After Rep. Ted Lieu (D., Calif.) recently demanded that Attorney General Pam Bondi resign, a senior Trump administration official told the Washington Reporter that the administration relishes the conflict with Lieu, given how “genuinely insane he is, especially on the anti-Semitism front.”
Lieu has for years maintained close ties to both the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and to activists like Linda Sarsour.
CAIR is a controversial advocacy group; lawmakers like Sen. Tom Cotton (R., Ark.), the Chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, have long demanded investigations into CAIR “due to the group’s ties to terrorist organizations like Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood and the organization’s leadership repeatedly voicing support for terrorism.”
In 2012, Lieu accepted an “Excellence in Leadership” award at CAIR’s 16th annual Los Angeles banquet. Lieu also presented Linda Sarsour, a prominent anti-Semitic activist, with an award on behalf of the Asian American Justice Committee (AAJC).
Lieu distanced himself from the controversial activist following the award presentation due to what he called “the failure by the Women’s March founders like Linda Sarsour and other [sic] to adequately denounce Louis Farrakhan and his hateful, anti-Semitic views.”
Sarsour has previously called for “jihad” against the Trump administration and has defended Sharia Law as being “reasonable.”
In 2019 Lieu claimed that Trump’s Jewish Ambassador to Israel had “an allegiance to Israel greater than his allegiance to America.”
Lieu’s congressional district was home to a notorious anti-Semitic protest outside of the Adas Torah Synagogue in 2024, in which violent anti-Israel demonstrators blocked the entrance to a synagogue. Prominent Democrats, including then-President Joe Biden and Gov. Gavin Newsom (D., Calif.) condemned the violent provocateurs at the time.
