cities. “And that hurt us this election,” said Goyle, who is involved in the DA, and said its donors would do well to steer more cash to groups on the ground in landlocked states. “Progressive donors and organizations need to immediately correct the lack of investment in state and local strategies.”
The Democracy Alliance was launched after the 2004 election by Soros, the late insurance mogul Peter Lewis, and a handful of fellow Democratic mega-donors who had combined to spend tens of millions trying to boost then-Sen. John Kerry’s ultimately unsuccessful challenge to then-President George W. Bush.
The donors’ goal was to seed a set of advocacy groups and think tanks outside the Democratic Party that could push the party and its politicians to the left while also defending them against attack from the right.
The group requires its members — a group that now numbers more than 100 and includes finance titans like Soros, Tom Steyer and Donald Sussman, as well as major labor unions and liberal foundations — to contribute a total of at least $200,000 a year to recommended groups. Members also pay annual dues of $30,000 to fund the DA staff and its meetings, which include catered meals and entertainment (on Sunday, interested donors were treated to a VIP tour of the recently opened National Museum of African American History and Culture).
Since its inception in 2005, the DA has steered upward of $500 million to a range of groups, including pillars of the political left such as the watchdog group Media Matters, the policy advocacy outfit Center for American Progress and the data firm Catalist — all of which are run by Clinton allies who are expected to send representatives to the DA meeting.
The degree to which those groups will be able to adapt to the post-Clinton Democratic Party is not entirely clear, though some of the key DA donors have given generously to them for years.
That includes Soros, who, after stepping back a bit from campaign-related giving in recent years, had committed or donated $25 million to boosting Clinton and other Democratic candidates and causes in 2016. During the presidential primaries, Soros had argued that Trump and his GOP rival Ted Cruz were “doing the work of ISIS.”
A Soros spokesman declined to comment for this story.
But, given that the billionaire financier only periodically attends DA meetings and is seldom a part of the formal proceedings, his scheduled Tuesday morning appearance as a speaker suggests that he’s committed to investing in opposing President Trump.
The agenda item for a Tuesday morning “conversation with George Soros” invokes Soros’ personal experience living through the Holocaust and Soviet Communism in the context of preparing for a Trump presidency. The agenda notes that the billionaire currency trader, who grew up in Hungary, “has lived through Nazism and Communism, and has devoted his foundations to protecting the kinds of open societies around the world that are now threatened in the United States itself.”
LaMarche, who for years worked for Soros’s Open Society foundations, told POLITICO that the references to Nazism and Communism are “part of his standard bio.”
LaMarche, who is set to moderate the discussion with Soros, said the donor “does not plan to compare whatever we face under Trump to Nazism, I can tell you that.” LaMarche he also said, “I don’t think there is anyone who has looked at Trump, including many respected conservatives, who doesn’t think the experience of authoritarian states would not be important to learn from here. And to the extent that Soros and his foundations have experience with xenophobia in Europe, Brexit, etc., we want to learn from that as well.”
The Soros conversation was added to the agenda after Election Day. It was just one of many changes made on the fly to adjust for last week’s jarring result and the stark new reality facing liberals, who went from discussing ways to push an incoming President Clinton leftward, to instead discussing how to play defense.
A pre-election working draft of the DA’s agenda, obtained by POLITICO, featured a session on Clinton’s first 100 days and another on “moving a progressive national policy agenda in 2017.” Those sessions were rebranded so that the first instead will examine “what happened” on the “cataclysm of Election Day,” while the second will focus on “combating the massive threats from Trump and Congress in 2017.”
A session that before the election had been titled “Can Our Elections Be Hacked,” after the election was renamed “Was the 2016 Election Hacked” — a theory that has percolated without evidence on the left to explain the surprising result.
In his post-election emails to donors and operatives, LaMarche acknowledged the group had to “scrap many of the original plans for the conference,” explaining “while we made no explicit assumptions about the outcome, the conference we planned, and the agenda you have seen, made more sense in the event of a Hillary Clinton victory.”
NoI or CAIR to Lead the DNC? Bring Back HUAC
Congressman Ellison has introduced several pieces of legislation that have never advanced.
Washington (CNN)Rep. Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to Congress and one of only two members in the Capitol, said Wednesday that in the wake of anti-Muslim rhetoric after the Paris attacks, Muslims are feeling a need to assert even more how patriotic they are.
The Minnesota Democrat said when he hears other lawmakers suggesting Christian Syrian refugees should be allowed into the country but Muslim Syrian refugees should not, it reminds him that the First Amendment to the Constitution establishes freedom of religion. More here.
