ALERT: at approximately 7:00 p.m. this evening, Nihad Awad, Executive Director of CAIR, was served a summons at the CAIR 14th Annual Banquet – onstage – by Dave Gaubatz. The dinner is ongoing and viewers here will be able to see the Youtube video which was edited and uploaded to Youtube immediately after the dessert course.
CAIR Sued by Former Clients for Racketeering,
Fraud, & Breach of Fiduciary Duties
For more information:
David Yerushalmi, Esq.
Law Offices of David Yerushalmi
ContactYerushalmiLaw@verizon.net
646.262.0500
November 24, 2008 – Washington, DC: Four clients of the Council on Islamic-American Relations (CAIR) have filed a federal civil complaint alleging criminal fraud and racketeering against CAIR, a self-described public interest civil rights law firm. The lawsuit also names CAIR’s national leadership as individual defendants.
The defendants were served with the complaint and summons to appear while attending the CAIR 14th Annual Dinner Sunday night in Arlington, Virginia. Congressman Ellison (D-Minn) was a guest speaker at this affair.
The lawsuit, filed in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, alleges that Morris Days, the “Resident Attorney” and “Manager for Civil Rights” 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 assistance and who had paid for CAIR legal services.
While attorney David Yerushalmi represents the four plaintiffs in this particular lawsuit, two of whom are African American Muslims, the complaint alleges that according to CAIR internal documents, there were hundreds of victims of the CAIR-Days fraud scheme.
According to the complaint, CAIR failed to conduct a background check on Days prior to hiring him and when they did discover his massive fraud, they immediately set about to cover it up. CAIR officials purposefully concealed the truth about Days from their clients, law enforcement, the Virginia and D.C. state bar associations, and the media. When CAIR did get irate calls from clients about Days’ failure to provide competent legal services, CAIR fraudulently deceived their clients about Days’ relationship to CAIR, suggesting he was never actually employed by CAIR, and even concealed the fact that CAIR had fired him for criminal fraud.
“The evidence has long suggested that CAIR is a criminal organization set up by the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas to further its aims of stealth Jihad in the U.S.,” Mr. Yerushalmi said referring to the fact that CAIR has been named by the federal government as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terror financing trial.
“But our investigation and this complaint makes clear that CAIR’s criminal activities know no bounds,” Yerushalmi continued.
“According to the facts as carefully laid out in this complaint,” Yerushalmi explained, “CAIR has engaged in a massive cover-up of a criminal fraud in which literally hundreds of CAIR clients have been victimized and because of the CAIR cover-up they still don’t realize it. The fact that CAIR has victimized Muslims and non-Muslims alike demonstrates that CAIR is only looking out for CAIR and its ongoing effort to bilk donors out of millions of dollars of charitable donations thinking they are supporting a legitimate organization.”
The complaint also alleges that in addition to covering up the Days fraud scheme, CAIR officials in D.C. forced angry clients who were demanding a return of their legal fees to sign a release that bought the client-victims’ silence by prohibiting them from informing law enforcement or the media about the CAIR-Days fraud. According to the agreement, if the “settling” clients said anything to anyone about the fraud scheme, CAIR would be able to sue them for $25,000.
This enforced code of silence left hundreds of CAIR client-victims in the dark such that to this day they have not learned that Days is not an attorney and that he had not filed the legal actions on their behalf for which Days and CAIR publicly claimed credit.
The four plaintiffs contacted their attorney David Yerushalmi only after they had spoken to Dave Gaubatz, a private researcher who had been investigating CAIR for its connections to the Muslim Brotherhood and its ties to global jihad. Had Gaubatz not informed the plaintiffs of the fraud, they would still be under the impression that Days was a competent attorney representing their legal interests in various lawsuits and administrative proceedings.
The complaint identifies CAIR as a racketeering enterprise under the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), which is a criminal racketeering statute that allows victims to sue the defendants in civil court. In addition to damages, the plaintiffs are seeking injunctive relief under this and other statutes to shut down CAIR and to prevent the individual defendants from engaging in public interest legal work in the future.
The named defendants are: the Council on American-Islamic Relations Action Network Inc. (dba CAIR); Nihad Awad aka Nihad Hammad who serves as executive director of CAIR National; Parvez Ahmed who was the chairman of the board of CAIR National during the relevant time period; Tahra Goraya who was the national director of CAIR but who has since resigned; Khadijah Athman who is the manager of the “civil rights” division of CAIR; and Nadhira al-Khalili, Esq., who is in-house legal counsel for CAIR.
According to the complaint, CAIR’s in-house Washington, D.C.-based attorney Khalili was directly involved in taking the legal files out of the CAIR Virginia office and concealing them in the D.C. office.
Also named as defendants are Ibrahim Hooper and Amina Rubin, CAIR’s director of communications and coordinator of communications, respectively. According to the complaint, these two were directly responsible for issuing fraudulent press releases about the Days fraud scheme, thus aiding and abetting the CAIR cover-up.
