Alan Bender (left) shaking hands with Mohammad Tawhidi (Imam of Peace) sometime before July 18th, 2019. Ilhan Omar (right)

This report will show how Alan Bender, a key witness in a Florida court case, who provided a deposition implying that Ilhan Omar is a foreign agent, admitted that those close to the case and those allegedly coordinating with the plaintiff’s attorney, Rebecca Castaneda, were working to forge documents related to Omar.

A very reputable individual provided us with text messages allegedly between Tawhidi and Pittard’s attorney, Rebecca Castaneda, where Tawhidi directs Castaneda to provide specific people access to critical and yet-to-be-released documents related to the Pittard case.

Alan Bender claims that Mohammad Tawhidi met him in Toronto and tried to convince him to work with Jared “Kushner and MBZ.” (Unverified claim by Bender)

Before joining the “team” Alan Bender claims, via text message, that Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and UAE Crown Prince MBZ are coordinating with Tawhidi to attack Ilhan Omar, and that the “team” wants to “defeat Omar and Linda Sarsour by Christmas.” (Unverified claim by Bender)

Alan Bender threatens to testify under oath that Qatari officials told him Brian and Ed Krassenstein were Agents of Qatar, then threatens to sue the Krassensteins if they share any information he provided.

Via text message, Alan Bender correctly and eerily predicts Trump’s tweets, as well as Israel’s actions against Ilhan Omar.

In July, Alan Bender claims to have been offered $20 million to divulge Qatar’s secrets to Saudi Arabia. This was before suddenly changing his stance and attacking Omar and Qatar.

(Note: Anyone using information from this article, or any of the evidence we’ve uploaded, must link back to this article — We do not want information taken out of context. We have already provided much of this information to the FBI, the US Dep. of State (at the request of the US Embassy in Qatar) and Ilhan Omar’s office.

As many of you may be aware, over the course of the last few weeks, a group of individuals have begun to push an apparent smear attempt alleging that Congresswoman Ilhan Omar is an agent of Qatar and that she funneled state secrets to Iran. These claims are the product of a deposition by Alan Bender in a Rebecca Castaneda-led lawsuit in Florida. What many people do not realize is that we (Brian and Ed Krassenstein and one of our wives), have been investigating many of those involved in this apparent smear campaign for over four months, as they seemingly prepared to launch the attack linking Ilhan Omar to Qatar.

One man who has been foreshadowing this story for months, and who admittedly has been thoroughly involved in it is Imam Mohammad Tawhidi, also known on Twitter as the “Imam of Peace.” We (Brian and Ed Krassenstein) currently are in the process of filing a defamation lawsuit against Mr. Tawhidi in the Australian courts, in regards to his defamatory allegations that we are agents of Qatar, among other claims. These extremely damaging claims against us by Tawhidi were made after we believe he discovered the information that we obtained of him as well as information in regards to the Ilhan Omar plot that was provided to us. The vast majority of this information and evidence is provided below. (Note: It is possible that his attacks were planned ahead of time in an effort to distort facts, and that he was working with Alan Bender from the very start.)

While we will not come to any conclusions about the plot or those involved, we will simply present the evidence we have gathered. We want to make it clear that many of the individuals involved are known to be questionable in character and have had a reputation for dealing with bad information in the past. We will allow the evidence to speak for itself and we encourage you to draw your own conclusions. It’s not our job to tell you what to believe. We’ve felt the urgent need to come forward as soon as possible because some of those behind this plot are continuing their attacks on our family.

We will give an overview of the plot and those involved. We have uploaded hundreds of text messages, and within the below overview we have linked to images of the texts when convenient. Below the overview, we will provide all documentation in the form of text messages and recordings, as well as a timeline with links to all relevant documents, tweets, archived tweets, emails and key events. Many tweets and some Twitter accounts that we refer to have been deleted, but we were sure to archive them via the internet archive. Everything we say here can be corroborated with recordings, texts, emails or other hard evidence. We are willing to provide additional evidence to the media or investigators upon request (email: edbri871[at]gmail.com).

The “Attack Ilhan Omar” Plot Commences

(Please note that for all the claims we make below, we also hyperlink to the hard evidence that corroborates these claims, so be sure to click on links when you see them.)

