American Muslims for Palestine Ordered To Turn Over Damaging Donor Documents in Virginia Terror Financing Probe

These Islamic terror-tied groups have been operating and exploiting our constitutional American freedoms to undermine and sabotage our very way of life.

American Muslims for Palestine Ordered To Turn Over Potentially Damaging Donor Documents in Virginia Terror Financing Probe

By: Adam Kredo, WFB, July 16, 2024

RICHMOND, Va.— A Virginia judge on Tuesday ordered American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), a prominent anti-Israel advocacy group, to disclose its funding channels as part of an investigation by Republican attorney general Jason Miyares into allegations of terrorism financing.

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AMP, a nonprofit group that is driving anti-Israel protests across the country, will now have to provide Miyares with access to its donor records and funding streams, which the state argues could show evidence that the U.S.-based organization is providing material support to overseas terrorist groups.

The case pivots around AMP’s failure for seven years to properly file basic tax forms allowing it to solicit donations in Virginia. Miyares used this lapse to initiate a wide ranging investigation into AMP, alleging in an October 2023 press statement that the group “may have used funds raised for impermissible purposes under state law, including benefitting or providing support to terrorist organizations.”

The judge in Richmond’s circuit court agreed with the state’s arguments, saying that Miyares “acted in good faith” when he requested AMP’s financials and that the ask “was entirely in [his] statutory authority” to ensure the group is complying with state laws that bar support to terror groups and their affiliates. The ruling also noted AMP’s admittance that it failed to file the proper paperwork, though the organization said it has since rectified what it called an unintentional oversight.

The decision sets the stage for Miyares to obtain potentially years’ worth of funding documents, including its donors and transaction records. The case has garnered national attention due to AMP’s status as one of the country’s leading anti-Israel forces, responsible for a wave of anti-Semitic protests on college campuses that have featured violence and vocal support for Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre.

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The case is also certain to increase public pressure on AMP as congressional Republicans probe the group’s funding streams for terrorism financing. AMP is also being sued by Israeli terror victims who allege the group and its allies serve “as collaborators and propagandists for Hamas.”

Miyares touted the court’s decision in a press release, saying it affirms his office’s “jurisdiction to investigate possible violations of the Commonwealth’s charitable registration and solicitation law.”

“I am pleased with the Court’s decision,” Miyares told the Washington Free Beacon.

In asking to have the case dismissed, AMP lawyer Christina Jump said the nonprofit group is now “in full compliance with Virginia law” and that Miyares’s broad request for donor documents violates the First Amendment. Jump describes the state’s case as “wide ranging and inflammatory,” arguing that “there is no evidence” to indicate any financial support to terrorist groups abroad.

“The attorney general doesn’t have free reign to seek everything and anything it wants,” Jump said, adding that AMP is happy to provide limited records related to its initial failure to properly register as an active nonprofit. “There is simply no validity to what the attorney general seeks here.”

“Allegations from others” about AMP’s activities, Jump added, “doesn’t show that AMP has done anything inappropriate.”

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