Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed told NBC he and his family had no Muslim Brotherhood ties, then old posts from his half-sister described the opposite.
On Sunday's "Meet the Press," NBC host Kristen Welker pressed the Democratic Michigan Senate candidate on claims his family had connections to the Muslim Brotherhood.
Fox News reported he denied any personal or family ties on air. The denial now faces scrutiny in Michigan's Senate race after his half-sister's 2012 and 2013 posts described family links to the group.
Welker followed up, "No, you don't have any ties, and your family doesn't?" He denied it again.
El-Sayed then suggested Republican opponent Mike Rogers was floating Islamophobic attacks against him and his family.
Critics are accusing him of lying to Welker. His campaign says the questions are a bad-faith attack on his faith and family.
El-Sayed's half-sister, University of Chicago professor Eman Abdelhadi, wrote the posts on X. Fox News said the Washington Free Beacon first reported a 2012 message about their mother, Fatten Elkomy.
Abdelhadi wrote:
"Had an amazing talk with my mom about her activism in the Muslim Brotherhood during the early 70s while she was in college #respect"
Elkomy had attended Egypt's Alexandria University. Fox News cited a Brookings Institution report that the campus had strong Muslim Brotherhood activity in the 1970s.
Abdelhadi did not stop at her mother's college years. In another 2012 post, she described the family's history in broader terms.
"My family has long been MB, but I've always felt that it has navigated the political sphere poorly/destructively."
In 2013, she wrote that she was praying for family members who support the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and told them to lie low and stay safe.
Fox News did not present those posts as proof that El-Sayed himself joined the Muslim Brotherhood. It did present them as the record now being set against his television denial.
An unnamed El-Sayed campaign spokesperson sent Fox News a statement after the interview. It cast Rogers as the problem and did not address Abdelhadi's posts point by point.
"Abdul is a dad and a doctor. He has spent his entire career working to keep Michiganders healthy and safe. Independent fact checkers have repeatedly debunked Mike’s lies, but their campaign continues to use bad faith attacks on Abdul's faith and family. Mike wants to distract from Trump’s agenda that is terrorizing Michigan families at the pump and at the grocery store."
The campaign has also said the Muslim Brotherhood accusations have been "debunked as racist and untrue." It did not name those fact checkers in the statement Fox News published.
Rogers's own words were not included. NBC News did not immediately respond to a Fox News Digital request for comment.
What Michigan voters have in public is simpler than the spin. El-Sayed said no. His half-sister already wrote that their mother spoke of Brotherhood activism in college, that the family "has long been MB," and that relatives in Egypt supported the group.
A Senate candidate can call a question bigotry. He still has to live with the answer he gave on national television.
