Documenting the activities of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) as an unregistered foreign agent

November 12, 2012: Last Friday, the Law Offices of David Yerushalmi, P.C. and the American Freedom Law Center (AFLC) filed a devastating legal brief supported by hundreds of pages of evidence, asking a federal judge to find the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) liable to five of its former clients for fraud, breach of fiduciary duty, and intentional infliction of emotional distress.  The legal brief demonstrates beyond any reasonable doubt that CAIR is a criminal organization that deceptively holds itself out to the public as the nation’s largest Muslim-American civil rights organization.

The brief and supporting evidence were filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in two companion cases, Saiyed v. CAIR and Lopez v. CAIR, in which David Yerushalmi is lead counsel.  The brief and supporting evidence overwhelmingly demonstrate that CAIR was involved in a massive criminal fraud and cover-up that injured numerous client-victims who had looked to CAIR for legal assistance, yet the CAIR “attorney” allegedly handling their cases was in fact not an attorney.

Yerushalmi, who is also Co-Founder and Senior Counsel of AFLC, commented, “The evidence has long suggested that CAIR is an organization set up by the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas to further its aims of stealth Jihad in the United States,” referring to the fact that CAIR was named by the federal government as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism financing trial.  “According to the facts that are carefully laid out in our legal brief and fully supported by the record evidence,” Yerushalmi explained, “CAIR has engaged in a massive criminal fraud in which numerous CAIR clients have been victimized, and because of the CAIR cover-up many still don’t realize it.  The fact that CAIR has victimized Muslims and non-Muslims alike demonstrates that it is only looking out for itself and its ongoing efforts to bilk donors out of millions of dollars of charitable donations thinking they are supporting a legitimate organization.”

Five former clients of CAIR filed the two lawsuits in federal court alleging common law and statutory fraud, breach of fiduciary duty, and intentional infliction of emotional distress against CAIR.  These two lawsuits followed an earlier lawsuit which had also alleged that CAIR’s fraudulent conduct amounted to racketeering, a federal RICO crime.  In that case, the court dismissed the RICO counts, concluding that CAIR’s conduct as alleged was fraudulent but not a technical violation of RICO.  The two civil lawsuits were filed by Yerushalmi on January 6, 2010, and because they arise out of the same facts, the cases were consolidated.

The supporting evidence, which was compiled after more than a year and a half of contentious discovery that involved numerous document requests, motions to compel the production of documents that CAIR was concealing, and multiple depositions of high-ranking CAIR officials, shows that Morris Days, the “Resident Attorney” and “Civil Rights Manager” at the now defunct CAIR-MD/VA chapter in Herndon, Virginia, was in fact not an attorney and that he failed to provide legal services for clients who came to CAIR for legal representation.  The evidence also shows that CAIR knew of this fraud and purposefully conspired with Days to keep the CAIR clients from discovering that their legal matters were being mishandled or not handled at all.  While Yerushalmi and AFLC represent the five plaintiffs in these two lawsuits, three of whom are Muslim Americans, according to CAIR’s internal documents, there were many more victims of the CAIR fraud scheme.

As set forth in the court filings, CAIR knew or should have known that Days was not a lawyer when it hired him.  But, like many organizations accused of wrongdoing, things got worse when CAIR officials were confronted with clear evidence of Days’ fraudulent conduct.  Rather than come clean and attempt to rectify past wrongs, CAIR conspired with Days to conceal and further the fraud.  To this end, CAIR officials purposefully concealed the truth about Days from the clients, law enforcement, and the media.  When CAIR did receive calls from irate clients about Days’ failure to provide competent legal services, CAIR fraudulently deceived them about Days’ relationship with CAIR, suggesting that he was never actually employed by CAIR.

Robert Muise, co-counsel in the lawsuit and Co-Founder and Senior Counsel of AFLC, commented: “The overwhelming evidence marshaled in this case will finally put to rest the myth fabricated by CAIR’s PR machine and perpetrated by a complicit media that this is a legitimate Muslim-American civil rights organization.  This lawsuit strips away CAIR’s veil of legitimacy.”

