Andrew McCarthy Breaks Down Adam Hamawy’s Deep Ties to Convicted Terrorist Known as the “Blind Sheikh”

Andrew McCarthy, Fox News Contributor, Former Assistant U.S. Attorney For Southern District Of NY, and author of Ball Of Collusion: The Plot To Rig An Election And Destroy A Presidency, joined us on the Guy Benson Show to discuss the case of the “Blind Sheikh” and the NJ Democratic candidate with close ties to the convicted terrorist. McCarthy explains why candidate Adam Hamawy’s strong connections with terrorist organizations and terrorist organizers should not be ignored, and you can listen to the full segment with Andy below.

Listen to the full segment below:

Read the full (automated) transcript below:

Guy Benson: With us now, Andy McCarthy, Fox News contributor, former assistant US attorney for the Southern District of New York, a longtime federal prosecutor, which will be relevant to this conversation. Also a bestselling author multiple times over. Andrew C. McCarthy on social. Andy, welcome back.

Andy McCarthy: Guy, great to be with you as always.

Guy Benson: I wanna start with Iran. There was some breaking news earlier this afternoon from Barak Ravid, a reporter at Axios, who seems to be pretty well sourced inside the administration. His scoop was that the United States and Iranian negotiators have reached a deal, but they need final approval from the president. This according to multiple officials who are familiar and involved in the mediation efforts. And behind the scenes, he said, officials said the two teams, US and Iran, agreed to most of this compact on Tuesday but still needed approval from senior leadership. U.S. Officials claiming the Iranians later came back and said they had the approvals and were ready to sign. Iran has not confirmed that from their side. U. S. Negotiators briefed the president, President Trump, on the details of the final deal. He did not immediately sign off. Quote, the president relayed to the mediators that he wants a couple of days to think about it. So that’s where it seems like things stand. I also read a report that Trump is running a lot of this past, our allies in Israel. So I’ve been watching this with great interest and some trepidation and concern and some hopefulness over recent weeks. I know that you are watching it very closely as well. In your mind, where does this stand and what are you looking for if the details of this thing do in fact emerge?

Andy McCarthy: Well, I think there’s two things, Guy, that are important to distinguish. I think what we’re talking about here substantially is some kind of an agreement that both sides can come away saving face to stop the ongoing fighting, the ongoing conflict. That’s very different from a binding agreement between two countries. We talked a lot during the Obama-Iran nuclear deal. And one of my big complaints about that was we seem to be end running the Constitution. In fact, they actually did a bit of legislation back then that was designed to kind of counterman what the treaty clause requires to make something a binding agreement between nations…

Guy Benson: And by the way, the Republicans who did that were accused of like treachery or even treason by some on the left, but go ahead.

Andy McCarthy: Yeah, well, I, I accused of the Constitution shredding myself. So I was attacking it from a different direction. But my point is that if anything about whatever he’s gonna do is going to be binding in any way, it’s gotta be something that could be enacted or adopted or ratified as a treaty under American law. Otherwise, it’s just, you know…

Guy Benson: Temporary, right, it’s just sort of like, it might last a while, as long as he’s president. But the other thing is, Andy, just to jump in here, my understanding, and we don’t know exactly what is and is not a part of this, let’s say, phase of a deal, but this is not, based on my understanding the actual final deal. It is a deal to get to a deal that would punt everything by 60 days to hammer out some of the thornier questions and there’d be some agreement stuff up front. That is at least. How I have read this we don’t know that for sure but this would be like a preliminary step one of a deal ultimately that I think would have to if it were to become a treaty go through the process that you’re talking about but this is at least as far as I know a temporary agreement that’s being reported.

Andy McCarthy: I think that’s an excellent point to make because I can’t remember if the Gaza thing was that a 21-point plan or a 14-point plant, but so far as I know, we’re still on step two. And what we were talking about back then was we’d implement step one and then we would proceed right on to the ensuing steps, and we never proceeded beyond the first step. And there’s nothing, as I said, you know, the reason for stressing… The difference between something that’s ratified as a treaty and something that is a mere executive agreement is the latter is not enforceable and it’s basically a political arrangement until the people who participate in it decide not to participate anymore and there’s binding about 60 days.

