‘Dr.’ Abdul El-Sayed is the Democratic Party’s latest socialist flavor of the month, but if what one of his now-former campaign workers said is true, he could be in a lot of trouble.
The Michigan Democratic Party has fired a field organizer caught on undercover video making explosive but unverified claims about overseas donations to El-Sayed and suggesting the candidate could lose supporters if he unequivocally rejected Hamas.
The video, released Monday by James O’Keefe’s O’Keefe Media Group, features Abdoul Beckwith, who was identified as a regional field organizer working for the Michigan Democratic Party’s coordinated campaign, discussing El-Sayed during conversations with an undercover reporter.
El-Sayed’s campaign stressed that Beckwith was not employed directly by Abdul for Senate, while the Michigan Democratic Party confirmed after the video surfaced that Beckwith was no longer employed by its coordinated campaign.
“This junior staffer has never been employed by the Abdul for Senate campaign,” an El-Sayed campaign spokesperson said while describing Beckwith’s statements as “untrue” and “wildly misinformed.” (Of course.) The campaign also said it was fully compliant with Federal Election Commission regulations and denied that Beckwith possessed knowledge of its internal operations.
In the undercover footage, Beckwith claimed El-Sayed had “people from overseas” donating to him, before acknowledging during the conversation that prohibited foreign contributions would not be legal. Beckwith then discussed a hypothetical scenario in which overseas money could be routed through another person, eventually declaring that “Everybody does it!”
Federal law prohibits foreign nationals from directly or indirectly making contributions or donations in connection with federal elections, and it separately prohibits concealing the true source of a political contribution by making it in another person’s name.
The recording also generated controversy over Beckwith’s comments about Hamas, the U.S.-designated terrorist organization that carried out the October 7, 2023, attack on Israel. According to the footage, Beckwith suggested El-Sayed could not simply reject Hamas without risking support from some of the people who had helped build his political coalition.
The organizer’s comments are not evidence that El-Sayed himself supports Hamas, and the candidate has not been shown making the statements attributed to him by Beckwith. The controversy nevertheless arrives during an already bitter Michigan Senate race in which Republican nominee Mike Rogers has repeatedly attacked El-Sayed over Israel, Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood and the Democrat’s relationships with pro-Palestinian activists and organizations.
El-Sayed has denied having ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, and during an October 17 town hall he answered “Sure, yeah, absolutely” when directly asked whether he would disavow the organization. El-Sayed has also faced scrutiny over his approach to other controversial figures, including left-wing streamer Hasan Piker, with the Democrat previously saying he did not want to alienate Piker’s millions of followers even while disagreeing with some of his statements.
The latest undercover video adds a different problem for Democrats because the allegations involve campaign-finance law at a time when national Democratic organizations are spending heavily to keep Michigan’s open Senate seat in the party’s hands.
Senate Majority PAC, the super PAC aligned with Senate Democratic leadership, has committed roughly $30 million to helping El-Sayed, while Republican-aligned outside organizations have also poured tens of millions into the race. We’ll stay on this story to see where it leads.
