Attorney General Barr posed for photos at Trump hotel with hate group leader
Trump’s attorney general smiled as he posed with Brigitte Gabriel, a ‘notorious anti-Muslim hate group leader.’
On Wednesday, Attorney General William Barr made yet another ethically dubious decision by posing for a picture in the lobby of Trump’s D.C. hotel alongside Brigitte Gabriel, the leader of a major anti-Muslim hate group.
“I ran into Attorney General William Barr at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, DC,” wrote Gabriel in a post alongside the photo. “The Trump is where all the best people come together!”
Barr has already proven a couple of times over that he’s a Trump lackey rather than an independent law enforcement agent. But posing with someone like Gabriel takes things another step further.
Gabriel is a vocal Trump ally who’s been described by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) as a “notorious anti-Muslim hate group leader.” She’s also the head of ACT for America, the “the largest anti-Muslim group in the U.S.” that “pushes wild anti-Muslim conspiracy theories, denigrates American Muslims and deliberately conflates mainstream and radical Islam,” according to the SPLC.
Gabriel has said that Muslims “cannot be loyal citizens of the United States” and has pushed the conspiracy theory that the country has been “been infiltrated on all levels by radicals who wish to harm America.”
Referencing terrorist attacks like 9/11, Gabriel laid the blame at the feet of all Muslims, not just terrorists.
“Going forward we must realize that the portent behind the terrorist attacks is the purest form of what the Prophet Mohammed created. It’s not radical Islam. It’s what Islam is at its core,” she wrote in 2008.
Like Trump, Gabriel has espoused bigoted concerns about immigrants.
“They are people from Libya, Tunisia, Eritrea, Egypt, the Horn of Africa…They are people trying to suck off of the people from the West. They know they can get a free ticket for money. They are not coming here to build empires and become great businessmen and entrepreneurs. They are coming here to get the free checks from you and me who work very hard to pay our taxes,” she said in 2015.
Her group organized “March Against Shariah” rallies in 2017 that attracted extremist neo-Nazis. The group has also pushed “anti-Shariah” legislation.
Barr has already shown he cannot be trusted to speak honestly and uphold the law. But posing with Gabriel immediately calls into question his ability to treat all faiths and ethnicities equally when enforcing the law.
Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.
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