Starting in late 2018 we became acquainted with a man named Alan Bender (AKA Ali Bandar) of Toronto, Canada after an anonymous source told us to contact him regarding a story related to the Middle East. Please note that this is the same Alan Bender whose testimony in the Rebecca Castaneda-led lawsuit in Florida involving plaintiff Matthew Pittard and defendant Sheikh Khalid bin Hamad al Thani (The Emir of Qatar’s Brother), has alleged that Ilhan Omar is a Qatari asset. We pursued Bender’s story along with another journalist who now works for CNN, and eventually published a story unrelated to Ilhan Omar on HillReporter late last year. Bender’s information was found to be accurate at times and not-so-accurate at other times, but it was clear that he had a favoritism towards Qatar, and against Donald Trump at the time. It was also very clear that he had strong connections to various middle eastern royal families, yet unclear for certain where his loyalties may lay or what his overall motives may have been. We had numerous phone calls, and hundreds of texts with Bender over WhatsApp and Signal, with some of the material he provided being “off-the-record.” We transcribed all of our phone calls with him, and have recordings of some of them. Basically we used Mr. Bender in order to track down other worthwhile sources for stories at the time.

Around July 18, 2019 Mr. Bender began to contact us once again, directing our attention to a man named Imam Mohammad Tawhidi. Bender’s messages clearly indicated that he wanted us to investigate Tawhidi. Bender claimed that Tawhidi was involved with a group of individuals within the GOP as well as foreign nations, namely the UAE and Saudi Arabia, to smear Ilhan Omar and Linda Sarsour. Names mentioned in connection to Tawhidi included MBZ, Donald Trump Jr., Mike Pence, Jared Kushner, and Adelle Nazarian (See this text too), as well as other GOP donors/activists and two GOP members of Congress (Lee Zeldin and Steve Drakowski). (Note that these are Alan Bender’s claims, as you can see in the links above, not our own, and we are not vouching for him or his claims in any way). The material Bender fed us was in the form of both recordings of Tawhidi that Bender claimed were left on his voicemail and dozens of text messages that Bender claimed were from Tawhidi.

Prior to the public distribution of this report we reached out to Mohammad Tawhidi to give him a chance to refute and/or explain Bender’s claims. His office responded, copying in on their response Rebecca Castaneda, Alan Bender, Abdullah Al-Saleh, Vicky Ward and Al Arab’s Editor-in-chief, Abdullah al-Athbah. The response, signed “Brian Krassenstein Senior Shoe-Licker for Tamim Bin Hamad Director of Ass-Kissing Department at the Office of Mohammed al-Masned” simply pointed to this Youtube video.

Bender Claims Tawhidi met him in Canada and works with Jared Kushner and Crowd Prince Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan

Bender continued to push his narrative, oftentimes backing it up with alleged text messages and apparent recordings from Mohammad Tawhidi (It is important to note that it is possible, although probably unlikely that Bender manipulated the texts). Bender’s narrative alleged that there was a large group working together to attack Ilhan Omar and Linda Sarsour. The group was, according to Bender, trying to help Trump in 2020 as well as Saudi Arabia and the UAE by means of smearing Omar/Sarsour, who often spoke out against the human rights violations of these nations.

Over the course of two weeks (between July 18 until July 30, 2019) Bender forwarded us a total of 11 recordings which he said were from Tawhidi (as you can hear in the “evidence” section below, they sound exactly like Tawhidi, who has a YouTube channel and frequently posts videos on Twitter), and countless texts he claimed were between himself and Tawhidi. When we asked Bender why Tawhidi was spilling his guts to him, revealing such sensitive and incriminating information, Bender claimed that he had information on Tawhidi which would send him to prison, if that information was released. His exact words were “He tells me everything and I save his ass from jail. That’s the deal.” When we pushed for further details on this, Bender told us, via phone, that he cannot elaborate but the information, if released, would ensure that Tawhidi would be “sharing a jail cell with Epstein and George Nader.” Some of the names that Bender, and his texts, which were allegedly from Tawhidi, claimed were involved in this plot and working with Tawhidi were: Donald Trump Jr, Rep. Lee Zeldin, Rep. Steve Drakowski, Adelle Nazarian (See this text too), Adam Milstein, Robert Shillman, Nina Rosenwald, Benjamin Weingarten, Ellie B. Brown, Asra Nomani, Mohammad Fahmy and others. One of the screenshots of Tawhidi’s texts that Bender provided us suggested that the “team” met in Encino (Los Angeles) on Ventura Blvd. Bender encouraged us, at the time, to contact Omar’s office as well as Linda Sarsour to warn them of the plot. (It’s worth noting that we reached out most of these individuals mentioned. Ellie B. Brown denied ever getting paid by Tawhidi. Adelle Nazarian did not want to put a statement on the record. Asra Nomani said, “I’m an independent journalist and don’t receive payments from Imam Tawhidi. He once gave me a donation of $500 to support Muslim reform work. I have since returned the $500 to Imam Tawhidi.”)