A full report will be found at Gates of Vienna here>>
G of V reports: “In addition to the Council on American-Islamic Relations Action Network Inc., the individuals named in the complaint were:
- Nihad Awad a.k.a. Nihad Hammad, executive director of CAIR National
- Parvez Ahmed, chairman of the board of CAIR National during the relevant time period
- Tahra Goraya, former national director of CAIR who has since resigned
- Khadijah Athman, manager of the “civil rights” division of CAIR
- Nadhira al-Khalili, Esq., in-house legal counsel for CAIR.
- Ibrahim Hooper, CAIR’s director of communications
- Amina Rubin, coordinator of communications
According to David Yerushalmi, “The evidence has long suggested that CAIR is a criminal organization set up by the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas to further its aims of stealth Jihad in the U.S. But our investigation and this complaint makes clear that CAIR’s criminal activities know no bounds.”
The Holy Land Foundation Trial Verdict — GUILTY
Back in 2007 the U.S. Department of Justice brought officials of the Holy Land Foundation, America’s largest Muslim charity, to trial charging them with money laundering, tax violations and for having sent millions of dollars to support Islamic terrorism. There were over 200 charges, and the evidence was complex. The jury deliberated for nearly 19 days before declaring it was deadlocked and unable to reach a decision in September of 2007. A mistrial was declared.
In 2008 the Holy Land Foundation and five of its’ officials were again brought to trial, and this time, on November 24, a jury has found all five defendants guilty on all counts. Dr. M. Zudhi Jasser, a Muslim Phoenix physician who operates the American Islamic Forum for Democracy website at http://www.aifdemocracy.org has this to say about these important verdicts:
“Monday’s guilty verdict against the Holy Land Foundation (HLF) and the five indicted co-defendants may ultimately represent a sea-change in the willingness of the American public to hold Islamists accountable for their countenance of front charities and organizations which support terrorism either directly or indirectly,” .
We should not forget the absurd and defiant statements of CAIR and MAS leaders after last year’s mistrial. After the mistrial, in October 2007, Mahdi Bray, Executive Director of the Muslim American Society (MAS) Freedom Foundation boasted, “that the mistrial was evidence of the power of religious freedom…and we aren’t going to let the American government make it a crime.” Nihad Awad, Executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), playing the victim role, compared the HLF case to McCarthyism after the initial mistrial telling the Dallas Morning News, “Today’s campaign has a different name and a different target… the campaign is anti-terrorism and the target is the American Muslim community.”
Dr. Jasser has this to say about those statements: “such victimology has no place in representing the interests of Americans and of Muslims. It was not the American government who made it into a crime, it was a jury this week of our peers who heard the same facts and unanimously convicted these criminals on all charges. Their crimes of financing and contributing to terrorism are obvious to all fair-minded individuals who heard the case fully made by the prosecutors.”
“This verdict proves that, in fact, the target of the Department of Justice is not the American Muslim community, but rather the target is terror-promoting and facilitating criminals who in this case happen to be Muslims. Any American who knowingly finances an organization which uses terrorism as a tactic should now be warned. Mr. Awad, Mr. Bray and other Islamist leaders and their followers in the United States should now be on notice that Americans and our juries will not dismiss Islamists from their moral responsibilities to counter terrorism and their moral responsibility to stop charity organizations from contributing to causes affiliated with radical Islamism and terrorism,”
The reactions and fallout forthcoming from American Islamist organizations and their supporters will speak volumes to their real agenda. This trial did a major service in exposing to the American people the real agenda of loosely ideologically affiliated Muslim Brotherhood organizations in the U.S, many of which were unindicted co-conspirators. It is likely that these organizations will mostly continue their Islamist agenda of deception and victimization. This verdict is a character defining moment for American Muslims and their organizations. Will they opt to play the role of victims and wallow in defeat or will they take the side of truth, justice, and the HLF jury of Americans?
In Dr. Jasser’ estimation, this jury verdict will be looked upon in history as the beginning of a sea change in the American body politic against Islamists and their transnational networks. The American people are now waking up to understanding that we will expose and hold accountable organizations which finance and apologize for acts of terror. The HLF trial demonstrated that the five defendants went far beyond simply being apologists for Islam and actually funneled over $60 million to HAMAS. Defense attorneys tried to argue that the charity was non-political and legitimate, but the prosecution effectively demonstrated from wiretapped conversations, for example, quite the contrary; that the defendants actually celebrated and invoked the name of God after terror attacks upon civilians in Israel.
It was this endemic corruption, excusing acts of terror, and using a charity to camouflage their real political transnational goals which ultimately brought their downfall. Slowly, Islamist organizations are going to be held accountable for their Islamist ideologies and how they run against American principles of Constitutional law and of morality.
This verdict, declared this Thanksgiving week, gives all Americans something for which they should be thankful.