CAIR's tax-exempt status targeted as Cornyn moves to strip group after terror designations
FIRST ON FOX: A Senate Republican wants to nix the tax-exempt status of a national Muslim advocacy group that both Texas and Florida have designated as a terrorist organization.Sen. John...
By Fox News · Fox News
FIRST ON FOX: A Senate Republican wants to nix the tax-exempt status of a national Muslim advocacy group that both Texas and Florida have designated as a terrorist organization. Sen. John Cornyn , R-Texas, intends to introduce legislation that would remove the Council on American-Islamic Relations’ (CAIR) tax-exempt status. Currently, an organization's tax-exempt status is suspended if it is designated by the State Department as a terrorist organization. Cornyn’s bill would lump CAIR in with designated federal terrorist organizations, like Hamas, Hezbollah and al Qaeda, by extending that prohibition to include groups that provide material support or resources, such as finances, services or training to a terrorist organization. TEXAS GOV ABBOTT DECLARES CAIR, MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD AS TERRORIST GROUPS, PREVENTING LAND PURCHASES The Texas Republican said in a statement to Fox News Digital he was moving ahead with the legislation, "because no organization who bankrolls terrorists should get a tax break, period." "CAIR is a radical group of terrorist sympathizers with a long history of undermining American values and trying to unconstitutionally impose Sharia law on Texas , which is why I stand behind Gov. Abbott’s decision to designate it as a foreign terrorist organization," he said. "I also call on President Trump to do so at the federal level to ensure this breeding ground for anti-American hate is starved of funding and forced to close its doors once and for all." Cornyn’s bid to revoke the organization’s tax-exempt status comes after both the governors of Texas and Florida designated CAIR and the Muslim Brotherhood as foreign terrorist and transnational criminal organizations earlier this year. CAIR has long argued that it is not connected to the Muslim Brotherhood, which is affiliated with offshoot federally designated terrorist organizations, like Hamas. COTTON CALLS ON IRS TO PULL MUSLIM ADVOCACY GROUP'S NONPROFIT STATUS Texas Gov. Greg Abbott took executive actio…