Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) recently fell under media scrutiny for praising the American branch of Islamic Relief Worldwide (IRW), a charity that the U.S. State Department, multiple banking institutions, and several other governments have severed ties with due to concerns of terrorism and antisemitism — but he also voted for a bill that funneled USAID money and other federal grants to the organization.
The incumbent senator caught flak after Fox News reported this month that he had “repeatedly” voiced support for the international group’s wing based in the U.S., IRUSA — one of the Muslim organizations that provided funding to the Texas’s East Plano Islamic Center, the mosque behind the contentious planned Islamic community known as EPIC City.
Around this time last year, Cornyn sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) requesting that the federal investigators look into the controversial community, citing concerns of “religious discrimination” and “Sharia Law.”
However, the senator has voted for U.S. taxpayer dollars to go to IRUSA, which provided the IRW with tens of millions of dollars per year in 2021 and 2022, making it the worldwide group’s largest source of funding, according to a Fox News report on its financial disclosures.
Through fiscal year 2016’s appropriations bill, IRW received a $100,000 grant from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and a $270,000 sub-award from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The resolution passed 65-33 with Cornyn’s help, while 26 other Republicans voted against it.
Just a few years later, 990 filings show that IRUSA gave $10,000 grants in both 2020 and 2021 to the East Plano Islamic Center — the mosque that announced their Muslim-based planned Texas community in 2024 that would feature over 1,000 homes, a K-12 school, community college, and commercial shopping.
“As we witness a rise in anti-Semitism in every corner of the globe, it is incumbent on all people of good conscience to stand strong and exhibit zero tolerance for the blatant and horrifying anti-Semitism and glorification of violence exhibited at the most senior levels of IRW,” the State Department wrote in December 2020 of IRW. “We encourage all government bodies currently examining IRW activities and their relationship with IRW.”
IRW was officially dropped by the State Department in January 2021 after multiple accusations of antisemitism from watchdog groups, detailing how the organization’s senior leaders praised Hamas leaders and referred to Jewish people as the “grandchildren of monkeys and pigs.”
Up until that point, the group had been an official State Department partner under the Obama and Trump administrations, the Washington Free Beacon reported.
When the State Department announced its separation from the international wing of IRUSA, an official told the outlet that the agency was “conducting a full review of the organization and U.S. government funding” due to the “anti-Semitism exhibited repeatedly by IRW’s leadership.”
As Fox News previously covered, Cornyn has publicly praised IRUSA multiple times, including dedicating a Ramadan message to them.
“Thanks to my friends at Islamic Relief USA for all their humanitarian work, and as the world returns to normal, I hope those of you watching this video are safely able to gather with friends and loved ones during this time,” Cornyn said in a May 2021 video during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In a 2023 letter posted on the group’s website, Cornyn again referred to IRUSA as “friends,” thanking the group for its “dedication to serving our most vulnerable neighbors” and wishing them “prosperity” during the Islamic holiday season.
In 2024, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith (R-MO) wrote to the IRS to investigate and revoke IRUSA’s tax-exempt status due to its cooperation with Hamas-affiliated entities, including the Muslim Brotherhood.
Other entities cut their ties with the IRW years before, with Swiss bank UBS severing its relationship with the group in 2012 and the British HSBC Bank doing so in 2016 amid concerns that it was financially linked to Islamic terrorism.
Countries including Israel, the United Arab Emirates, the Netherlands, and Germany have also all “taken actions” against the IRW for its alleged ties to terrorism, Fox News reported.
Despite this, the IRW has denied being supporters of terror.
“Islamic Relief [Worldwide] operates to the highest standards of governance, compliance and oversight across all our work,” a group spokesperson told the outlet. “We are a purely humanitarian organization, and we stand firmly against all forms of extremism, including antisemitism. Our staff deliver aid in some of the world’s most dangerous places and some of our own colleagues have lost their lives to acts of terror. We have been victims of terrorism, not supporters of it. The leading financial institutions that work with us demand our work to be rigorously audited by governments, institutions and leading accounting firms, which have all confirmed that our funds are used for entirely humanitarian purposes.”
Texas Republicans will pick their nominee for Senate in the runoff election between Cornyn and state Attorney General Ken Paxton on May 26.
Olivia Rondeau is a politics reporter for Breitbart News based in Washington, DC. Find her on X/Twitter and Instagram.