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Saturday, November 26, 2011

Would a New Administration Prosecute CAIR?

Earlier this year, it was revealed that the Eric Holder Justice Department had quashed an indictment of a "high-ranking" official involved with the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR). This was a follow-up to the successful 2007 Holy Land Foundation trial in the Northern District of Texas in Dallas of various individuals involved in front charities that, in fact, were funneling money to Hamas-linked terrorist groups in the Middle East. This case has cast suspicion on virtually all Islamic-linked charities in the US.  The below article is written by former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy in National Review.

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/265729/dodging-and-more-dodging-holder-admits-doj-dumped-cair-case-andrew-c-mccarthy

It is hardly surprising that Eric Holder would try to mask this decision as having been made by career DOJ officials when it was actually made by political hires, just as political hires have brought us the ATF scandal Fast and Furious. According to McCarthy and others, the chief target of the Dallas follow-up probe is CAIR co-founder Omar Ahmad. Just how many others involved with CAIR, the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), and others listed in the 2007 Holy Land Foundation trial as unindicted co-conspirators are subject to the Dallas probe we don't know.

CAIR, which advertises itself as the largest Muslim advocacy organization in the US, was founded in 1994 after a 1993 meeting in Philadelphia involving Hamas operatives who wanted to establish a front organization in the US that would call itself moderate and mainstream. That meeting with surveilled and taped by FBI agents.

In the last several years, especially since 9-11, groups like CAIR, the ISNA, Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) and others have sold themselves to the public and our government leaders as mainstream organizations with whom the government could work with and trust in spite of countless revelations that indicate otherwise.

The question now begs: With an election coming up next year, would a defeat for President Obama mean that the US Attorney's Office in  the Northern District of Texas would get the green light to re-open that file and go ahead with their indictments? The re-election of Obama and the continuation of Eric Holder-or a like-minded person in the Justice Department under Obama would certainly mean that no action would be forthcoming in the next four years.

This is not meant to assume guilt toward anyone whose name is contained in that case file sitting dormant in Dallas. However, if federal career investigators and prosecutors in Dallas had, in fact, compiled a case they were prepared to bring indictment(s) on, should not the case be brought and heard in open court-especially in a matter that concerns our national security?

3 comments:

Siarlys Jenkins said...

The Justice Department does not "quash." A court of competent jurisdiction may quash an indictment, a writ, or other legal action issued in a case.

The Justice Department decides that no law has been broken, or that there is insufficient evidence to prosecute.

This decision is to be taken irrespective of whether people in or out of the Justice Department consider an individual's actions to be worthy of condemnation. Criminal prosecution requires that the act violate a statute, of which any reasonably informed citizen would have had notice.

Gary Fouse said...

DOJ does exert some degree of control over so-called "sensitive prosecutions". That means that these cases are run by DOJ in Washington before they are indicted.

Siarlys Jenkins said...

Yes Gary, in any organization that is better organized and more disciplined than the University of California, top executives make final decisions about what operations subordinates will proceed with. EVERY attorney general has had the final word on whether the local U.S. attorney (who is merely an agent of the power entrusted to the president by the constitution, and to the attorney general by statute) will proceed with a case.

That is not called "quashing." To quash is a specific legal term, and the DOJ exists to practice law.