Guy Benson: Yep. So I will be very interested in the particulars of this and what the initial stage would look like. And then if it’s 60 more days, then what? I, again, want to keep my mind open. And I’m hopeful on some level I’m also concerned because of the nature, not of Trump, but of the Iranian regime in particular. And we’ll see what is achieved or achievable and what isn’t. And then we will make assessments accordingly. Andy I want to turn to this story that we touched on yesterday and I was chomping at the bit to ask you about it. We previously had you on the show to talk about a man who’s a leading congressional candidate in New Jersey, your home state, and he is at least according to some polling at the top of the list for Democrats to become a nominee in a blue district. His name is Adam Hamawy. And last time you and I spoke, it was about his relationship with the so-called “Blind Sheik” who you helped. Put behind bars for life after his role in the World Trade Center bombing in 1993, the first Islamist attack against the World trade center. The blind sheik had a translator and a confidant and a friend who was Adam Hamawy, who is now running for Congress in the United States. And he testified, this man did, at the blind sheik’s trial as a witness for the defense. So you and I had talked about that. Here’s a new detail That was just reported this week by Jewish Insider. In 1994, this same guy, the congressional candidate, running as a Democrat, Adam Hamawy, traveled to Bosnia for what he called volunteer work with a foundation that was subsequently discovered to be an al-Qaeda front group by the United States government. And it was dissolved because it was a terrorist group. And during that same period, this man also maintained the friendship with the bombing mastermind, Omar Abdelrahman, and as I said, testified as a defense witness at that trial. So there are two pieces here to unpack. There’s the “Blind Sheik” connection, being a friend and a translator and a witness for him, and then this additional revelation that he went over to volunteer for a group that, whoops, turned out to be Al-Qaeda, Andy. A couple of red flags here, I would say. I wonder what you make of it.

Andy McCarthy: Well, I find it very interesting guy because the case that we convicted the “Blind Sheik” on was kind of a two-phase thing. One was the World Trade Center bombing, and the second phase was this New York City landmarks plot where they were planning to do simultaneous bombings of the Lincoln and Holland Tunnel, the FBI’s lower Manhattan headquarters, the UN’s complex, an American military facility. We were able to infiltrate that plot with an informant, which is why we were so well informed about it. And the thing I find very interesting is because they were really caught by an informent who was making tapes, they decided to try an entrapment defense. And what they claimed was that they had been hoodwinked by the government’s informant because they didn’t intend to bomb New York. What they planned to do was go to Bosnia and participate in the jihad in Bosnia. This was a very hot number at the time, and it was actually…

Guy Benson: Wait, wait, wait. Hang on, hang on. Their actual defense was, oh no, we were definitely planning terrorism just somewhere else.

Andy McCarthy: Well, you know, if you’re on tape building a bomb, it’s hard. It’s hard to yes.

Guy Benson: I know that wasn’t for Americans that was for Bosnians.

Andy McCarthy: So they said they were training for Bosnia and wow, you know The background for this is it’s less crazy than it sounds because al-qaeda Was born out of the jihad in Afghanistan against the Soviets. So this phenomenon of Muslims being called by, you know, fundamentalist leaders on the premise that they had to perform jihad because Islam was under attack in a certain place. That was a thing in Afghanistan, and they tried to make it a thing in Bosnia. The other thing I find very interesting about this is we knew very little about al-Qaeda at that time. I don’t think we knew that al-qaeda was called al- qaeda until around But the “Blind Sheik” knew al-Qaeda, and it turned out that we had a tape. We didn’t realize the reference that he was making was to al-qaeda, because we didn’t know enough at the time. But they definitely had al-quaeda units, and the interesting thing with that, what they ought to be asking Dr. Hamali about, is that when the Soviets left Afghanistan, what bin laden decided to do was to take the jihad against america which he regarded as the head of the snake uh… There was a lot of push in jihadist circles back then that they ought to you know take the battle to israel bin ladin was big for no no you know let’s go for the as he called it the great satan uh… U.s. The point being though they wanted to have a global jihadists Approach where they could hit not only American targets, but American allies and American interests around the world. And it was thought to be an effective strategy to have jihadist activities in places like Bosnia because you could not only achieve whatever objectives that they had in that region, but their idea was that any time that you’re training up jihadists, They are then trained and you can use them anywhere.

Guy Benson: Okay, so something you just said Andy is fascinating and actually disturbing to me and I want to make sure that I’m hearing this correctly. Let’s take a very quick break because I have to and we’ll come back with Andy McCarthy continue this important discussion on the Guy Benson Show.

