The U.S. ambassador to the Netherlands said in 2016 that longtime Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin had “egregious” ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, according to a new report.
Fact-checkers have found that claim to be false.
“We need to recognize that a lot more has come out about Huma and a lot of this stuff has been known by the Investigative Project on Terrorism, and I’ve talked with Steve [Emerson] about this extensively,” Pete Hoekstra said at a 2016 conference, according to CNN’s KFile.
Hoekstra also said there were more examples of links between the U.S. government and the Muslim Brotherhood.
“We don’t believe, as egregious as what Huma Abedin and her connections and her family are, again it’s why we’re doing what we’ve done, the research, we think there are much better examples of making the connection between the US government and this administration and their connections with the Muslim Brotherhood.”
The claims about Abedin and her family have been widely debunked. A Washington Post fact-checker in 2016 gave the claim that Abedin has ties to the Egypt-based Islamist group “four Pinocchios.”
“Abedin has lived in the United States for 23 years, working in the White House, the Senate and the State Department,” the Post wrote. “Vague suggestions of suspicious-sounding connections to her parents don’t pass the laugh test, even at the flimsiest standard of guilt by association.”
Abedin has long been the subject of attacks from some Republican officials.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) came to her defense in 2012 after then-Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) and four other House GOP lawmakers accused her of aiding the Muslim Brotherhood.
“When anyone, not least a member of Congress, launches specious and degrading attacks against fellow Americans on the basis of nothing more than fear of who they are and ignorance of what they stand for, it defames the spirit of our nation, and we all grow poorer because of it,” McCain said from the Senate floor.
“These attacks on Huma have no logic, no basis and no merit. And they need to stop now.”