Radical Islamists, Including a Convicted Terrorist, Joining Trump’s White House

In a rather shocking yet suppressed revelation, President Trump’s White House is welcoming as its new employees a few fundamentalist Muslims, one of whom was convicted and jailed for Islamic terrorist activities.

Conservative investigative journalist and commentator Laura Loomer rang the alarm bell on May 16 over the appointment of the two Islamists to the White House Advisory Board on the Religious Liberty Commission. The two Muslim men appointed to the board are Ismail Royer and Shaykh Hamza Yusuf.

In her X post, Loomer summarized the backgrounds of the two men, highlighting their long affiliation with Islamist-Jihadist (warrior) ideology and called their appointment to Trump’s White House “truly unacceptable.” She wrote:

“There is a massive Vetting Crisis and it’s getting worse each day. They are endangering President Trump who has already been threatened by Islamic terrorists who have tried to assassinate him. What the hell is going on inside the White House “vetting room”? Truly indefensible. We need answers now.”

Loomer separately tweeted about Ismail Royer to include his background and links to Islamic terror while citing official sources, including the Department of Justice. She highlighted the fact that Royer traveled to Pakistan to train in an Islamic militant training camp and in 2003 was indicted by the Department of Justice on terrorism-related charges, which included conspiracy to wage war against America and providing material support to the Islamist-terrorist organizations of al-Qaeda and Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT).

Royer pleaded guilty in January 2004 to the two aforementioned charges and was sentenced to 20 years in prison. However, he was released in 2017 after serving 13 years of the sentence. Since then, he has worked at various nonprofits that claim to be working toward peace. He is now the Director of the Islam and Religious Freedom Action Team of the Religious Freedom Institute (RFI).

The second White House appointee that Loomer mentioned is Shaykh Hamza Yusuf, the co-founder of the Zaytuna College in Berkeley (CA), who is considered an influential Islamic scholar. As reported on Thequint.com (May 21), Yusuf also reportedly worked with the State Department’s Commission on Unalienable Rights during Trump’s first term as the President. He has been known for criticizing America and defending terror convict Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman while remaining an Islamist apologist. Interestingly, these appointments that seem concerning at least to quite outrageous in view of the two men’s backgrounds and ideologies have been entirely ignored by the media, including conservative media. But a number of conservative commentators on social media, in addition to Loomer, questioned the White House’s choice of these men. These voices sounding the alarm include Paul Sperry, John Ferguson, Frank Miller (III), John Guandolo, and many others. Guandolo, who is as ex-Marine and former FBI Special Agent, also mentioned another Muslim appointee to the White House – Sameerah Munshi – as a Hamas operative who is “as slimy and dangerous as the others.”