(Daily Signal)—A district court judge ordered the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which bills itself as America’s largest Muslim civil rights group, to hand over donor information to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.
CAIR “will produce documents sufficient to identify the identities of any foreign donor who has given donations … of $5,000 or more to” the CAIR Foundation and to the Washington Trust Foundation, an entity established to support CAIR, Judge Alan D. Albright of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas wrote in the order Thursday.
Abbott celebrated the order on X.
“I demanded CAIR give us its donor list, donee list, and details for [CAIR Executive Director] Nihad Awad’s travel to 9 countries hosting Islamic terror,” the governor wrote. “A federal court granted my request.”
CAIR emphasized that Abbott had requested more information than the judge ordered CAIR to hand over.
“Contrary to Greg Abbott’s claim, a federal court just rejected his attempt to go on a McCarthy-era fishing expedition into our civil rights work,” CAIR told The Daily Signal in a statement Thursday.
“Mr. Abbott wanted the names of every American who has donated to CAIR over the past ten years, but the court ruled that he can only review the names of any foreigners who may have donated to us from 2021 to 2024 above a certain monetary limit,” the group noted. “So be it.”
“That Governor Abbott would try to celebrate and distort an order in which the vast majority of his discovery was rejected underscores his ‘proclamation’ is nothing more than bad political theater,” CAIR added. “Blatantly lying about a court ruling is unacceptable.”
CAIR a Foreign Terror Group?
The case traces back to November, when Abbott, a Republican, formally designated CAIR a foreign terrorist organization, authorizing state actions against the group. CAIR condemned the designation as “defamatory” and “lawless,” and filed a lawsuit in response.
Abbott’s proclamation notes the FBI’s previous finding that CAIR was founded as a “front group” for “Hamas and its support network,” and that CAIR was an “unidentified co-conspirator” in the 2009 terrorism financing case involving the Holy Land Foundation. It mentions the FBI suspending formal contact with CAIR in 2008 and the Biden administration removing CAIR’s name from documents in 2023 as a means of distancing itself from the group.
CAIR vehemently contested Abbott’s claims. “We have consistently condemned all forms of unjust violence, including hate crimes, ethnic cleansing, genocide and terrorismopens in a new tab. In fact, we condemn terrorism so oftenopens in a new tab that ISIS once put a target on our national executive director,” the group said.
CAIR has long disputed claims of the kind Abbott cited.
“CAIR is not ‘the Wahhabi lobby,’ a ‘front-group for Hamas,’ a ‘fund-raising arm for Hezbollah,’ ‘part of a wider conspiracy overseen by the Muslim Brotherhood’ or any of the other false and misleading associations our detractors seek to smear us with,” the organization notes.
CAIR admits that it was included on a list of unindicted co-conspirators in the Holy Land Foundation case, but notes that there were more than 300 other organizations on the list.
CAIR accused Abbott of violating its free speech and free association rights under the First Amendment, and its due process rights under the 14th Amendment. Abbott denied these accusations and filed a motion to compel “discovery,” the process by which parties to a suit can demand documents from one another to prove their side of the case.
Albright’s Order
Albright, an appointee of President Donald Trump, went through each of Abbott’s requests and ordered CAIR to hand over documents related to them. As CAIR noted, the judge granted limited access to CAIR documents.
Abbott had demanded the identities of all CAIR donors in the past 10 years who gave $5,000 or more, but the judge only granted the part of his order relating to foreign donors.
The Supreme Court has long upheld Americans’ rights to donate to charitable causes anonymously, but the same rights do not extend to foreign donors.
Albright also ordered CAIR to hand over documents identifying any foreign recipient of $2,500 or more from the CAIR Foundation or the Washington Trust in any single year between Jan. 1, 2021, and Dec. 31, 2024.
He also ordered CAIR to search for and produce documents requesting or receiving foreign funds and documents identifying the travel itineraries of Awad, CAIR’s executive director, to specific foreign countries during which he met with individuals regarding CAIR, the Washington Trust Foundation, Hamas, or the Muslim Brotherhood. Abbott had requested similar documents from two other leaders.
Albright ordered CAIR to perform a “reasonably diligent search” and produce documents regarding solicitation or receipt of foreign funds from any foreign source.
While CAIR frames the orders as a partial victory, the judge did require the Muslim group to hand over a large amount of evidence.