Bender implicates Donald Trump Jr, and MBZ as people Tawhidi is allegedly working with on a plot to smear Ilhan Omar

Below are some of the more serious claims Bender made to us over the course of a few weeks from July until August, 2019. (Note once again that these are claims made by Alan Bender, most of which have not been verified, and very possibly could be false. The main point of posting these claims, especially regarding Tawhidi, is that Alan Bender is the same man that Tawhidi had been praising, working with and using as the ‘honest’ Canadian businessman who has revealed Omar’s alleged ties to Qatar.)

Alan Bender’s Claims, in his own words, In July/August of 2019:

Bender sent us this text, allegedly from Tawhidi, in Mid July. It describes the ‘team’s alleged plan

Bender claims to have seen text messages between Adelle Nazarian and Tawhidi, plotting to “doctor up” information regarding Ilhan Omar.

If the recordings and texts that Bender provided to us are in fact accurate, it would seemingly appear to show that Tawhidi was involved in a clear plot to attack and harm Omar politically.

On July 25th we spoke to another individual who we used to source information from in the past, Dr. Abdullah Al-Saleh. We reached out to Al-Saleh because we knew that he had ties to Qatar, as well as other Middle Eastern nations. We asked him if he had any information on a campaign to connect Ilhan Omar to Qatar. He immediately replied that “this is the dirty work of MBZ (The leader of the UAE).” In the course of our discussions with Al-Saleh, he claimed that he had been gathering information on Tawhidi and that Tawhidi is an “MBZ man in the West” and that Tawhidi is “well funded” by MBZ and works with the GOP as well as AIPAC. He then clearly stated that Tawhidi is an MBZ “agent”. Even though this was now a second person to make such claims regarding Tawhidi, we had absolutely no evidence that these claims were true and continued to doubt them.

On August 6th Bender called us, this time agitated, asking why we spoke to Al-Saleh about what we knew. He then warned us that Al-Saleh will almost certainly share our messages with Tawhidi, and Tawhidi will use those messages to make himself look like the victim in all of this.

Like clockwork, on August 7th, a Twitter account, @credibleleaks (pay attention because this Twitter account is brought into the mix again, and again later in this article), made a tweet which stated that “Rep. Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) is working with Brian Krassenstein behind the scenes to frame GOP Donors, Trump supporters, Ilhan’s loud critics, Tawhidi, Conservative media as paid agents working for MBZ (@MohamedBinZayed) and the UAE. He wants to ‘Expose’ based on ‘likely’ events.” This tweet also had an out-of-context snippet from our conversation with Al-Saleh. Soon after this tweet was made, Tawhidi retweeted it.

On August 8th, an Article was published on Tawhidi’s website, claiming that we are agents of Qatar, working with Ilhan Omar and Linda Sarsour to frame “GOP Donors, Trump supporters, Ilhan’s loud critics (Mainly Imam Tawhidi), and Conservative media — as paid agents working for MBZ (Mohammad Bin Zayed), Leader of The UAE.” The article takes a text message we made to Al-Saleh out of context to make it appear that we were plotting to frame Tawhidi. If you view the entire string of unedited texts (Here, Here, Here and Here) you will see that it was Al-Saleh, not us, who said that Tawhidi was working for the UAE and MBZ. Tawhidi also made several tweets in the days and weeks to follow which continued to push such a false narrative about us. To us, it was clear that Tawhidi knew we were looking into him and had thus wanted to get ahead of any damaging material which he thought could emerge. To him, the easiest way to discredit the material would be to discredit us. He would do this by simply claiming that we were also working for a foreign government, Qatar.

