Marco Rubio says US working to designate Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization

Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced Tuesday that the United States is actively working to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization.

In an interview with Sid Rosenberg on Sid and Friends in the Morning, Rubio was asked about the support New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani is receiving from groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood. Rosenberg pressed Rubio on whether the administration would move to officially designate the group, and possibly the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), as terrorist entities.

"Yeah, all of that is in the works," Rubio said, noting that the Brotherhood operates in multiple branches, each requiring its own designation. He stressed that the process is lengthy and must be thorough, but confirmed that it is a priority. “We are constantly reviewing for groups to designate, for what they are: supporters of terrorists, maybe terrorists themselves. We haven’t done this in a long time, so we’ve got a lot of catch-up to do. And you’ve mentioned a couple names, particularly the Muslim Brotherhood, that are of grave concern.”

The move follows increased calls from lawmakers to scrutinize groups with alleged terror ties. Earlier in August, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AK) urged the Internal Revenue Service to investigate CAIR’s tax-exempt status, citing “longstanding evidence” of its connections to both Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood.

In a letter to IRS Commissioner Billy Long, Cotton argued that CAIR’s public image as a civil rights organization belies its deeper associations. He noted that in the largest terrorism financing case in US history, CAIR was listed as part of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestine Committee.

According to The New York Post, previous court proceedings have shown links between the Council on American-Islamic Relations Foundation Inc. (CAIR) and the terrorist organization Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. In March, CAIR settled a case with a former employee rather than open its financial books to reveal its sources of foreign funding.

CAIR, which presents itself as a civil rights group focused on advocating for Muslim Americans, was identified by the Justice Department's Office of the Inspector General as an unindicted co-conspirator in the United States v. Holy Land Foundation terrorism financing case, the largest terror financing trial in US history, as part of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestine Committee, an entity formed to support Hamas in the US. According to government evidence, the case “linked CAIR leaders to Hamas, a specially designated terrorist organization.”

In a November 2023 speech, CAIR’s national executive director and co-founder, Nihad Awad, said he was “happy to see” Palestinians “breaking the siege and throwing down the shackles of their own land,” in reference to Hamas’ October 7 massacre of Israeli civilians that left 1,200 dead and over 250 taken hostage. The comments led the Biden administration to remove CAIR from its White House task force on antisemitism shortly thereafter.

Founder and director of the Investigative Project on Terrorism, Steve Emerson, previously said that “CAIR was created as a Hamas front group and still functions as a propaganda arm of Hamas to this day.”

The Anti-Defamation League has said that “Antisemitism is in the DNA of CAIR. It is part of CAIR’s intrinsic fiber. CAIR leaders often traffic in antisemitic and anti-Zionist rhetoric...some of its leaders have cultivated suspicion among the public toward a wide array of American Jewish institutions.”