Bachmann said Huma Mah-mood Abedin had connections with the Muslim Brotherhood, which implied that she was part of a wider conspiracy. Abedin, 36, was born in Michigan to parents from Pakistan.
The volume and speed of the vocal support she has received was stunning and further reduced Bachman’s dwindling political stature.
“These attacks on Huma have no logic, no basis and no merit, and they need to stop now,” Senator McCain said.
Bachmann, along with four other Republican legislators, earlier wrote a letter to the State Department and other government agencies calling for a probe into the Muslim Brotherhood’s influence in the US government, singling out Abedin. The letter alleged she had connections to the Muslim Brotherhood through her family.
Republican Senator Lindsay Graham of Southe Carolina said the charges were “ridiculous” and that Abedin “is about as far away from the Muslim Brotherhood view of women and ideology as you possibly could get.”
Bachmann also received calls to apologize from Representative Keith Ellison, a Democrat who is a Muslim and serves the Minnesota congressional district adjoining Bachmann’s
Abedin, who was also Clinton’s aide during her Senate term, is married to a former Democratic congressman from New York. He is Jewish.
McCain led the fury against Bachmann. describing the accusations against Abedin as “ugly” and “sinister.”
The letter that started it all questioned whether Abedin was part of a nefarious conspiracy to harm the United States by influencing US foreign policy with her high-level position at the State Department.
“The Department’s Deputy Chief of Staff, Huma Abedin, has three family members—her late father, her mother and her brother—connected to Muslim Brotherhood operatives and/or organizations. Her position affords her routine access to the Secretary and to policy making,” said the letter, signed by Republican Reps. Bachmann, Trent Franks of Arizona, Louie Gohmert of Texas, Thomas Rooney of Florida and Lynn Westmoreland of Georgia.
The letter points to a report by the Center for Security Policy, a conservative think tank, which makes the allegations about Abedin’s family ties and calls on the Inspector General of the Department of State to begin an investigation into the possibility that Abedin and other American officials are using their influence to promote the cause of the Muslim Brotherhood within the US government.
McCain called Abedin a “fine and decent American,” saying he observed her work as both a long-time aide to Clinton while she was a senator and as the secretary of state.
“These sinister accusations rest solely on a few unspecified and unsubstantiated associations of members of Huma’s family, none of which have been shown to harm or threaten the United States in any way,” McCain said. “These attacks have no logic, no basis, and no merit and they need to stop. They need to stop now.”
He said, “The letter and the report offer not one instance of an action, a decision or a public position that Huma has taken while at the State Department or as a member of then-Senator Clinton’s staff that would lend credence to the charge that she is promoting anti-American activities within our government.”
McCain said that no one, “not least a member of Congress,” should launch such a “degrading attack against fellow Americans on the basis of nothing more than fear of who they are or an ignorance of that they stand for.”
Abedin’s husband is former Rep. Anthony Weiner. who resigned a year ago following an embarrassing sexting scandal.