On August 9th we sent an informal Cease and Desist to Tawhidi, via his website. A person calling themselves “Leni R, Assistant to the Imam” responded the next day claiming that they have a recording of us admitting that we work for Qatar, before calling us ‘Qatari scum,’ and asking us to never contact them again (Note: we obviously never admitted such because it absolutely is not true). On this same day, Ed’s wife, Whitney, received two life-threatening text messages mentioning both MBZ and Saudi Arabia. (Texts are seen here and here — Note that the numbers are spoofed and are not the actual numbers which sent the texts).

As Tawhidi now turned his attention towards attacking us as agents of Qatar, behind the scenes things appeared to be changing. Not only did it appear that Al-Saleh was working in unison with Tawhidi, but during the first half of August Alan Bender’s narrative that he had been pushing suddenly began to shift. Bender began implying that Tawhidi’s information was actually all accurate and that he had suddenly realized this. The problem with this claim, however, is the fact that Bender’s alleged meeting with officials in Doha, where they allegedly provided him with all the damaging claims related Ilhan Omar and US journalists being paid off by Qatar, took place back in June. The vast bulk of the material Tawhidi has used to help push the narrative that Omar is an agent of Qatar, has been Bender’s own deposition about this June meeting. If Bender really believed, since June, that Omar was an agent of Qatar and that US journalists were being paid off by Qatar, then why did he spend weeks trying to get US journalists like ourselves to discredit those attacking Omar as such, and why would he be telling us that Tawhidi was working with others to “[doctor] up information about Ilhan Omar?” Also why would he be communicating with us at all, especially considering the fact that later he would claim that Qatar also told him in June that we were paid agents?

Backtracking two weeks, on July 22 Matthew Pittard, with his attorney Rebecca Castaneda, filed a lawsuit in Florida against the Emir of Qatar’s brother, Sheikh Khalid bin Hamad al Thani. The suit alleged that Sheikh Khalid bin Hamad al Thani had asked Mr. Pittard to murder two Americans, and then threatened Pittard when he refused. There were also other allegations, which are not important at this time. This is the case that Bender becomes a key witness in, and where he is deposed, offering up the damaging claims regarding Ilhan Omar and others.

Tawhidi would later claim that when he found out about the Pittard case, he used it in order to work with Castaneda to have her ask Bender key questions related to Ilhan Omar. He claimed that he needed a “legal coating” for Bender’s claims, in order to give them more of a punch. “We made sure that when the ambassador and his associates were questioned, questions about Omar were also asked,” Tawhidi said in a live video with Jack Posobiec. Tawhidi also tweeted a thread explaining how he targeted this case to reveal Qatar’s ties to Omar.

In the first half of August, Tawhidi, Adelle Nazarian and others began to bring attention to this court case. As they did, it became apparent to us that the case would be used as a vehicle to bring forth damaging allegations against Ilhan Omar, Linda Sarsour and Qatar. While we knew the case against the Emir’s brother would be used to attack Omar, we did not know at the time if Matthew Pittard, or his attorney knew what they were getting themselves into. We contacted the plaintiff’s attorney, Rebecca Castaneda several times to warn her, telling her that we had information related to a witness in the case, as well as a few questions. Castaneda refused to respond to any of our requests for a call back. It is also very important to note that Castaneda appears to be the attorney representing Tawhidi. (This is a legal threat Tawhidi allegedly sent to another journalist who wrote a negative story on him. It mentions that Castaneda is his attorney.) Additionally, Tawhidi posted this letter that Castaneda allegedly wrote for him regarding an attempt to have him banned from Twitter. Furthermore, several of the letters that Tawhidi sent to our attorney’s were also copied to Rebecca Castaneda, even though she does not practice law in Australia (the venue where we are suing him). Even more importantly, a very reputable individual provided us with text messages between Tawhidi and Rebecca Castaneda, where Tawhidi directs Castaneda to provide specific people access to critical and yet-to-be-released documents related to the Pittard case.

According to a Facebook post made by Tawhidi on Aug 23rd, Castaneda sent a letter on August 19th to the Qatari Ambassador asking them to provide details about the trip that Alan Bender took to Doha on June 17, 2019. This officially marked the beginning of Bender’s public involvement in the case.

