Man who heckled El-Sayed over Muslim Brotherhood is former Hawley aide, records show
A man who heckled Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed and demanded he disavow the Muslim Brotherhood at a Michigan town hall is a former aide to Republican Sen. Josh Hawley, according to congressional staff records, The Guardian reported Monday.
At the event on Saturday, an attendee who gave his name only as “Tommy” shouted from the crowd, asking whether El-Sayed would disavow the movement. El-Sayed answered, “Sure, yeah, absolutely,” then turned the question around, asking whether the man assumed he would not.
Over nearly five minutes, El-Sayed said the question carried an implication of “dual loyalty,” comparing it with the doubts once raised about John F. Kennedy’s Catholicism, and told the room he was running for the Senate and “happens to be Muslim”. When he asked Tommy whether he would disavow any attempt to read religious doctrine into American law, Tommy said he would not. El-Sayed answered that it was Tommy who needed to understand the Constitution, drawing cheers, and the man left the room.
The questioner has since been identified as Thomas Teepell, whose staff records show he joined Hawley’s office as an intern in 2023 and rose to operations director before leaving in February. He then became political director for Philip Sarnecki’s Kansas gubernatorial campaign; Sarnecki lost the Republican primary on Aug. 4. Teepell is the son of Republican strategist Timmy Teepell, a longtime adviser to Hawley and former Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal. The Handbasket first reported the identification.
The question echoes a line of attack Republicans have pushed against El-Sayed for weeks, including when his Republican rival Mike Rogers raised alleged Brotherhood ties during one of their debates. After El-Sayed told NBC’s Meet the Press that neither he nor his family had any such ties, the conservative Washington Free Beacon resurfaced social media posts by his half-sister, University of Chicago professor Eman Abdelhadi, describing their mother’s activism in the group in the 1970s. There is no evidence El-Sayed was personally involved; he was born in the 1980s and was not raised by his birth mother.
President Donald Trump has gone further, saying without evidence at a White House lunch that El-Sayed was “100%” Muslim Brotherhood and calling him a “fraud,” and describing him on another occasion as a “member” of the group. Ahead of the weekend, Trump said El-Sayed’s name is “Adulbabababababa Mohammed El-Sayed,” adding: “So I was right. He’s a jihadist.”
The attacks come in a close race. El-Sayed holds a narrow lead in the RealClearPolitics polling average, 48.1% to 45.5% for Rogers, and the most recent survey, from InsiderAdvantage taken Oct. 9-10, had him ahead 48% to 46%. El-Sayed is set to campaign with former President Barack Obama in Detroit on Saturday, Oct. 24, the first day of in-person early voting, at a rally that will also feature Democratic gubernatorial nominee Jocelyn Benson. Election day is Nov. 3.