The chief of a progressive Jewish group has condemned Leo Terrell, the pinnacle of Donald Trump’s official antisemitism taskforce, for sharing a put up by a outstanding white supremacist.
The put up Terrell shared was written by Patrick Casey final Wednesday. It accompanied footage of the US president saying within the Oval Workplace that Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic Senate minority chief, “was once Jewish” and “is just not Jewish anymore, he’s a Palestinian”.
Within the put up Casey mentioned Trump “has the power to revoke somebody’s Jew card”.
Casey is a former head of Id Evropa, a defunct racist group. In that position, in 2018, he informed NBC Information his mission was to “take over” the Republican celebration “as a lot as potential”.
“Trump’s antisemitism chief shared an antisemitic, white supremacist put up from a neo-Nazi concerned in Charlottesville,” mentioned Amy Spitalnick, the chief government of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, in reference to the march by neo-Nazis and different extremists in assist of Trump in Virginia in 2017, throughout which a counter-protester was killed.
“This administration doesn’t care about countering antisemitism,” Spitalnick mentioned. “They care about exploiting it to assault democracy.”
Spitalnick beforehand led Integrity First for America, the group that steered a profitable lawsuit in opposition to organizers of the Charlottesville march.
“We efficiently sued [Casey’s] now-defunct hate group,” Spitalnick mentioned on Monday.
Terrell, 70, is a civil rights lawyer from California. A former Democrat however a Fox Information contributor, he got here out in assist of Trump in 2020.
In January, Terrell was nominated to serve within the civil rights division of the US justice division. In February, the Trump administration introduced that Terrell would lead “a multi-agency Job Drive to Fight Antisemitism”, centered on faculty protests over Israel’s battle in Gaza.
Terrell mentioned: “Antisemitism in any setting is repugnant to this nation’s beliefs. The division takes significantly our accountability to eradicate this hatred wherever it’s discovered. The Job Drive to Fight Antisemitism is step one in giving life to President Trump’s renewed dedication to ending antisemitism in our faculties.”
Now, consideration to Terrell’s social media habits comes amid controversy concerning the arrest and detention of Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia scholar and protest organizer. Khalil is being held for deportation underneath an obscure provision of immigration legislation however has not been charged with wrongdoing.
Uncooked Story, a progressive website, first famous that after sharing Casey’s tweet, Terrell shared one other by Keith and Kevin Hodge, podcasters the advocacy group Cease Antisemitism mentioned have “taken a puzzling antisemitic flip”, together with “admitting to listening to Hitler’s speeches … wishing America had a pacesetter like him”.
Terrell has not commented. The Division of Justice didn’t instantly reply to a remark request.
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