Michigan Democrat Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed once criticized the U.S. drone strikes that killed 9/11 mastermind Ayman al-Zawahiri in 2022 as "troubling" and called them a "fig leaf" to cover up the Biden administration's botched withdrawal from Afghanistan.

On August 5, 2022, El-Sayed published a piece in The New Republic titled "Projecting Strength Abroad Isn't Simply About Killing Terrorists. It's About Standing Up to Despots, Too." In it, he attacked the drone strike that killed Al-Zawahiri, who was a fellow Egyptian and member of the Muslim Brotherhood who eventually went on to lead al-Qaeda.

Here's some of what El-Sayed wrote (emphasis added):

President Biden is using the strike to bolster his approval here at home. It is troubling to watch yet another American president flog “War on Terror” themes to resurrect a laggard term. That said, Biden’s approval numbers began to slip toward their current historic lows after the botched pullout from Afghanistan, where Al Zawahiri was killed. The shambolic, if courageous, pullout left open questions about whether the U.S. had even accomplished the aims it had set out to achieve after 9/11. This strike, then, offers the Biden administration a fig leaf, demonstrating that even in Taliban hands, Afghanistan is not off-limits for direct action against terrorist targets.

...

If Biden is serious about projecting strength abroad, he needs a new playbook. The War on Terror themes he struck—extrajudicial executions of foreign terrorists—while justifiable, have gotten stale. If he’s serious about addressing the root causes of terrorism, he needs to demonstrate now the same bold leadership he showed when he pulled us out of Afghanistan in the first place. Rather than dapping dictators U.S. presidents have backstopped for far too long, it means confronting them.

And that starts with demanding the immediate release of Asim Ghafoor. A husband and father of three, Ghafoor was recently taken to the emergency room for complications of Covid-19, which he contracted in his Emirati prison. That the United States should allow a foreign government to treat an American political prisoner this way is pathetic.

As the Free Beacon notes, Ghafoor was not simply a "husband and father of three"; he was a spokesman for the Global Relief Foundation (GRF), a charity closed after 9/11 for allegedly engaging in financing terrorism in Afghanistan. The Treasuring Department said in October 2002 that the GRF "has connections to, has provided support for, and has provided assistance to Usama Bin Ladin, the al Qaida Network, and other known terrorist groups." Ghafoor also was a spokesman for Care International, another nonprofit closed for financing terrorism.

The United Arab Emirates eventually freed Ghafoor, who was imprisoned for money laundering and tax evasion, but they never overturned his conviction.

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In the years before 9/11, al-Zawahiri was behind a series of deadly attacks on Americans overseas.

This is another blow to El-Sayed's campaign, who has spent weeks dodging and deflecting questions about his ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, as well as campaign donor links to terrorist organizations. This includes recent comments by an Abdul El-Sayed campaign staffer who defended the Muslim Brotherhood and dismissed concerns by calling American voters idiots.