While this was all happening, Bender continued to try and push Tawhidi’s claims while also finding out that we were in the process of suing Tawhidi in Australia for defamation related to his claims that we were Qatari agents working with Ilhan Omar. Bender seemed spooked, trying to talk us out of suing Tawhidi, claiming that we had no case, and that suing Tawhidi would open up a can of worms regarding Qatar.

Then on August 28th, after several tries over text message to unsuccessfully dissuade us from suing Tawhidi, Bender calls us, and says that if we sue Tawhidi, Tawhidi will expose everything and link everyone to everything, including us. On this same day, hours after Bender’s call, the aforementioned @credibleleaks Twitter account makes a tweet which has since been deleted after we reported it to Twitter. The tweet read: “The ocean you’re swimming in is [sensitive numbers related to our personal banking accounts] KM deep. The drive will require 625073814 days to complete. It depends if you go down the Intracoastal or the Anchorage. Either way, the Spouse, Edward, should wear a seat belt. And refrain from the past marijuana business, it’s not good.😘” (tweet archived here) (Note: Intracoastal and Anchorage are the streets we live on. The message is a threat directed at Ed’s wife. The number 625073814 is Ed’s wife’s phone number scrambled. This appeared at the time to be a threat against us not to sue Tawhidi.)

This was around the time we first contacted the FBI with what we knew and understood at the time. Over the next several weeks Tawhidi made additional defamatory tweets about us both (see here and here), saying that we work with “Qatari Terrorism-supporters” despite them believing that we are “Jewish Pigs” and claiming that we are also working with Omar and Sarsour.

Then on September 17th Alan Bender sent us copies of the subpoenas which were sent to him asking him to testify in the Castaneda-led case, as well as subpoenas sent to Qatari officials. When we asked if some Qatari officials are ok with the fact that this case is happening, he said “Yes, and the power struggle is going to bring down the temple on their heads.” See texts here and here. Tawhidi also tweeted about the issuance of subpoenas against Bender, Mohamad Masned and Meshal al-Thani.

On September 17th our attorneys, practicing out of Australia, sent an official cease and desist order to Mohammad Tawhidi, asking for the complete removal and retraction of numerous tweets as well as a Facebook post and an article.

A week after sending Tawhidi the Cease and Desist, he finally replies, oddly copying Alan Bender in on this response to us. In the email he denies owning the website ImamTawhidi.com or being part of his own Foundation after January of 2019, although after January he publicly claimed on numerous occasions that it is in fact his website. Additionally he has Tweeted essentially the same defamatory comments that the article on his website alleged. Two days later the @credibleleaks account makes a string of tweets, which we take as an effort to once again intimidate us into not filing the suit. The tweets show that they know our wives’ maiden/middle names, our previous vehicles which we owned, our real estate attorney’s name and our places of residence (Tweets seen here: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10).

Over the next three weeks Tawhidi continues to attack us both, making a couple different tweets (here and here) about us being linked to Qatar, and even going as far as sending an email on October 10 to many prominent journalists as well as worldwide embassies, namely Saudi Arabia and Qatar. This email was also copied to Rebecca Castaneda. The email points to an article and attacks Hugh Miles and Vicky Ward. He signs the letter “Brian Krassenstein, Senior Shoe Polisher for Tamim Bin Hamad”. A second similar letter was sent on October 18th as well.

Alan Bender Begins Threatening Us

Up until this point, Bender had always been cordial, and even when we could sense agitation coming from him, he was always polite and respectful. Starting near the end of October, Bender began to threaten us, not physically but from a legal and intimidation standpoint. Instead of simply discouraging us from suing Tawhidi, Bender began to start claiming that, if he has to, he would testify under oath that he was told during his meeting in Doha with Qatari officials that we were paid agents of Qatar, like Tawhidi claimed. Bender also claimed that there were documents proving such (More texts from Bender here and also here, here, and here) and that he saw a ledger with journalists’ names on it. Many of Bender’s past claims were “off the record,” which we honored 100%, up until the point where he began to threaten and intimidate us, as well as provide a sworn deposition to what appeared to be contradictory information.

Near the end of our communication with Bender, he began to try another means of intimidation, bringing up our past legal mess, and claiming that we don’t want to have all of that in the media again. The problem with this tactic is that neither of us have ever been charged with a crime, and the legal issues he brought up were civil claims and not criminal, stemming from actions that we are not at all embarrassed to talk about, nor should we be. His intimidation attempts can be seen here, here, here and here.

