Michigan's El-Sayed Says Free Beacon 'May Have Illegally and Unethically Obtained Recording' and Employs Diversion Tactic Discussed in Campaign Strategy Call

Michigan's left-wing Democratic Senate candidate, Abdul El-Sayed, said the Washington Free Beacon "may have illegally and unethically obtained" audio of an internal campaign meeting in which El-Sayed said he wanted to avoid commenting on Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's death because many of Michigan's Muslim voters were "sad" about it. In line with his strategy, El-Sayed's statement did not mention Khamenei.

The Free Beacon broke the news on Monday that El-Sayed told staffers he wanted to avoid making a public statement about the assassination of Khamenei because "there are a lot of people in Dearborn who are sad" about the late Iranian dictator’s death. The story was based on audio from a private campaign strategy call obtained by the Free Beacon.

Nearly 12 hours after the story broke, El-Sayed released a statement calling the Free Beacon a "rightwing news outlet" that "may have illegally and unethically obtained" the audio recording.

"The fact that a rightwing news outlet may have illegally and unethically obtained a deliberation about how to talk about this by way of a disgruntled former employee is only a distraction," El-Sayed said in the statement. "They’re distracting from the fact that Donald Trump, Mike Rogers, the entire MAGA base doesn’t want to talk about the pain they’re forcing us all into."

El-Sayed also accused the Trump administration of an "illegal and unjustifiable war" and argued that "Americans are paying with their lives and livelihoods for a war MAGA swore they’d never take us into."

Rather than comment on the story when contacted by the Free Beacon ahead of publication, the El-Sayed campaign responded through a lawyer who said the "campaign is considering legal options against the individual" who took the recording.

"I write to inform you that the audio recording that you base the below questions on was obtained without the campaign's permission, and without knowledge that individuals were being recorded," said the attorney, David Mitrani, a partner at the Washington, D.C., law firm Sandler Reiff. "Given these circumstances, the campaign expects that you will take this into account in determining to proceed with any reporting on this matter."

Unlike El-Sayed, Mitrani did not suggest that the Free Beacon illegally obtained the recording.

In the audio of the March 1 meeting, El-Sayed discussed his Iran War communications strategy with a group of campaign advisers. He said he wouldn’t comment on the Khamenei assassination that took place the day before because "there are a lot of people in Dearborn who are sad" about it, referencing the heavily Democratic Michigan city that has the largest Muslim population per capita of any city in the country and in 2023 became the nation's first Arab-majority city.

Instead, El-Sayed said he would pivot to different subjects.

If reporters pressed El-Sayed to take a position, he said, he would change the subject to President Donald Trump's relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. "I'm just gonna go straight to pedophilia, frankly," El-Sayed said. "I'll just be like, 'Pedophile president decides that he doesn't like the front page news, so he decides to take us into another war.'"

Critics accused El-Sayed of siding with radical, anti-American terrorists.

"Abdul El-Sayed empathizes more with terrorists than their victims," wrote Michigan Republican Senate candidate Mike Rogers on X. "This is what we’re up against."

Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R., Tenn.) criticized El-Sayed as a "left-wing lunatic" who "refused to take a position about the strike that killed Khamenei because ‘a lot of people in Dearborn’ were sad."

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