Cruz Hearing Revisits Holy Land Foundation Case, Says Muslim Brotherhood Network Still Active. Democrats Boycott

A Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing on Wednesday dug back into one of the largest terrorism financing cases in U.S. history, arguing the network it exposed nearly two decades ago never actually went away.

The hearing, titled "Hidden in Plain Sight: Confronting the Muslim Brotherhood Network in America," was chaired by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), who leads the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Federal Courts, Oversight, Agency Action and Federal Rights. Cruz opened by pointing out that every Democrat on the subcommittee, Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse, Richard Blumenthal, Mazie Hirono, Alex Padilla, and Peter Welch, skipped the session entirely, according to reporting from a Bronx-based outlet covering the hearing.

Democrats had announced their boycott in advance and issued a joint statement calling the hearing an attempt to scapegoat Muslims and describing it as political theater, according to The National News. Cruz called their absence an embarrassment.

The Holy Land Foundation Case

The hearing centered on the 2008 Holy Land Foundation prosecution, in which the Holy Land Foundation, once the largest Muslim charity in the U.S., and five of its leaders were convicted on 108 counts including providing material support to Hamas, money laundering, and tax fraud, with sentences reaching 65 years, according to the Daily Wire.

Prosecutors in that case said the trial exposed a wider domestic network tied to organizations including the Islamic Society of North America, the North American Islamic Trust, and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).

A central exhibit was the 1991 "Explanatory Memorandum," a document the FBI recovered in Annandale, Virginia in 2004, which described Brotherhood work in North America as a "grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within." The document urged followers to build coalitions and work through existing Islamic organizations, per the Daily Wire's review of the record.

Lara Burns, the retired FBI special agent who led the Holy Land Foundation investigation and now heads terrorism research at George Washington University's Program on Extremism, testified that CAIR was named an unindicted co-conspirator in the 2008 case and has never formally disavowed the Holy Land Foundation. Asked whether that evidence would still warrant CAIR's inclusion on a list of organizations for further scrutiny, Burns answered, "It would." She told the subcommittee the underlying conspiracy still exists and the threat is growing, according to both the Daily Wire and The National News.

CAIR has repeatedly denied having ties to the Muslim Brotherhood or Hamas, a denial The National News noted explicitly in its coverage. No new indictment, investigation, or federal designation targeting CAIR was announced at the hearing. The unindicted co-conspirator designation from 2008 is a matter of public record from that case, not a new legal finding.

From 1993 Meeting to 2026 Politics

Witnesses tied CAIR's 1994 founding to a 1993 Philadelphia meeting of Palestine Committee leaders that the FBI recorded, where participants discussed supporting Hamas while building influence in American universities, media, and politics, and shaping school curricula, according to the Daily Wire. Nihad Awad, who attended that meeting, remains CAIR's executive director today.

Cruz drew a direct line from that history to current events, invoking the pro-Palestinian campus protests that spread across universities in 2024 and the primary win of Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, citing his family's ties to Brotherhood-linked organizations, according to The National News.

Kyle Shideler of the Center for Security Policy testified about alleged partnerships between Brotherhood-linked groups and left-wing organizations including the Democratic Socialists of America, describing what he called a shared objective of undermining the U.S. Constitution, per the Bronx outlet's account. Arielle Klepach of the National Jewish Advocacy Center also testified, telling the subcommittee that the Brotherhood said decades ago it wanted to infiltrate American universities and media, and "that is exactly what they've done."

The Boycott Argument

Democrats' stated objection is that the hearing amounts to political theater timed to mobilize conservative voters ahead of November's midterms, and that it unfairly paints an entire religious community as a security threat based on a single 18-year-old prosecution and disputed organizational links, according to The National News. Tying a sitting Senate candidate's electoral win to a terrorism-financing case decided in 2008, without new charges against him personally, risks conflating political disagreement with criminal conspiracy.

But skipping the hearing entirely means no Democrat cross-examined Burns, Klepach, or Shideler on the record, or challenged the specific claims made about CAIR, the Explanatory Memorandum, or the 1993 Philadelphia meeting. The public record from Holy Land Foundation is real and already survived appellate review. Whether it still describes an active, growing network in 2026, as Burns testified, versus a historical case with no new prosecutions attached to it, remains the actual dispute. That dispute went unchallenged in the room.

Witnesses called on Congress to close what they described as a legal loophole letting groups the U.S. has designated as terrorist organizations relaunch under new names to dodge accountability. No legislation resulted from Wednesday's hearing. Whether Cruz's subcommittee moves that proposal into an actual bill, and whether any Democrat engages with the underlying evidence rather than boycotting on its next occurrence, is unresolved.