Bari Weiss Urged CBS to Probe El-Sayed’s Alleged Ties

CBS News editor in chief Bari Weiss urged journalists to investigate whether Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed had ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, according to reporting attributed to people familiar with newsroom discussions. Weiss raised the subject on editorial calls and assigned the network’s investigative unit to examine El-Sayed’s background, the report said. As of Sunday afternoon, October 18, the team was expected to publish a story in the coming days. People familiar with the work said it was not clear whether the report would contain new revelations. The supplied reporting does not establish whether CBS later published the story or what it found. The inquiry centers partly on a 2012 social media post by El-Sayed’s half-sister, Eman Abdelhadi. She described a conversation with their mother about the mother’s activism in the Muslim Brotherhood in the early 1970s. The post documents what Abdelhadi wrote; it does not by itself establish that El-Sayed or his family had organizational ties. El-Sayed has denied that he or his family has ties to the group, according to accounts quoting his denials. He has also questioned the inference drawn from his half-sister’s...