CBS chief legal correspondent Jan Crawford has apologized and deleted a social media post praising a man who asked Michigan Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed about the Muslim Brotherhood during a town hall meeting Saturday.
On Sunday, Crawford, who originally joined CBS in 2009, wrote on
Crawford’s deleted post thanked a man named Tommy while saying, “I had to watch this twice to catch Dr. Abdul El-Sayed’s nanosecond response, ‘yeah, absolutely.’
The video Crawford was referring to showed the man who identified himself only as Tommy asking El-Sayed: “Will you disavow the Muslim Brotherhood?”
In response, El-Sayed said: “Of course. Yeah, absolutely. Why are you asking that question?”
Tommy replied, “Well, because they’re a terrorist group.” » El-Sayed then replied: “But what are you insinuating? Do you think I wouldn’t do it?”
“You ask because implicitly you assume that I will have dual loyalties, right? You assume that somehow I will not disavow it, or that I will have a higher order of allegiance to the Constitution.”
Crawford’s tweet obviously generated significant backlash within CBS and among other members of the news media.
Guardian reporter Jeremy Barr wrote on »
Meanwhile, journalist AJ Katz wrote: “Jan Crawford is the chief legal correspondent for CBS News, not an opinion commentator. Some pretty striking language from a broadcast network reporter about a Democratic Senate candidate on her public account.”
Pod Save America co-host Tommy Vietor said in part: “A very strange editorial from a chief legal correspondent!
Meanwhile, CNN political commentator Karen Finney wrote that Crawford was “caught red-handed” trying to help “spread false, racist lies about Abdul because he is Muslim.”
“Shame on you,” Finney also wrote.
Crawford’s apology and removal comes as CBS has faced scrutiny over allegations of political bias after conservative commentator Bari Weiss was named the network’s editor-in-chief in October 2025.
Weiss’ appointment came after CBS parent company Paramount Skydance acquired Weiss’ right-wing digital media company, The Free Press.
Additionally, on Tuesday, having recently joined CBS News as a global affairs correspondent, veteran British broadcaster Sir Trevor Phillips delivered a blunt message during a tense meeting with staff at the channel’s London bureau, telling critics questioning the network’s integrity to “fuck off and let us do our jobs.”
MS Now host Ali Velshi interviewed El-Sayed on Saturday and asked him about Muslim Brotherhood issues as he ran against Mike Rogers, a Republican, for a Senate seat in the Nov. 3 midterm elections.
“The only reason this question is asked is to insinuate that somehow I have dual loyalties,” said El-Sayed, whose party is expected to win seats in the midterms. He also said, “It’s a crazy thing to assume that somehow I would have dual loyalties, as someone who is running greedily to protect” abortion, LGBTQ+, and religious rights.
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