Helping Hand for Relief and Development reportedly has ties to Jamaat-e-Islami, a violent extremist network that operates in South Asia.
A senior House lawmaker says he’s frustrated with the U.S. Agency for International Development’s apparent refusal to investigate a government grant issued to a nonprofit group allegedly linked to terrorism. In a letter to USAID administrator Samantha Power this week, Representative Mike McCaul (R., Texas), the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, demanded a full review of the situation.
The nonprofit in question, the Michigan-based Helping Hand for Relief and Development, reportedly has ties to Jamaat-e-Islami, a violent extremist network that operates in South Asia. In October 2021, USAID awarded HHRD a grant for $110,000 to reimburse it for shipping costs related to its humanitarian aid work.
“Please immediately personally review this grant to HHRD,” McCaul wrote in the January 24 letter, which was obtained exclusively by National Review. “I strongly urge you to pause this grant while you complete a thorough review of the allegations, to include coordination with the intelligence community, federal law enforcement, the State Department Counterterrorism Bureau, and the Department of Homeland Security.”
This is not the first time that HHRD’s alleged links to the terrorist group, which has existed since 1941, has come up. In 2019, Representatives Jim Banks, Chuck Fleischmann, and Randy Weber wrote to a State Department official requesting an investigation into “the nexus of charitable networks and terrorist groups,” such as Jamaat-e-Islami. HHRD’s alleged links to Jamaat-e-Islami include a 2017 conference it organized in Pakistan whose attendees included terrorist groups, and the proximity of its staff to Jamaat-e-Islami organizations, as Sam Westrop previously wrote at National Review.
McCaul’s letter expresses his exasperation over what he characterizes as USAID’s apparent refusal to make a review of the grant a priority.
He wrote that his team first inquired about the grant in May of last year but that USAID replied with an insubstantial response. Earlier this month, according to McCaul, USAID provided a briefing on the matter: “It was clear that the agency had failed to take any action to investigate the allegations or suspend the award, despite having been provided detailed information by congressional staff months prior.” McCaul also complained that one of the State Department briefers had only recently learned about the issue.
McCaul also wrote that USAID told his staff that the matter was being taken up by the agency’s inspector general, and he requested all documents related to the HHRD grant by February 7.
Neither USAID nor HHRD responded to National Review’s requests for comment.
While Jamaat-e-Islami’s sources of funding is far from one of the most prominent issues that House Republicans are raising in the majority, McCaul’s letter speaks to how GOP investigators are now reviving old probes that had languished and scrutinizing sketchy government grants — a push that will ramp up in the coming months.