McCain calls accusations against Clinton aide 'sinister'

Several House Republicans, including Representative Michele Bachmann, sent a letter to the State Department in June suggesting that a member of the Secretary of State's staff had ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. Now other Republicans in Congress are criticizing this action.

|
AP Photo/Charles Dharapak
In this file photo House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio participates in a ceremonial swearing in with Rep. Anthony Weiner, D-N.Y., and his wife Huma Abedin on Capitol Hill in Washington. Boehner said that it's dangerous for a fellow Republican to allege that an aide to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has family ties to Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood.

The top Republican in the U.S. Congress on Thursday criticized Representative Michele Bachmann and four other fellow House Republicans for making "pretty dangerous" accusations when they questioned the security clearance of a Muslim aide to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

The comments of House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner came after Senator John McCain, the 2008 Republican presidential nominee, blasted the five lawmakers for seeking an investigation into whether Huma Abedin, Clinton's deputy chief of staff, had connections to the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist political organization.

Boehner, speaking at a regular news briefing, said "accusations like this being thrown around are pretty dangerous." He said he did not know Abedin, but "from everything I know of her, she has a sterling character."

McCain took to the Senate floor on Wednesday to accuse the lawmakers of making a "sinister" attack on Abedin. Following the custom in Congress, he did not name them but left no doubt he was talking about Bachmann, as well as Representatives Louie Gohmert, Trent Franks, Thomas Rooney and Lynn Westmoreland.

They sent a letter in June to the State Department's inspector general suggesting members of Abedin's family may have connections to the Muslim Brotherhood, which the writers said may be seeking access to high levels of the U.S. government.

Most attention has focused on Bachmann, who earlier this year failed in her bid for the Republican presidential nomination. She has long been criticized by fellow Republicans, among others, for controversial comments and factual errors.

Bachmann defended her actions Thursday on the talk show of conservative host Glenn Beck. "If my family members were associated with Hamas, a terrorist organization, that alone could be sufficient to disqualify me from getting a security clearance," Bachmann said, according to a transcript of her remarks. "So all we did is ask, did the federal government look into her family associations before she got a high level security clearance."

There is no evidence connecting Abedin or her family to any terrorist organization, McCain stressed in his Senate speech.

"Rarely do I come to the floor of this institution to discuss particular individuals," McCain said. "But I understand how painful and injurious it is when a person's character, reputation, and patriotism are attacked without concern for fact or fairness."

Preposterous 

He called Abedin "an intelligent, upstanding, hard-working, and loyal servant of our country and our government, who has devoted countless days of her life to advancing the ideals of the nation she loves and looking after its most precious interests."

A State Department spokesman said Clinton "very much values" Abedin's "wise counsel and support" and called the allegations preposterous.

McCain was supported on Wednesday by Edward Rollins, a prominent Republican strategist who worked on Bachmann's primary campaign.

On the Fox News website, Rollins wrote that he was "fully aware that she sometimes has difficulty with her facts," but said "this is downright vicious and reaches the late Senator Joe McCarthy level," a reference to the U.S. senator from Wisconsin who rose and then fell accusing government officials and others of being communists in the 1950s.

"....Shame on you, Michele!" Rollins wrote, adding that she should apologize to Abedin, Clinton and "to the millions of hard working, loyal, Muslim Americans for your wild and unsubstantiated charges."

The lawmakers' June 13 letter, which they released publicly, asserted that the State Department had recently taken action "enormously favorable" to the Muslim Brotherhood and that its interests could pose a security risk for the United States.

The letter cited a security study by an outside group alleging that three members' of Abedin's family, including her father who died two decades ago, and her mother and brother were linked to operatives or organizations of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Abedin is married to former U.S. Representative Anthony Weiner of New York, a Jew.

(Additional reporting by John Crawley; Editing by Fred Barbash and Vicki Allen)

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to McCain calls accusations against Clinton aide 'sinister'
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Latest-News-Wires/2012/0719/McCain-calls-accusations-against-Clinton-aide-sinister
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe