Michigan Senate hopeful Abdul El-Sayed pulled in more than $25,000 from co-signers of a 2012 letter backing Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood and a media purge, and his rival is making it a national security fight.
Reporting this week ties the Democratic candidate’s campaign cash to at least six men who signed that letter more than a decade ago, according to figures first laid out by the Washington Free Beacon and built from federal contribution records.
The money is not abstract. Itemized donations, the letter’s own signatures, and a televised clash with Republican Mike Rogers put the same cast of names in the same frame: a Michigan Senate race, a 2012 push for Mohamed Morsi’s Brotherhood-led government in Egypt, and donors who once put their names on that push.
El-Sayed, who also ran for governor in 2018, has faced repeated questions about Muslim Brotherhood connections on the campaign trail. Rogers used Wednesday night’s debate to turn those questions into a direct challenge about who funds the Democrat and what that money means for U.S. security.
The Free Beacon reported Thursday that El-Sayed has received more than $25,000 from at least six co-signers of the 2012 letter. The letter carried 46 signatures from people described as leaders of the Egyptian community in the United States.
El-Sayed appears on that document himself. He is listed as the 33rd signature, “Dr. Abdul Rahman El-Sayed” of New York, at a time when he was attending medical school at Columbia University.
The letter backed what it called the “revolutionary actions” of Morsi and urged a “purge” of Egypt’s media and police. It went out days after Morsi unilaterally granted himself new powers. Signers also derided critics in America and Europe who opposed the new regime.
That paper trail now sits beside Federal Election Commission contribution data tied to El-Sayed’s committees. The largest named overlap is not a mystery check from nowhere. It is a short list of doctors and community figures who signed in 2012 and wrote checks years later.
Dr. Hesham Gayar stands out on the money side. He works in oncology and proton therapy at Michigan’s Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute and signed the letter as a member of the “Egyptian Foundation.” He gave at least $7,000 to El-Sayed’s Senate run and nearly the same amount to the 2018 gubernatorial campaign, the biggest El-Sayed donor among the letter signers identified in the reporting.
Dr. Hany Saqr, who identified himself with the Egyptian Association in America, contributed at least $1,000 to the Senate campaign. Federal prosecutors, in a filing from a terror-financing case, listed Saqr in a 1990s phone directory of U.S.-based Muslim Brotherhood leaders. Saqr has also blasted Egypt’s current president, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, as a “dog of the Jews” over Sisi’s opposition to the Brotherhood.
Ahmed Shehata, CEO of Islamic Relief USA, donated $500 to El-Sayed’s Senate campaign and another $500 to the 2018 governor bid. In a December 2013 Roll Call opinion piece, Shehata criticized the crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood and called on the United States to reinstate Morsi. A year later he attacked efforts to brand the Brotherhood a terrorist organization.
Other donor doctors who signed the letter trained in Cairo and practice in Michigan and Texas, the same reporting notes, though it does not publish a full name-by-name ledger for every dollar in the $25,000-plus total.
Campaign finance law allows legal contributions from U.S. persons. The political issue Rogers is pressing is not a technical FEC violation. It is whether a Senate candidate should answer for a funding circle that once lined up behind Morsi’s project and a purge of Egyptian media and police.
At the Wednesday night debate, Rogers did not treat the donor list as a side issue. He framed it as a loyalty and security test for anyone seeking a U.S. Senate seat from Michigan.
Rogers said:
"So, being bought off by the Muslim Brotherhood, having donors to his campaign from Hamas that support Hezbollah, is not a problem?"
He pressed further:
"If you are going to go to the United States Senate, we need to know: Are you for America or are you for these terrorist groups overseas? You can grin, and you can smile, and you can talk real pretty, but I’m going to tell you what, that is a risk to our national security."
Those lines are Rogers’s claims about the character of the donor network. The verified record in the Free Beacon account is the letter, the signatures, and the contribution amounts. Hamas and Hezbollah appear in the debate exchange as Rogers’s charge, not as a separate documented finding in the donation article.
Still, the debate made plain what the paper trail already showed: El-Sayed’s critics intend to keep Muslim Brotherhood associations, money, signatures, and family questions alike, at the center of the race through November.
Related coverage has already tracked how Trump labeled El-Sayed a Muslim Brotherhood “con man” in the same Michigan contest, raising the same basic accountability theme Rogers voiced on stage.
Context around 2012 is not ancient trivia for a Senate race. Morsi’s power grab and the Brotherhood’s hold on Egypt’s government were live foreign-policy fights in Washington. A letter from U.S.-based community leaders cheering “revolutionary actions” and a media-and-police purge was a public alignment, not a private prayer group.
El-Sayed’s name on that page, while he was a Columbia medical student listed out of New York, puts him inside that alignment as a signer, not merely as a later recipient of checks. The donors who joined him on the letter then reappeared on his campaign finance reports for the governor’s race and the Senate bid.
Shehata’s later commentary kept the same thread going: reinstate Morsi, resist terrorist designations for the Brotherhood. Saqr’s directory listing and his attack on Sisi add a harder edge to the roster. Gayar’s five-figure pattern across two El-Sayed campaigns makes him the clearest financial bridge from the letter to the present race.
Voters have also seen El-Sayed deny Muslim Brotherhood family ties even as relatives’ posts complicated that message. Donor co-signers are a separate lane from family claims, but both lanes run through the same organization and the same demand for straight answers.
Stack the pieces that are actually on record. A 2012 letter from 46 signers backs Morsi and a purge of Egyptian media and police. El-Sayed is signature No. 33. At least six fellow signers later send his campaigns more than $25,000. One of them is listed in a 1990s Brotherhood leaders directory cited by federal prosecutors. Another runs Islamic Relief USA and spent years defending the Brotherhood in print. A third is El-Sayed’s largest overlapping donor and a Michigan physician.
Rogers used the debate to ask whether that pattern is “not a problem.” The Free Beacon used contribution data and the letter to show the pattern is real. El-Sayed’s campaign still has to persuade Michigan voters that shared signatures and shared donors from that network are irrelevant to a Senate term that will vote on foreign policy, sanctions, and national security nominations.
Press attention on the candidate has not been limited to one outlet’s donor story. Internal newsroom fights over how hard to scrutinize him, including the storm after Bari Weiss pushed a Muslim Brotherhood probe, show how contested the coverage itself has become on the left.
Deleted posts and shifting explanations have followed the same candidate for months. So have denials aimed at national audiences, including when he told NBC his family had no Brotherhood ties as contrary posts resurfaced.
None of that erases the FEC numbers or the 2012 signatures. It frames why Rogers treated the donor list as a character test rather than a bookkeeping footnote.
Senate races are where soft answers on foreign ideological networks usually go to die. Michigan gets to decide whether over $25,000 from fellow Brotherhood-letter co-signers is a closed chapter, or a live warning.
