The town hall confrontation also prompted CBS News correspondent Jan Crawford to delete a social media post praising the questioner and apologize for violating network standards. Meanwhile, journalist Jonathan Levine stated on Monday that commentator Mehdi Hasan confirmed his reporting that El-Sayed signed a November 2012 Arabic-language letter supporting Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood government under then-President Mohammed Morsi and calling on it to "purge" Egyptian media and crack down on dissenters.
Scrutiny of El-Sayed's alleged ties to the Islamist movement escalated after he denied on NBC's Meet the Press that he or his family had any connection to the group, prompting the Washington Free Beacon to publish 2012 social media posts from his half-sister, Eman Abdelhadi, stating that "my family has long been Muslim Brotherhood" and citing their mother's college activism in Egypt during the 1970s. While El-Sayed dismissed his sister's posts as "hearsay" and his campaign called the claims "racist" and "untrue," Republican opponent Mike Rogers has made the allegations a central campaign issue, telling journalist Roop Raj after Raj said he found no direct connection between El-Sayed and the group, "Roop, you have not looked hard enough or you're just looking and you don't want to find it."