The Pittard Case Moves Forward as Does our Pending Case against Tawhidi

Finally, on or around October 23rd, Bender provides his deposition to attorney Rebecca Castaneda. Castaneda tweets (now deleted — see archived tweet, here and here) that she just finished her deposition with Alan Bender in Toronto. (The deposition was originally scheduled for Oct 2nd). Tawhidi also tweets about the deposition and Pittard responds to his tweet (now deleted — see archived tweet). Throughout the run-up to the public release of Bender’s deposition, Pittard retweeted several tweets (now deleted) from Tawhidi, attacking Omar and promoting the case. Also, in Mid November, Pittard, who only followed 171 people on Twitter at the time, followed four new accounts, all Saudi Arabian, including: Princess Reema Bandar Al-Saud, The KSA Minister of Foreign affairs, The Saudi Embassy and the Vice Minister of Defense, Khalid bin Salman. Note that Bender told us that Princess Reema Bandar Al-Saud was involved in arranging payments for Tawhidi, per our July 24th phone call (see complete transcript in transcripts section below).

Then on November 12th we reached out to Pittard via text message. We told him that one of the witnesses who provided a deposition and is from Canada has provided us with contradictory information related to Qatar in the past. We urged him to at least have his attorney (Castaneda) look further into it. He replied that they already did and that they are good. We then asked if he knows Mohammad Tawhidi. He responded that he doesn’t know him but that he follows Tawhidi on Twitter. We asked if Tawhidi has had any involvement in his case, and he says “none to my knowledge”. Pittard appears to at least know that Tawhidi had good knowledge of his case, because he replied to an Oct 23rd tweet by Tawhidi where Tawhidi promised that the case will expose Omar (now deleted). Pittard also liked several replies (here, here, here, and here on Nov 18 to Tawhidi, where Tawhidi is teasing that he knows inside information about Pittard’s case.) Note that between Nov 25 and Nov 30 both Castaneda and Pittard deactivate their Twitter accounts.

On November 4th a final letter from our attorneys is sent to Tawhidi. Three days later Tawhidi travels to Toronto (Bender’s home town). A couple days after this, on November 11, Donald Trump Jr. helps spread Tawhidi’s “Qatar” claims, by retweeting them (archived) on his own Twitter account.. Whether he was doing so in a planned collaboration with Tawhidi, or merely just coincidentally, we do not know.

On November 13th Tawhidi finally issues a response to our attorney, claiming that he will report our attorneys to the Australian authorities for taking money from clients who funneled it from Qatar (us). He then asks our attorneys a series of questions about us and then threatens to publish an article on November 19th about us both. This letter was also sent to both Bender and Castaneda, and he claimed that he would also be sending it to his “contacts within the Australian Federal Police and State Intelligence,” as well as “Stephen Johnson from the Daily Mail.” He also sent another letter to Alan Bender, who he copied us, our attorneys and Castaneda in on. This letter asked Bender to provide a sworn testimony that we are paid by Qatar, among other things. (Note that later, in November Tawhidi would post an image of a letter that Castaneda sent to Twitter on his behalf, and also claim to another journalist that Castaneda was representing him.)

On this same day, the first news regarding Bender’s claims leaks via an article by Oren Litwin of the Dailywire. Dinesh D’Souza made the following tweet to the article, where Bender claims that Dana Shell Smith is paid by Qatar. In the tweet, D’Souza tagged both Tawhidi and Bender. Tawhidi retweeted it. Tawhidi tweeted it again with commentary hours later. Note that Brian Krassenstein called Dana Shell Smith — former US Ambassador to Qatar — 3 days earlier to get her take on the situation involving Tawhidi and Bender. Dana Shell Smith will be able to verify that we talked to her about the plot taking shape prior to any of it going public. A few days later Dinesh D’Souza retweeted a long thread by Tawhidi and claimed that he saw some of the evidence against Omar (if it’s Bender’s deposition, then how? According to text messages provided to us by a reliable source, it appears as though Castaneda gave permission to Tawhidi to leak the deposition.) and that it was just the tip of the iceberg, and would all be exposed. Tawhidi retweeted this tweet shortly thereafter. Ed Krassenstein questioned D’Souza about his tweet, and he claimed that he didn’t know Bender and really wasn’t following the case all that well.

