The man who heckled Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed and demanded he disavow the Muslim Brotherhood at a Michigan town hall is a former aide to Republican Sen. Josh Hawley, according to congressional records.
At Saturday’s event, an attendee who called himself simply “Tommy” shouted into the crowd, asking if El-Sayed would disavow the movement. El-Sayed replied, “Of course, yes, absolutely,” then turned the question around, asking if the man thought he wouldn’t do it.
Tommy said he simply hadn’t heard El-Sayed dismiss the Muslim Brotherhood, one of the Arab world’s oldest and most influential Islamist movements. Under Trump, the United States moved to designate sections of the group as foreign terrorist organizations.
For nearly five minutes at the town hall, El-Sayed emphasized that Tommy’s question posed a “dual loyalty,” comparing it to doubts once raised about John F. Kennedy’s Catholicism, and told the room that he was running for Senate and “happens to be a Muslim.”
He then asked Tommy if he would disavow any attempt to interpret religious doctrine into American law. Tommy said he wouldn’t do it. El-Sayed responded that it was Tommy who needed to understand the constitution, prompting cheers, and the man left the room.
The questioner has since been identified as Thomas Teepell, who personnel records show joined Hawley’s office as an intern in 2023 and became director of operations before leaving in February. He later became political director of Philip Sarnecki’s Kansas gubernatorial campaign. Sarnecki lost the Republican primary on August 4.
Teepell is the son of Republican strategist Timmy Teepell, a longtime adviser to Hawley and former Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal. Handbasket was the first to report the identification.
The question echoes a line of attack that Republicans have been trying to level at El-Sayed for weeks, notably when Rogers brought up alleged ties to the Muslim Brotherhood during one of their debates.
After El-Sayed told NBC’s Meet the Press that neither he nor his family had any such ties, the conservative Washington Free Beacon resurfaced on social media in posts by his half-sister, Eman Abdelhadi, a University of Chicago professor, describing their mother’s activism with the group in the 1970s. There is no evidence that El-Sayed was personally involved; he was born in the 1980s and was not raised by his biological mother. He called the suggestion that a member of his family took part in the event “an insane thing to assume”.
On Meet the Press, he said Rogers raised the issue because he “really wanted to repeat the word Muslim.” In a separate interview on NBC, he dismissed the questions as “unserious.”
Trump went further, also without evidence, claiming at a White House lunch that El-Sayed was “100 percent” Muslim Brotherhood and calling him a “fraud,” and on another occasion describing him as a “member” of the group. Before the weekend, Trump hissed about his Islamophobia, saying El-Sayed’s name was “Adulbabababababa Mohammed El-Sayed.” He added: “So I was right. He’s a jihadist.”
The attacks take place in a tight race. El-Sayed holds a slight lead in the RealClearPolitics average, 48.1% to Rogers’ 45.5%. The most recent survey, conducted by InsiderAdvantage on October 9 and 10, gave him a lead of 48% to 46%. Most leads fall within or near the margin of error.
El-Sayed will campaign with Barack Obama in Detroit on Saturday, October 24, the first day of in-person early voting, at a rally also attended by Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jocelyn Benson. Election day is November 3.
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