Attacking Ilhan Omar as ‘Qatari asset’ is part of smear campaign to tarnish Democratic Party ahead of 2020 elections, claims report
Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar is not new to controversy but of late, the attacks against her accusing the Somalian-born lawmaker as a foreign agent have been major. Some Republican candidates running for next year’s Congressional elections, including her own opponent in Minnesota, have even demanded that Omar be hanged because they think she has committed an act of treason by passing on information to countries like Qatar and Iran.
According to a November report in the Jerusalem Post, a Florida court has been told that Omar was recruited by a foreign government and received funding from abroad. She was accused of passing sensitive information to Iran, one of the US’ prime enemies, through intermediaries.
The claims against the 38-year-old came during testimony by Alan Bender, a Kuwaiti-born Canadian businessman who was producing evidence in the trial of Sheikh Khalid bin Hamad al-Theni, the brother of the emir of Qatar, who is accused of asking his American bodyguard to kill two persons and holding a US citizen as hostage. Speaking from Toronto via a video link, Bender informed the Florida court that he met with some top Qatari officials, including the emir’s secretary for security affairs. Bender added that these officials revealed to him about Omar, saying if it was not for Qatar’s cash, she would remain just another black Somalian refugee in the US engaging in charity work.
He also added that the officials asked him to rope in American politicians and journalists as Qatari assets and when he tried to refuse, he was told that a number of prominent figures were already on the work and they included Omar.
Omar’s office has denied these allegations and counterclaimed that these were run by mouthpieces run by Saudi Arabia, a close US ally and a staunch opponent to countries like Qatar and Iran.
Bender’s testimony also came under questioning but he told the Post that the information published by the news outlet about Omar and Qatar to be 100 percent accurate.
Bender revealed the other side of the story, as per the investigative report
But another revelation by the Krassenstein brothers Ed and Brian — who are known to be strong critics of President Donald Trump — has hinted at yet another twist in the tale. According to an investigative report prepared by them over four months, Bender has admitted that those who are close to the case and allegedly coordinating with US Prosecutor Attorney Rebecca Castaneda in the Hamad al-Theni case, were making forged documents on Omar.
In their report, the Krassenstein brothers alleged a group of people is conducting an apparent smear campaign against Omar, calling her a Qatari agent who is passing on information to Iran. They came up with the name of Imam Mohammad Tawhidi, who is known on Twitter as the “Imam of Peace” against whom they have also moved Australian courts over his claims that they too are Qatari agents.
The Krassenstein brothers, who said their family was targeted after they pursued the Omar case, added that they came to know Bender in late 2018 while pursuing a story related to the Middle East. They said Bender was found to be favorable towards Qatar and against Trump. Around July this year, Bender reportedly contacted the Krassensteins to bring the focus on Tawhidi. He claimed that the latter was related to people in the Republican Party and countries like Saudi and the UAE to target Omar and political activist Linda Sarsour. Names that were found to be connected to the “Imam of Peace” included among others, Vice President Mike Pence and Jared Kushner, the investigative report cited materials to say.
The investigators claimed to have reached out to Tawhidi for a response but the latter came up with quite a distasteful answer, according to them.
According to Bender, the group was working to help Trump in the 2020 election as well as Saudi Arabia and the UAE by running a campaign against Omar since she often speaks out against these countries’ human rights records. He said Tawhidi revealed crucial information to him because he knew something about the former that could send him behind the bars, the report added.
The investigators however mentioned in their report that most of the claims made by Bender were not verified and could have been false. “The main point of posting these claims, especially regarding Tawhidi, is that Alan Bender is the same man that Tawhidi had been praising, working with and using as the ‘honest’ Canadian businessman who has revealed Omar’s alleged ties to Qatar,” it added.
The Kuwaiti-Canadian businessman even claimed that since Omar is vocal over Saudi and the Emirates’ human rights records as she is against Trump, the group working against him is of the opinion that she is favoring Qatar. They thus feel that by targeting Omar, they could hit Qatar and none other than the president will be happy with that considering it as a step towards the removal of the ‘Squad’ member from the Congress. He also claimed that the Saudis showered Tawhidi with cash.
Bender also spoke about people funding anti-Omar campaign
Bender also took some names as people who are funding the anti-Omar campaign and one among them is even acting on behalf of the Israeli Embassy, the report said. He said the group’s agenda included making Omar the face of the Democratic Party and then seeing her coming under attack from none other than the president. The goal is to hit the Dems’ image by destroying Omar. The interesting part is — as the report said, citing Bender’s claim — after Tawhidi said the goal of the group was to make Omar the face of the Democratic Party, Trump also started claiming Omar as the face of his opponent party and not Nancy Pelosi and Maxine Water as he claimed earlier.
In another shocking revelation, Bender claimed to have been offered in July a whopping $20 million to reveal Qatar’s secrets to the Saudis and this happened before he changed his stance to attacking Doha and Omar. The Krassenstein brothers said in their report that they had met another individual, Abdullah Al-Saleh, who has ties with Qatar and other Middle Eastern nations, to know more about the case and when he was asked about Omar and Qatar, he said it is a dirty work of Mohammad Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the Crown Prince of the UAE.
The Krassenstein brothers, who produced all kinds of evidence to back their report in the form of phone conversations, text messages and audio recordings, told MEA WorldWide: “This plot appears to have gone very deep and Alan Bender made some eerily precise predictions about Donald Trump's future tweets and Israel's actions toward Ilhan Omar. Most of these texts we received were prior to the public finding out about the plot, so it appears to show the inner workings.”
They have already shared much of the information of their report with the FBI, Department of State, at the request of the US Embassy in Qatar and also Omar’s office.