CAIR Ordered to Reveal Donors After Lawsuit Backfires 

On 27 Novem­ber 2024, The New York Post report­ed that the Coun­cil on Amer­i­can-Islam­ic Rela­tions (CAIR) will have to dis­close its fund­ing sources after a defama­tion suit against a for­mer employ­ee went awry. The arti­cle begins: 

 The Coun­cil on Amer­i­can-Islam­ic Rela­tions (CAIR) will be forced to open its books and reveal its sources of fund­ing after a defama­tion suit it filed against a for­mer employ­ee com­plete­ly back­fired. US Mag­is­trate Judge David Schultz ruled Mon­day that CAIR’s donors, fund­ing sources — poten­tial­ly includ­ing for­eign ones — and any assets owned by the group are all with­in the “scope of per­mis­si­ble dis­cov­ery” as part of for­mer chap­ter leader Lori Saroya’s law­suit against the con­tro­ver­sial Mus­lim rights group.  Saroya filed a fed­er­al defama­tion com­plaint against CAIR in Jan­u­ary after the group dropped its own law­suit against the for­mer employ­ee, which accused her of embark­ing on a “defama­tion cam­paign” against the orga­ni­za­tion…  

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Key Points:

1. CAIR must reveal its fund­ing sources after a law­suit it filed back­fired, poten­tial­ly expos­ing for­eign donors. 

1. For­mer CAIR employ­ee Lori Saroy­a’s defama­tion coun­ter­suit led to this rul­ing, imply­ing CAIR may have accept­ed for­eign fund­ing. 

1. The judge ruled that CAIR’s finan­cial infor­ma­tion is with­in the scope of per­mis­si­ble dis­cov­ery for Saroy­a’s law­suit. 

1. CAIR had pre­vi­ous­ly dropped its law­suit against Saroya to avoid dis­clos­ing donor information.