The father-in-law of Abdul el Sayed has donated the most money as an individual contributor to the main super PAC supporting the Democratic Senate nominee for Michigan. He also holds senior positions within Islamic groups that were previously flagged as collaborators in a federal terrorism financing case.
Tayeb Jukaku, a doctor, currently sits on the governing bodies of two Islamic organizations that were named as unindicted co-conspirators in the 2007 criminal case, USA v. Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, which resulted in the convictions of the foundation’s founders on terrorism-related charges. At trial, officials argued that the Holy Land Foundation, which was the largest Muslim charity in the United States at the time, provided material support to terrorists under the guise of humanitarian aid. Five of Holy Land’s leaders were ultimately found guilty of funneling more than $12 million to Hamas.
Jukaku is a member of the Islamic Society of North America’s founders committee and a board director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations’s Michigan chapter, as reported by the Washington Free Beacon. In the Holy Land proceedings, ISNA and CAIR were identified by name on the Justice Department’s list of unindicted co-conspirators or “joint venturers.” According to federal prosecutors, ISNA was one of the domestic affiliates part of the Muslim Brotherhood’s U.S. infrastructure, while CAIR had intimate connections to the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestine Committee.
CAIR grew out of the Islamic Association for Palestine, a group that was founded by Hamas leadership. Muslim Brotherhood planning documents identified IAP as one of its fronts in America.
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In 1993, the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestine Committee organized a secret conference in Philadelphia that was wiretapped by the FBI. According to a transcript of the meeting, two IAP officials named Nihad Awad and Omar Ahmad were recorded strategizing with leaders of organizations under the Muslim Brotherhood umbrella on how to establish a new, purportedly “neutral” activist entity for shaping U.S. policy and public opinion in support of Hamas because “it is known who we are” and “we are marked.”
Awad and Ahmad co-founded CAIR a year later, with Ahmad serving as CAIR’s chairman until 2005 and Awad remaining its executive director to this day.
In 2009, a federal court on appeal upheld both ISNA’s and CAIR’s designations as unindicted co-conspirators due to “ample evidence” linking them to Hamas, the Holy Land Foundation, and IAP, though it ruled that the government’s list of collaborators should not have been published. “Therefore, the Court finds it appropriate to seal the entire list of unindicted coconspirators but stops short of ordering CAIR, ISNA and [the North American Islamic Trust]’s names expunged from any documents filed or produced by the government,” the ruling said.
Jukaku, who has been serving on ISNA’s founding body since at least 2007, and other committee members are required to contribute a minimum of $5,000 annually to ISNA in addition to the Founders Legacy Fund. ISNA’s founders committee ensures ISNA’s financial stability by making direct contributions and providing guidance to the ISNA board of directors.
As a financial supporter of his son-in-law’s Senate run, Jukaku has contributed a total of $300,000 to Fighting for Michigan, the super PAC specially formed to elect el Sayed to the U.S. Senate, making Jukaku the pro-el Sayed super PAC’s top individual donor to date.
The only other highest-paying contributor, matching Jukaku’s donations, is California-headquartered Institute for Middle East Understanding, an anti-Israel organization whose communications director served as legal adviser to the Palestine Liberation Organization.
Fighting for Michigan operates out of a townhouse in Silver Spring, Maryland, a suburb near the nation’s capital. Salary receipts show that Peter Sarasohn, the political consultant who runs the super PAC, is a paid Bernie Sanders operative receiving roughly $3,000 a month from the Vermont socialist’s reelection committee. The four-bedroom townhouse listed as Fighting for Michigan’s mailing address in campaign finance records appears to be Sarasohn’s home, according to Sarasohn’s own past contributions to other left-wing PACs.
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Sarasohn, formerly the budget director of Sanders’s 2020 presidential campaign, has set up bank accounts for Fighting for Michigan and Troy Jackson’s newly created Senate fundraising committee in Maine at the same Wells Fargo branch based in Washington, D.C.
Ahead of the party’s Aug. 4 primary, el Sayed exchanged blows with his sole Democratic opponent, Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI), over outside spending groups, particularly foreign actors, pouring money into the head-to-head race.
Fighting for Michigan was created specifically to boost el Sayed’s electoral chances, although it claims its efforts are “conducted independently and are not authorized by, coordinated with, or made in concert with Abdul El-Sayed.” The pop-up super PAC has deployed a multimillion-dollar marketing campaign explicitly in support of el Sayed, with more than $2.9 million spent so far in digital advertisements, direct mailers, voter-targeted text messaging, and TV promotions.
Some Jewish advocacy groups have expressed concerns about outside meddling in the highly competitive Senate contest, suspecting that well-funded actors are seeking to influence U.S. policy toward Israel through the election process.
Following el Sayed’s victory over establishment-backed Stevens, the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy is urging greater scrutiny of the financial and organizational networks orbiting his candidacy.
“Abdul El-Sayed’s emergence as a nominee for the United States Senate makes transparency regarding the networks financing and surrounding his political rise essential to the integrity of the democratic process itself,” Dr. Charles Asher Small, the founder and executive director of ISGAP, said in a statement shared with the Washington Examiner. “Publicly available reporting and federal records raise serious questions.”
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Referring to Jukaku’s contributions to the el Sayed-aligned super PAC and his ties to the two Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated organizations, Small added, “This does not establish wrongdoing by El-Sayed, nor should political candidates be judged simply by the actions of their relatives.”
“But when substantial political financing intersects with organizations carrying this well-documented institutional history, the candidate has an obligation to address these concerns directly and provide clear answers,” Small said. “The people of Michigan, the Democratic Party and the American public deserve full transparency regarding the ideological and financial networks seeking influence at the highest levels of government.”
The Washington Examiner contacted el Sayed’s campaign for comment.