Leaked emails: Obama administration’s support to Muslim Brotherhood to dominate media

CAIRO – 12 October 2020: On Thursday, US President Donald Trump expressed displeasure that his Secretary of State had not yet released some emails related to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. A day later, Pompeo vowed to release them.

Arab and Gulf media have later focused on these emails, which are not new, revealing a relation between the US, during the term of former President Barack Obama, and Qatari Al Jazeera as well as the Muslim Brotherhood group.

The emails bring back to mind the role Clinton played in supporting the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood group to reach power and the exposure of the group’s plan at that time to control the media platforms to broadcast its intellectual project.

One of the leaked mails

The outlawed group targeted all high-level state positions, including ministries, and attempted to fully control the Egyptian media, so it launched pro-Muslim Brotherhood channels, broadcast from inside and outside the country.

The group knew that controlling media cannot be achieved except by controlling the building of the Egyptian Radio and Television Union, aka Maspero, the official broadcast building of the Egyptian state.

As a result, the group appointed notorious Salah Abdel-Maqsoud as the information minister.

Abdel Maqsoud was accused of committing three incidents of verbal sexual harassment of female journalists and media figures, during his term.

This prompted female journalists to launch a campaign to remove him from his post, and they submitted a petition to Mohamed Morsi, at the time, to pressure him to dismiss Abdel Maqsoud, but he did not care until the revolution broke out in 2013.

The group also tried to dominate a number of national press institutions by pushing a number of their affiliates to head these institutions.

This caused a number of major writers in independent newspapers to abstain from writing articles, in protest at what they saw as an attempt by the group to control the national media.

This situation continued until the June 30 Revolution in 2013 ousted the president and caused the group to be designated as terrorist.

Al Jazeera

Wadah Khanfar, former director of the Al Jazeera network, appeared in emails with Clinton notifying her with all details taking place regarding the network known for its support to terrorist and extremist groups. The full and direct supervise of Clinton’s staff to Al Jazeera network and its skeptical coverage to the political events, raises a lot of question regarding the whole administration intentions towards the MENA region.

In one of the emails sent by Khanfar, he explains his own opinion of the escalating political events in number of Arab countries, urging the U.S. government to interfere to protect freedoms. These emails were just between the Former Secretary of State and Khanfar as no officials or government members were included in these emails.

One of the leaked mails