RNA - Donald Trump is reportedly considering appointing Clare Lopez, an anti-Muslim conspiracy theorist, to serve as his deputy national security adviser.
Lopez is the vice president of the Center for Security Policy, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank that focuses on the threat of Islamic exterimism. She was on a short list of names that the Daily Caller reported as coming directly from the Trump transition team.
According to Lopez’s biography, she spent 20 years working for the Central Intelligence Agency before she became a popular writer for conservative websites like Breitbart News and World Net Daily. She served as an adviser to the presidential campaign of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), and while she didn’t hold an official post within Trump’s campaign, the president-elect regularly cited her work to support his anti-Muslim positions.
Lopez and Frank Gaffney, the president of the Center for Security Policy, have both promoted the idea that the executive branch is teeming with Muslim Brotherhood members and supporters. Their conspiracies became popular during the age of Trump, with members of the alt-right spreading the discredited theories in order to justify their support of the president-elect.
In 2014, Lopez declared that President Barack Obama and Osama bin Ladenshared the same vision for the Middle East. “The Obama administration very clearly has switched sides in the war on terror, what used to be called the war on terror,” Lopez said in an interview with the conservative site TruNews. “And we have provided arms and intelligence and funding and assistance and NATO warplanes to help al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood.”
Lopez regularly promotes the conspiracy that the Muslim Brotherhood has taken root within the United States government. “The infiltration is obviously very deep and very broad within the bureaucracy, not just the top level, but throughout the federal system, including the intelligence community,” Lopez said in a 2012 speech.
That someone who has peddled those beliefs would be a top national security adviser is a big concern, said Patrick Eddington, a policy analyst in homeland security and civil liberties at the Cato Institute.
“This isn’t ‘The X-Files,’” Eddington told The Huffington Post. “The last thing we need are alt-right conspiracy theorists in positions of responsibility in our government.”
Lopez gained notoriety among right-of-center conspiracy blogs after authoring a report suggesting Huma Abedin, Hillary Clinton’s longtime aide, is part of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Lopez called Abedin a “Muslim Brotherhood operative” and has intimated that Abedin, along with Obama, has assisted the Islamic organization.
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