Congressman Ellison attends the Masjid An-Nur mosque in Minneapolis and his visit to Mogadishu fulfilled a request from his constituents with ties to Somalia. Minnesota has one of the largest populations of Somali-Americans in the U.S. April of 2015, six Somali-Americans from Minneapolis were arrested for attempting to travel to Syria and link up with the Islamic State, also referred to as ISIS or ISIL. All were young men between the ages of 19 and 21. Zacharia Yusuf Abdurahman, 19, Adnan Farah, 19, Hanad Mustafe Musse, 19, and Guled Ali Omar, 20, were arrested in Minneapolis while Abdirahman Yasin Daud, 21, and Mohamed Abdihamid Farah, 21, were arrested trying to buy fake passports in San Diego. The criminal complaint is here.
Who is Keith Ellison? Left-wing congressman with past ties to Nation of Islam wants DNC job
FNC: In an attempt to stave off a civil war in the ranks, Democratic leaders are scrambling to unite behind a candidate for the party’s chairmanship – and have landed for now on a Louis Farrakhan-linked congressman who once called for Dick Cheney’s impeachment and compared George W. Bush to Hitler.
Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., the first Muslim elected to Congress and a leading progressive among House Democrats, already has picked up the backing of both the Democratic Party’s left – with support from Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren – and its establishment, receiving endorsements from Senate leaders Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and retiring Harry Reid, D-Nev.
Ellison is firmly on the party’s left – he has a fax line in his office, but his website says they will not respond to faxes “for environmental reasons.” He backed Bernie Sanders during the primaries, even introducing him at the convention.
“Bernie sparked the beginning of a revolution y’all,” Ellison said at his address during the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. “Together we call for climate justice, racial justice, wage justice.”
Sanders has given strong backing to Ellison in return, sending out a fundraising email saying an Ellison-led Democratic Party that will stand up to Wall Street greed and corporate America is “the Democratic Party we need.”
Ellison is expected to formally announce his bid Monday. On Sunday, Ellison hinted he would run and said the party needs to focus on middle- and working-class Americans and less on donors.
“I love the donors and we thank them, but it has to be that the guys in the barber shop, the lady at the diner, the folks who are worried about whether that plant is going to close, they’ve got to be our focus,” he said on ABC’s “This Week.”
Some strategists feel this economic message is exactly what the party needs to reach out to white working-class voters who pulled the lever for Trump.
“You can’t stand up for middle-class families if you are so closely associated with Wall Street and I think that was the issue with Clinton, her ties to Goldman Sachs, and I think that’s shown by how much money we raised from Wall Street,” Brad Bannon, Democratic strategist and CEO of Bannon Communications Research, told FoxNews.com. “We have to become more oriented to working-class families if we’re going to survive and prosper, because we blew the industrial Midwest.”
However, Ellison’s past associations and comments may trouble more moderate voters.
Ellison’s 2006 run for his seat was plunged into controversy after the conservative PowerLineBlog.com found he had once identified with Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam and in 1998 was referring to himself as Keith X Ellison and Keith Ellison-Muhammed.
The Washington Post reported that Ellison had defended Farrakhan against accusations of anti-Semitism in 1989 and in 1990 had called affirmative action a “sneaky” form of compensation for slavery, calling instead for reparations.
When the controversy erupted in 2006, Ellison acknowledged he had worked with the group, but only for 18 months to help organize Farrakhan’s 1995 Million Man March. He distanced himself from both Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam, and said he hadn’t scruitinized the group’s anti-Semitic positions appropriately.
“They were and are anti-Semitic, and I should have come to that conclusion earlier than I did,” he said.
Yet it isn’t the only controversy for Ellison. In 2007, Ellison made a comparison between Bush and 9/11 to Hitler and the 1933 Reichstag fire.
“9/11 is the juggernaut in American history and it allows… it’s almost like, you know, the Reichstag fire,” Ellison said, according to a Daily Telegraph report at the time. “After the Reichstag was burned, they blamed the Communists for it, and it put the leader of that country [Hitler] in a position where he could basically have authority to do whatever he wanted.”
He later clarified that he did indeed believe that Usama bin Laden was responsible for the terror attacks. But it wasn’t the only controversy for Ellison in 2007, as he also backed a movement to impeach then-Vice President Dick Cheney over his alleged fabrication of intelligence about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
However, Bannon believes that Ellison’s Muslim heritage could be a boost not a burden, especially in light of Trump’s elevation Sunday of controversial Breitbart boss Steve Bannon to chief strategist.
