(Ken Silva, Headline USA) Responsible Statecraft published an analysis Wednesday showing that New Jersey Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez’s legal defense fund is receiving donations from contributors linked to an Iranian group that used to be listed as a terror organization by the State Department.
Menendez and his wife face multiple charges related to them allegedly conspiring to have the senator act as a foreign agent of Egypt. More recently, they were charged with obstruction of justice.
According to Responsible Statecraft, the Menendez Legal Defense Fund has raised more than $400,000 to fight these charges. Some of that money is reportedly linked to an exile group called the Mojahedin e-Khalq.
“An analysis of the donor rolls by Responsible Statecraft and The Intercept, however, shows that about 15 percent of the people who gave to Menendez — including Moeinimanesh and Afshari — are linked to an Iranian exile group called the Mojahedin e-Khalq, or MEK,” Responsible Statecraft reported Wednesday.
“Menendez and the MEK have a relationship going back a decade. Shortly after the group was removed from a State Department list of ‘foreign terror organizations,’ Menendez advocated for the MEK following an attack on its members by the Iraqi government.”
According to Responsible Statecraft, MEK began as a Marxist group that fought on the winning side of the 1979 Iranian Revolution. But the group faced a crackdown from Iran’s new theocratic state shortly thereafter, and it wound up fighting on the Iraqi side of the Iran–Iraq War in the 1980s.
“In 1997, the MEK was placed on the State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations for, among other things, its role in the killing of six Americans in Iran in the 1970s and an attempted attack on the Iranian mission to the United Nations in 1992,” Responsible Statecraft explained.
“The designation would last for a decade and a half. Following a successful lobbying campaign by its supporters in the U.S., the group won a major victory when it was removed from the American terror rolls in 2012.”
Menendez faces trial in May. Meanwhile, he is reportedly considering running for reelection as an independent.
Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/jd_cashless.
