Muslim non-profit CAIR forced to reveal funding sources after defamation suit against former employee who claimed group was linked to terrorists

The embattled Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) will reportedly be forced to reveal its funding sources as part of discovery in a defamation suit the group filed against a former employee. 

According to The New York Post, on Monday US Magistrate Judge David Schultz ruled that the controversial organization’s donors, including foreign donors, and any assets owned by the group are all within the “scope of permissible discovery” as part of former chapter leader Lori Saroya’s lawsuit against the Muslim rights group. 

In January, Saroya filed a federal defamation complaint against CAIR after the organization dropped its lawsuit against the former employee, which accused her of a “defamation campaign” against the group for claiming CAIR is funded by terrorist organizations and foreign governments.

Saroya is seeking $75,000 in compensation and an injunction forcing the group to retract a January 2022 press release that she claims defamed her.

CAIR had alleged that Saroya’s statements posted on social media and emailed to the group’s supporters hurt the group’s ability to fundraise. However, in January 2022, the organization dropped the lawsuit over concerns that Saroya’s lawyers would “demand the names of CAIR supporters who have donated to us.” 

On Monday, Saroya’s lawyer Jeffrey Robbins told The Post that the ruling was “the mother of all legal boomerangs.” Robbins said, “It’s a very important ruling…very methodical, very careful, very detailed and very analytical.” 

As a result, CAIR will be forced to “turn over evidence about everything from fundraising practices, such as having raised money from foreign sources and concealed it; whether it deceived donors; whether it mismanaged donor money; whether it retaliated against employees or threatened to retaliate against employees for raising concerns about sexual harassment or the like.” 

The IRS designated tax-exempt nonprofit organization was called out in a September 2013 Justice Department Office of Inspector General’s report for evidence obtained during the 2008 federal case, the largest terror trial in US history, against a Muslim charity in the US the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development that was revealed to have funneled millions of dollars to Hamas. The case “linked CAIR leaders to Hamas, a specially designated terrorist organization, and CAIR was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the case.” 

Last year, the Biden administration scrubbed CAIR from the White House task force on antisemitism after the group’s co-founder, Nihad Awad, said he was “happy” about the atrocities committed by Hamas against Israel on Oct 7, 2023.

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

According to the Anti-Defamation League, "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."