“[Steve] Bannon propagates Muslim conspiracy theories,” Brad Bannon, who is not related to the Breitbart head, said. “Ellison is the perfect guy to counter that. Ellison is exactly what we need to prove we aren’t the party of hate and racism.”
Ellison would have competition for the job. Former DNC chairman and ex-presidential candidate Howard Dean has put his name in the running. Former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malle
y also said he’s considering a run.
Trump’s Transition Team to the White House
Update: 11/11/16:
Politico: President-elect Donald Trump has shaken up his transition team just days after winning the White House, replacing New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie with Vice President-elect Mike Pence at the helm of the effort that will shape his administration when it begins in January, according to a source close to Trump.
While Christie has long been a high-profile surrogate and member of Trump’s inner circle, his viability as part of the team was thrown into question when two of his close allies were convicted on charges of fraud and conspiracy elated to the Bridgegate scandal.
The source said Christie “will still be around”- hardly a ringing endorsement – and that Sen. Jeff Session’s chief of staff, Rick Dearborn, will help run the transition effort, especially the day-to-day operations.
2017 PRESIDENTIAL TRANSITION CHECKLIST
Donald Trump’s transition team has added a number of policy and personnel experts over the past week and will likely continue adding many more in the weeks to come. Transition teams usually have more volunteers than paid staff members and number in the hundreds by Election Day.
Until then, both transition teams will focus on developing a policy agenda, identifying hires to fill a staff of about 4,000 in the executive branch and fundraising. So far, Trump’s transition team has added a number of experienced policy experts, former advisers and officials, and lobbyists, as well as a mix of both conservative and establishment Republicans to its roster. Trump’s transition team, as of Oct 1, 2016.
Transition teams focus on three big tasks.
- Fundraising: Of course, transition teams are in part funded by Congress. However, they still need to raise funds to cover all expenses. The Partnership for Public Service estimates that Clinton and Trump will each need to raise $4 million to $5 million to pay for pre-election and post-election expenses.
- Government Appointments: A new administration has the responsibility to fill roughly 4,000 politically appointed positions within the executive branch (about one-quarter of which will require Senate confirmation). Members of each transition team will vigorously vet and screen candidates to create shortlists of candidates for these positions.
Policy Preparation: Both candidates must produce a clear policy agenda that can be put into action on Day 1 in office. This process requires the transition teams to go through intensive research and deliver an actionable policy strategy. For the complete report by Politico, go here.
Sid Blumenthal was POC for Libya, Muslim Brotherhood
Leader of LIFG, Belhadj
Base of Operation:Mountain territory near Benghazi and al-Akhdar aside the Libyan northeast coasts. The Libyan Islamic Fighting Group began formation from return Libyan Afghans from the war against the soviets ending in 1989; however, was not officially established as a group until the year of 1995. Between then and the present, the group has gone through several mischievous movements of acting out against the government. Per the United Nations under the direction of the U.S. State Department during the Bush administration:
LIFG is believed to have several hundred members or supporters, mostly in the Middle East and Europe. Since the late 1990s, many LIFG members have fled from Libya to various Asian, Arabian Gulf, African, and European countries, particularly the United Kingdom. It is likely that LIFG has maintained a presence in eastern Libya and has facilitated the transfer of foreign fighters to Iraq.
Related listed individuals and entities:Al-Itihaad al-Islamiya / AIAI (QDe.002), listed on 6 October 2001
Al-Qaida (QDe.004), listed on 6 October 2001
Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group (QDe.089), listed on 10 October 2002
The Tunisian Combatant Group (QDe.090), listed on 10 October 2002
Aiman Muhammed Rabi al-Zawahiri (QDi.006), listed on 25 January 2001
Zayn al-Abidin Muhammad Hussein (QDi.010), listed on 25 January 2001
Hassan Dahir Aweys (QDi.042), listed on 9 November 2001
Ibrahim Ali Abu Bakr Tantoush (QDi.057), listed on 11 January 2002
Merai Zoghbai (QDi.223), listed on 2 August 2006
Aly Soliman Massoud Abdul Sayed (QDi.229), listed on 8 June 2007
Salem Nor Eldin Amohamed al-Dabski (QDi.231), listed on 8 June 2007
Adil Muhammad Mahmud Abd Al-Khaliq (QDi.255), listed on 10 October 2008
Hillary Clinton Knew She Was Helping Islamists Move Into Power In Libya
Howley/DC: Hillary Clinton received intelligence that her effort to bring down Libyan president Muammar Gaddafi was leading to the rise of al-Qaeda militants and the Muslim Brotherhood in the country, according to emails released by WikiLeaks.
