Islamic Advocacy Group CAIR Will Settle Lawsuit Rather Than Name Its Donors
CAIR was under court order to reveal sources of funding from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Kuwait
The Islamic advocacy group CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations) has agreed to settle a federal lawsuit brought by one of its former board members and employees rather than turn over its donor lists, the New York Post reports.
The news of CAIR’s settlement comes months after US Magistrate Judge David Schultz ordered the group to open its books in the defamation lawsuit filed by its former Minnesota chapter head, Lori Saroya.
In our post covering the case here, we speculated the court’s order would force the group to settle to avoid revealing the sources of its funding.
As a nonprofit organization, CAIR isn’t ordinarily required to disclose its donors’ identities. But Saroya’s claims that the group hid the sources of its massive foreign funding from its own board brought that information within the scope of discovery, Judge Schultz ruled last November.
In its order granting her sweeping request for discovery, the court required CAIR to turn over the names of donors of $5,000 or more from 2014 through 2022, and documents showing contributions by “any individual or entity within, or any governmental unit of, Saudi Arabia, Qatar or Kuwait between 2007 and 2014.”
While it holds itself out as a Muslim civil rights organization, CAIR has long been accused of sympathizing with Islamic terror, including Hamas, a designated foreign terrorist organization. Last year, its executive director openly celebrated Hamas’s October 7 attacks against Israel at an event for American Muslims for Palestine. CAIR’s links to Hamas were also exposed in the 2007 federal terrorism funding case against the Holy Land Foundation, where it was named an unindicted co-conspirator.
The settlement brings to a close the legal battle between CAIR and Saroya dating back to 2021, when CAIR first accused Saroya of defamation in a lawsuit that it later dropped—only to renew hostilities days later in a press release suggesting it had won its case against her on the merits. That press release turned the tables, prompting Saroya to sue CAIR for defamation over its accusations.
CAIR agreed to scrub the statement about the lawsuit from its website as part of the settlement, The Post reports:
The amount of the settlement to Saroya was not disclosed.
“The parties have reached a monetary settlement to resolve Saroya’s claims against CAIR,” said a statement approved by both sides.
“The amount of CAIR’s payment to Saroya is confidential. In addition, CAIR retracts and has removed from its website its statement regarding Saroya and the 2021 lawsuit, which it regrets.”
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Comments
You are now free to infer the worst about the identities of their donors.
And you won’t be far wrong.
CAIR’s soft underbelly needs to be further explored. This implies that maybe they are operating as unregistered foreign agents? Maybe CAIR is in for some very interesting times?
CAIR needs to become a designated terrorist organization which is exactly what it is. If only our federal government had the guts to stop Islam’s intrusion into the U.S. Look what has happened to Europe, especially Germany, France, and the UK. The critical threshold seems to be about 5%. Once they get above that fraction of the population, they take over through bribery, blackmail, and terror. People fear them because they are willing do die for their cause. Only extreme measures will fix this problem.
1. There is no such thing as a “designated terrorist organization”. There is only a “designated foreign terrorist organization”, and CAIR isn’t foreign.
2. As far as anyone knows it doesn’t engage in terrorism. It supports terrorism, but that’s protected by the first amendment. It’s strongly suspected of materially supporting designated foreign terrorist organizations, and that isn’t protected and is a felony, but the key word there is “suspected”. The evidence necessary to bring charges has never been found, despite the FBI looking for it. Maybe a new investigation would finally find some, but I doubt it.
The FBI is the wrong agency to look for terrorism here. Put the IRS on it and the job will be finished before lunch.
As a minimum, go back to referring to CAIR as the unindicted terrorist coconspirator the court named them as .
Why is this org not on a terrorist watch list. I don’t think their donor list will be secert long.
My thought exactly.
As far as anyone knows it doesn’t engage in terrorism. And the FBI has never been able to prove that it gives material support to foreign terrorist organizations. It openly gives moral support, but that isn’t and can’t be a crime.
The FBI has never been able to prove that hundreds of classified messages on a personally-owned server in Hillary’s bathroom was a literal security violation. You expect a lot from an organization whose incentives are more perverse than its suspects.
Islamic Advocacy Group CAIR Will Settle Lawsuit Rather Than Name Its Donors.
Partial solution: keep suing CAIR. Its donors will have to cough up more money to settle the lawsuits.
To sue it you need plaintiffs with standing. That’s not easy to find. This plaintiff was one of its own.
Didn’t Obama drone some US citizens suspected of being terrorists?
0bama ordered a military strike on a confirmed enemy of the USA, who was waging war on us, just as any president in war time orders attacks on the enemy, or more commonly delegates this task to his generals.
The fact that the enemy happened to be a US citizen is completely irrelevant. It has never ever been the US military’s practice to check enemy soldiers’ passports before shooting them. Until this case I don’t think anyone had ever come up with the bizarre idea that an enemy soldier can be immune from attack by US forces just because he happens to have a US passport.
Immediately after 9-11 CAIR was very busy scrubbing their web site.
At that time they were under investigation on a very strong suspicion that they’d given material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization (i..e. Hamas). If there was any evidence of this to be found, they successfully hid it, because the government officially gave up on finding enough evidence to charge them.
Not surprising, while Cair may not technically itself be a terrorist group it’s certainly a terrorist-adjacent group – any Islamic wack-a-doodles who were celebrating 9-11 were posting their victory cheers all over the internets, no doubt including the Cair website.
Think Sinn Féin and the IRA during The Troubles, the (self proclaimed peaceful) Sinn Féin had the exact same primary goals as the (not-so-peaceful) IRA. The same wack-a-doodles who supported the IRA also supported Sinn Féin, just not 100% the obverse.
As I recall, all 3 of CAIR’s founders came from IAP, a group shutdown in America for promoting terrorism.
CAIR’s damning internet material was there well before 9-11.
CAIR’s kryptonite has just been identified – their donor list.
Bit of background just to play devil/djin’s advocate, there was/is historical precedence for a US nonprofit to be able to keep it’s donor list private / privileged info – during the civil rights era fights it was not unknown for certain states to sue to get civil rights groups donor lists so as to dox those donors – midnight cross burnings and firebombings by white-clad masked persons to follow.
Cair likes to liken themselves to (the early versions of) groups like the NAACP or ACLU, fighting (peacefully and legally) for their under-attack demographic. Unfortunately, in their actions Cair more closely resembles (imho) the opposition to those groups, the Klans and (real, not imaginary) White supremist groups who also wanted their own donor lists kept private.
They say sunshine is the best disinfectant, if true perhaps it is better to at least make larger donors (say of > $500 and up) to nonprofits public info, they already are disclosed to the IRS I would expect. Add to that foreign donors and govt and NGOs donors, it would certainly be useful to know if Cair gets money – directly or indirectly – from USAID for one instance.
well now, THAT is interesting…..
CAIR = Council to Avoid Islamic Responsibility
Its a pity she settled.
Someone else needs to sue and get to discovery of that donor list. CAIR is a cancer.
How about the Trump Administration being able to get their financials?
By the way, Steve Emerson, author is an expert about CAIR.