Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic frontrunner in Michigan's U.S. Senate race, appeared on a 2020 webinar where he endorsed emptying prisons and called for "any and all efforts to get people out of jails and prisons", while sharing the screen with a woman convicted of second-degree murder and a registered sex offender convicted of raping a teenage girl.
The August 2020 event, hosted by the Carceral State Project and the American Friends Service Committee, was billed as a discussion of "the road to decarceration and abolition." The Washington Free Beacon reported that El-Sayed thanked the hosts for "hosting such a critical conversation" and urged the compassionate release of older Michigan prisoners and those deemed at low risk of recidivism.
His co-panelists included LaWanda Hollister, who served 34 years in prison for second-degree murder, and Martin Vargas, a registered sex offender convicted of raping a 17-year-old girl. The American Friends Service Committee, which the Free Beacon describes as a prison abolition group, advertised the event with the hashtags #FreeThemAll and #AbolishPrison.
El-Sayed did not hedge. He framed incarceration itself as the injustice, not the crimes that led to it. In the webinar, he told attendees:
"Every choice we make about incarcerating somebody is about robbing that somebody from the people who love them and the people who need them."
He went further, casting the prison system as a failure of government obligation to the incarcerated:
"Not only are we taking people's rights from them, but also we have failed to provide them the basic means of a dignified life."
And he left no ambiguity about the policy direction he favored:
"Any and all efforts to get people out of jails and prisons and to keep people out of jails and prisons is policy that we need to be investing in."
His campaign did not respond to the Free Beacon's request for comment.
El-Sayed's advocacy came during a period when Michigan and other states were granting compassionate release to thousands of prisoners, including many serving time for violent offenses. The results were not abstract.
Ronald Segers walked out of a Michigan prison in June 2020 under pandemic-related release policies. By December 2020, he had shot his fiancée and her mother.
In February 2021, a Detroit judge ordered the release of John Bass, who had been serving two life sentences for multiple murders. Bass had ordered a hit on his brother-in-law and then murdered the hitman by setting him on fire. A federal judge in Detroit followed in April 2021 by ordering the release of Roger Sweet, who was serving time for murdering his first wife and raping a 16-year-old girl with learning disabilities. Sweet was also suspected of killing his second wife.
These are the kinds of prisoners who benefited from the very policies El-Sayed championed. He did not call for careful, case-by-case review. He called for "any and all efforts" to empty the cells.
The webinar was not an isolated lapse in judgment. Months before the August 2020 event, El-Sayed appeared as a guest on a podcast hosted by Joshua Hoe, a former University of Michigan debate coach and registered sex offender who pleaded guilty to soliciting a 14-year-old girl for sex. El-Sayed told Hoe his "voice is needed" and urged him and other ex-convicts to run for political office.
El-Sayed has also drawn scrutiny for his association with left-wing influencer Hasan Piker, who said "America deserved 9/11" and that Israel is "much worse" than Hamas. That relationship has deepened antisemitism fears in the Michigan Senate race.
He campaigned alongside Amir Makled, a candidate for the University of Michigan Board of Regents who called slain Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah a "martyr."
El-Sayed served on the board of the Sunrise Movement, a left-wing organization that referred to police officers as "fascist pigs" and called to "abolish" police departments. He also endorsed the movement to "defund" police in social media posts during 2020, posts he later deleted, as CNN's KFile team reported.
The deletion fits a broader pattern. El-Sayed has faced questions about claims he made regarding his record on a troubled juvenile jail, where state records told a far different story than his campaign narrative.
El-Sayed leads in most polls ahead of the August 4 Democratic Senate primary, where he faces more moderate rivals Haley Stevens and Mallory McMorrow. The open Michigan Senate seat is considered a toss-up in the general election, making the primary outcome a matter of national consequence.
Republicans have cast El-Sayed as "dangerous" and "extreme." The webinar footage, the deleted social media posts, and the roster of associates give those labels a factual foundation that goes well beyond standard campaign rhetoric.
El-Sayed first ran for Michigan governor in 2018. Since then, his political trajectory has tracked consistently leftward, from defund-the-police advocacy to prison abolition to associations with individuals who celebrate terrorists and solicit minors. His credibility has been challenged on other fronts as well, including questions about whether he accurately represented his medical credentials.
Meanwhile, Bernie Sanders has rallied with El-Sayed in Detroit, lending the progressive establishment's full weight to his candidacy. The national Democratic Party will have to decide whether this is the candidate it wants carrying its banner in a swing state.
El-Sayed sat across a video screen from a convicted murderer and a convicted rapist and told them the real problem was the prison system. He called for "any and all efforts" to release people from incarceration. He did not draw lines. He did not name exceptions. He did not acknowledge victims.
Ronald Segers's fiancée and her mother found out what "any and all efforts" looks like in practice. So did the 16-year-old girl Roger Sweet raped. So did the 17-year-old girl Martin Vargas raped, the same Martin Vargas who sat on that webinar panel while El-Sayed praised the conversation.
Michigan voters heading into the August 4 primary deserve to know exactly what El-Sayed meant, and whether he still means it. His campaign's silence suggests he would rather not say.
When a candidate's most revealing moments are the ones he tries to delete, voters should pay close attention to what he said before the scrubbing started.