More than a year before the Benghazi attack, Clinton learned that al-Qaeda terrorists were infiltrating the post-Gadaffi transitional government. Clinton also acknowledged that the Muslim Brotherhood wielded the “real power” in the rebel movement that Clinton was supporting — and that their Brotherhood allies in Egypt were waiting in the wings to move into Libya’s oil sector.
Clinton received a “CONFIDENTIAL” memo from Sidney Blumenthal on March 27, 2011. The subject of the email was “Re: Lots of new intel; Libyan army possibly on verge of collapse.”
Blumenthal explained that “radical/terrorist” groups were “infiltrating the NLC,” or National Libyan Council, a rebel quasi-government that earned French recognition as Libya’s governing body that very same month. Clinton was warned that al-Qaeda could become major players in the region.
Blumenthal wrote:
“This situation has become increasingly frustrating for French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who, according to knowledgeable individuals, is pressing to have France emerge from this crisis as the principal foreign ally of any new government that takes power. Sarkozy is also concerned about continuing reports that radical/terrorist groups such as the Libyan Fighting Groups and Al Qa’ida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) are infiltrating the NLC and its military command. Accordingly, he asked sociologist who has long established ties to Israel, Syria, and other B6 nations in the Middle East, to use his contacts to determine the level of influence AQIM and other. terrorist groups have inside of the NLC. Sarkozy also asked for reports setting out a clear picture of the role of the Muslim Brotherhood in the rebel leadership…
…(Source Comment: Senior European security officials caution that AQIM is watching developments in Libya, and elements of that organization have been in touch with tribes in the southeastern part of the country. These officials are concerned that in a post-Qaddafi Libya, France and other western European countries must move quickly to ensure that the new government does not allow AQIM and others to set up small, semi- autonomous local entities—or “Caliphates”—in the oil and gas producing regions of southeastern Libya.)”
On May 30, 2011, Hillary aide Jake Sullivan sent the secretary of state a full list of known “Libya emissaries.” By then, the National Libyan Council had given way to the Transitional National Council (TNC), but the “real power” still lay with the Muslim Brotherhood.
Sullivan’s intelligence memo noted:
“The Qadhafi regime has also met with the Libyan Muslim Brotherhood leadership in Egypt. According to Qadhafi chief of staff Fouad Zlitni, the Muslim Brotherhood asserts that TNC may be the political leadership of the opposition, but the real power lies with the Libyan Brotherhood and they are apparently willing to bide their time. The Qadhafi regime also offered to send senior tribal leaders to Benghazi to negotiate with the TNC, but the TNC rejected the proposal.”
Clinton forwarded that email to an aide, acknowledging that she had received it and assessed its contents.
Sidney Blumenthal wrote to Clinton again on July 3, 2012, two months before Benghazi, to talk about the upcoming election. The election, Blumenthal noted, was how the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt was hoping to use the new Brotherhood party in Libya to get into the Libyan oil game.
Blumenthal wrote:
“Source Comment: In the opinion of a knowledgeable individual, the division of the 200 seats in the GNC lies at the heart of this matter, with 120 seats allotted for the Tripolitania, 60 for Barqa, and 18 for the Fezzan area. At present, the Libyan Muslim Brotherhood (LMB) and its political arm, the Justice and Construction Party (JCP), are attempting to mount a national campaign, receiving discreet advice and technical support from the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood (EMB). With this assistance, Jalil is convinced that the JCP is the party that operates most effectively throughout the country. Jalil has established ties to the EMB, from whom he has learned that JCP leader Mohamad Sowan and his associates are working with the leadership of the EMB.) 4.According to his sources, Jalil believes that he can work with Sowan and the LMB/JCP; however, he is concerned that Mohammed Morsi, the newly elected EMB President of Egypt, and EMB Supreme Guide Mohammed Badie are focused on developing Egyptian influence in Libya. Jalil has been informed privately that these EMB leaders want to establish a strong position in Libya, particularly in the oil services sector as part of their effort to improve Egypt’s economic situation.
Over in Egypt, Clinton helped spur the uprising that led to the Muslim Brotherhood briefly taking power in that country around the same time. And a young Clinton Foundation employee, Gehad El-Haddad, was already working in Cairo to help the Muslim Brotherhood gain power.
El-Haddad was arrested in 2013, following the brief and disastrous reign of Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohammed Morsi, for inciting violence. He was reportedly one of Morsi’s top advisers. El-Haddad was sentenced to life in prison in 2015.