(FOLLOWING BREAK)

Guy Benson: We have Andy McCarthy with us here on the Guy Benson show. He was one of the prosecutors in the “Blind Sheik” case and one of them “Blind Sheik” this huge terrorist. He was convicted by Andy and his team. One of his close associates is a man running for Congress in New Jersey as a Democrat who’s now been linked to this al-Qaeda front group as well in the 1990s. And Andy, so you just said something before the break. Let me see if I can connect or at least present some dots here. This guy, Adam. Hamawi, who’s running for Congress as a Democrat in New Jersey right now. He was very close with the “Blind Sheik”, translated for him, testified on his behalf, traveled with him, listened to his many sermons, said, yes, of course, he was very pro-jihad, he was calling for a tax, all of that. So he was close with a “Blind Sheik”. And then in the trial, where the “Blind Sheik”r was convicted by you and your colleagues, they were defending themselves in one portion of the trial by saying, oh yeah, the And the jihad we were planning here actually wasn’t for all these locations in New York. Their explanation was we were going to do some jihad and some terrorist attacks over in Bosnia. I’m not sure exactly how that explains the bomb making in America. But nevertheless, that was part of their defense. I did not know that detail until you just told me. And then, in 1994, this same guy, Adam Hamawi, Ended up volunteering quote-unquote for a charity, quote unquote, that was later discovered to be, in fact, an al-Qaeda front group, it would seem to me, and I don’t want to definitively say this, Andy, but just having a few synapses firing here in my brain, it would seemed to me that the Bosnia connection and al- Qaeda, given this man and his relationship with the blind sheik, that cannot be a coincidence.

Andy McCarthy: Well, it sure doesn’t – it sure doesn’t sound like a coincidence to me. Let me throw in a couple of other things, Guy, that I think help connect the dots here. If you were a young guy like Hamali was back then, the most prominent people in jihadist circles in the United States at that time and in the New York area were the Muslims who had gone to Afghanistan to fight the Soviets. So, if you were a person who wanted to have prestige in these circles. The ticket to that was to go someplace where you could participate in the jihad, not just talk about it, go there and participate in it, partake in it. Those people were basically considered the elites in this movement. The second thing I think people should know about somebody who has a relationship with the blind check, and we’re talking now, you know, circa mid-1990s. When the blind check came here… Uh… You know around nineteen eighty-nine nineteen ninety he was already a famous person in the circles because he had issued the fat war which is the sharia edict approving the murder of egyptian president anwar sadat uh… In nineteen eighty one so he was all ready a globally infamous character and one of the things that uh… Hamali was asked to testify was the shakes Um, many. Calls on people for the murder of Sadat’s successor, who was Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak. One of the things he was called to testify about was whether he remembered hearing a conversation between the blind sheik and a government informant on the subject of killing Mubarak. And it was a very plausible conversation to be having with… Omar Abdul Rahman because he himself bragged about having issued the fat walk on Sadat. So that’s the That’s the circles that Dr. Hamawy I mean always was running

Guy Benson: Yep, and now he is a candidate as a Democrat for the United States Congress, and I would imagine if you were to ask him about all of this stuff, my guess would be we would hear a lot about Islamophobia, but I think given his connections and the Al-Qaeda situation that we just learned about and his buddy, the “Blind Sheik”, arch terrorist, it’s not phobic to ask questions about that of anyone, especially someone who would like to serve in Washington, D.C., representing hundreds of thousands of people in the state of New Jersey. Which is a state that lost a lot of people on 9-11, for example, and certainly would have lost a lots of people if the various plans that the “Blind Sheik” had in store for New York City had come to full fruition. Andy, very quickly before I let you go, this alleged slush fund from President Trump to January 6th people, this big pot of money. I know that there are a lot Republicans who are very uncomfortable with this. To me, it looks absolutely bizarre and indefensible. What do you make of it? Is this legal? Is this ethical? It’s not ethical.

Andy McCarthy: I don’t think it’s illegal. The Justice Department has a, we’ve called this a slush fund in a different context before guy. Remember when Obama was trying to tie up the Iran nuclear deal, he tapped into the Justice Department’s Judgment Fund, which is the same thing I think that Trump is talking about using here, in order to pay cash to the Iranians. You know, those palettes, the famous infamous palettes of cash. That’s the source of this. So. These funding mechanisms do exist. The executive branch has control over them. Congress can enact law to limit what the presidents can do on this, but this is not a new thing. And the Democrats were not as upset about the Judgment Fund when it was Obama tapping into it. I say that as somebody who is vigorously opposed to what Trump is doing here. But you know…

Guy Benson: Well, you’re being critical of both is what you’re doing, which seems to be in order, at least in my mind. Andy McCarthy, Fox News contributor, longtime federal prosecutor, a lot of details there in this conversation. Very, very relevant. You can read his books, you can read his writing at Andrew C. McCarthy on social. Andy, thank you so much.

Andy McCarthy: Thanks, Guy.