Uncairing, part 2
Yesterday in the Holy Land prosecution the government filed its memorandum responding to CAIR's pending motion to file an amicus brief urging that it be struck as an unindicted co-conspirator. At the Counterterrorism Blog, Brian Hecht quotes a paragraph of the government's memorandum that highlights a few of the same liberties taken by CAIR that I noted in "Coming clean about CAIR." The government's memorandum observes:
As support for its alleged injury-in-fact, CAIR provided this Court with data solely from a time period prior to the Government’s submission of its Trial Brief, a period when the alleged improper disclosure could not have affected such membership. CAIR alleges that the “negative reaction by the American public can be seen in the decline of membership rates and donations resulting from the government’s publicizing of CAIR as an unindicted coconspirator” (Amicus Br. at 10); that “the donations that they rely on for funding have suffered since the government named them as an unindicted coconspirator”( Amicus Br. at 38); and that “the government’s labeling of them as an unindicted co-conspirator has chilled their associational activity” (Amicus Br. at 51-52). In support for these assertions, however, CAIR relies upon a June 2007 article in the Washington Times, which revealed (by reviewing CAIR’s tax filings) that CAIR’s membership declined 90 percent from 2001 through 2006, down from 29,000 members to less than 1,700. ... The article provides no further factual information regarding CAIR’s declining membership since 2006. Ironically, the very same article, upon which it now relies, was publicly discredited by CAIR executive director, Nihad Awad, who claimed the article was “false and misleading."Regardless of the disposition of CAIR's motion, it is encouraging to see that someone in the government has taken note of CAIR's utter disdain for the truth.