American Freedom Law Center Resources:

Press Release

Memo (Brief) (PDF)

Facts (Brief) (PDF)

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The CAIR Observatory is a participatory open-source online research center developed to investigate the foreign funding, foreign direction and domestic political influence operations of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) in the United States of America.

This site documents many questionable actions on the part of the Council on American-Islamic relations (CAIR), but the unifying concept is that CAIR is acting as a foreign agent.  The Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) requires any agent of a foreign principal- including any foreign states, political parties, corporations, non-governmental organizations and individuals- to register with the U.S. government as a foreign agent.

The initial result of our ongoing investigation is “CAIR and the Foreign Agents Registration Act”, an analysis of public-source evidence dating from the foundation of the organization in 1994 through the present day.

The analysis in its current version documents that CAIR has:

• Received at least $2,792,203 in Contributions, Income and Money from foreign principals in the form of 11 distinct transactions
  

• Received a $2,106,251 mortgage loan from a foreign principal for their Washington, D.C. headquarters
  

• Secured the promise of at least $54,500,000 in pledges from foreign principals

• Met and coordinated with foreign principals on at least 35 occasions

• Engaged in more than 100 political influence operations on behalf of foreign principals in the United States

The analysis is fully referenced with links to documents that are almost exclusively hosted or mirrored within the CAIR Observatory site itself, guaranteeing their fidelity and permanence. It will continue to grow over time as new CAIR activities as an unregistered foreign agent are discovered and documented.

We have organized the documentation of CAIR’s FARA violations into 3 categories:

• (FF – Foreign Funding) : Accepting Contributions, Income, Money or Things of Value from foreign principals
• (MC – Meetings and Coordination) : Meeting and coordinating with foreign principals
• (IO – Influence Operations) : Attempting to influence United States policy on behalf of those foreign principals

An American entity engaged in such activities is required to register under FARA.  Indeed thousands of American entities have registered under FARA and continued to operate legally, but CAIR has operated in this capacity since its founding in 1994 and has failed to properly identify itself to the Department of Justice and the American public.

At the CAIR Observatory you can also:

• Educate yourself about the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).

• Study a comprehensive collection of CAIR’s publicly available financial records.

• View our archive of CAIR Action Alerts which includes thousands of entries sent to the CAIR email list between September 6, 2001 and February 13, 2007.

• Explore the “Categories” column  on the right.  You will find the documents underlying the 3 main FARA violation categories (FF, MC, IO) sorted by Country, Individual and Organization to round out the multi-dimensional view of CAIR’s impact on the American political landscape.  In addition we maintain chronological categories archiving CAIR’s Action Alerts, Chapters, Financial Records, Fundraising Banquets, Membership Numbers, Real Estate Records, and Statements About Foreign Donations.  Each document has a “post date” that matches the date associated with the document itself (or the closest approximation when the exact date is not known).  Clicking on any category will bring up a chronological list (newest to oldest) of that document type.

• Visit the Archives for a list of all of our diverse documents and you can literally follow all aspects of the history of CAIR as it unfolded in chronological order.

• Have internet access, a little spare time, and an interest in investigating the Muslim Brotherhood’s activities in America?  Browse our Open Topics and you can make a contribution to our research.

This is Version 1.0.  In Version 2.0 we will be adding:

• A Legal section including historical and ongoing legal action against CAIR

• A Legislators section chronicling the courageous efforts of U.S. politicians who have been exemplary in their efforts to expose CAIR’s activities

• A Lawfare section including legal cases initiated by CAIR to intimidate others

• Additional IRS tax documents for CAIR’s national office and chapters

• An OIC Observatory resource

Our  goal is to build a model for researching and compiling evidence of illegal behavior by Muslim Brotherhood front organizations or organizations operating as foreign agents for the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) and its member states in the United States. We encourage every concerned citizen to assist in the compilation and analysis of open source evidence.  We welcome visitors to contact us with links, information and suggestions to expand the scope of this website.