On November 21, Tawhidi sent yet another letter to us, our lawyers, Alan Bender and Rebecca Castaneda. In the letter he claims that he will also have Abdullah Al-Saleh testify to corroborate Bender’s claims about us being paid by Qatar. In the letter he refers to Bender’s deposition in the Pittard case, and points to the exact pages of his deposition which mentions him. Keep in mind that this was before the deposition was released or reported on. How had he already seen the deposition? In the email he also claims that Bender’s deposition shows that Qatar has hired journalists to sue Tawhidi. This letter prompted us to contact the FBI for the second time.

The Attack Takes Place

On November 25th, the attack on Ilhan Omar, which had seemingly been planned for months officially began, but literally hours prior to the first article being published on Al Arabiya, Alan Bender contacts us threatening to sue us over sharing his ID with an individual who was familiar with his work. He also attacked us for “using our wife’s Twitter account,” to ‘lie’ about him. Bender then blocked us on the messaging app, Signal.

The first article to appear was on Saudi state-run media outlet Al Arabiya. This spawned articles on several right wing blogs and news sites, including the GatewayPundit as well as multiple Israeli newspapers and blogs. Shortly after this, both Castaneda and Matthew Pittard deactivate their Twitter accounts, leaving no history of what they were liking, commenting on and retweeting in the days and weeks prior to the attack (We have archived it all, however). It’s worth noting that they were both clearly anti-Ilhan Omar.

On November 26th, the day after the first articles were released, Bender’s deposition was also released/leaked. Also Abdullah Al-Saleh came forward as the second witness and ‘verified’ Bender’s claims. (Note: My wife predicted this via a tweet, hours before it happened). It is also worth noting that Bender’s deposition has not been filed as of yet, which may be why many media organizations refused to cover the story.

The Fallout

Immediately before and shortly after the campaign against Omar started via multiple articles, it appeared to flop. While we began to release material to the media after they began covering it (oddly the Daily Caller), my wife also posted snippets of texts from Bender and Al-Saleh showing some of what we had. This entire document was not immediately shared because we had to compile it in an easily digestible format as well as speak to our attorneys regarding some of the content.

On November 30, Tawhidi makes an odd Tweet, which we assume is in an effort to get ahead of what material he assumes we have on him. In the Tweet, he once again says that we are working with Qatar, and then uploads an audio recording of him apparently talking to someone, bragging about how he fooled everyone into believing that he is an agent of the UAE. He makes two subsequent tweets (here and here) with two more audio recordings of him talking about spreading false information.

Even as we made the final preparations to release this information publicly, the intimidation tactics continued. A couple days later, on December 2, a woman named ‘Mechelle Larkinson’ (no public footprint of her online whatsoever) emails us and copies in numerous journalists, as well as world embassies. The email claims that a lawsuit will be filed against us in New York for defamation against Adelle Nazarian and Mohammad Tawhidi. It also includes a fake text message from us, which appears to be me (Brian) trying to convince someone to make it appear that Tawhidi is an agent of the UAE (even though days prior he bragged about allegedly trying to trick the media into believing that he was an agent of the UAE).

Then on December 4th, after we reached out to one of the reporters for the Jerusalem Post who covered Bender’s deposition, Donna Rachel Edmunds, she called us claiming that she had been talking with Tawhidi. She offered to act as an intermediary between us and Tawhidi, who she said claimed that he was fooled by Bender, and while he did plot with Bender to deceive the media into thinking he was an agent of a foreign government, he was fooled himself into thinking we were agents of Qatar. Edmunds told us that Tawhidi was ready to talk and retract his claims about us, if we were willing to both turn on Bender and out Bender in this plot, as well as not publish the text messages we have of Tawhidi. Tawhidi also allegedly told Edmunds that if we follow through on publishing this content then he would be ‘fronting a case’ for Alan Bender against us in New York. Tawhidi also allegedly mentioned that he feared Bender. As a ‘good faith’ gesture, according to Edmunds, Tawhidi removed one of the slanderous articles about us. We told Edmunds that if Tawhidi wishes to remove content and come to an agreement he can reach out to our attorneys, and that we are publishing the facts either way. Moments later the slanderous article was put back up.

The next day we receive an email from an anonymous source, echoing what Donna Rachel Edmunds told us Tawhidi wanted. The email once again brings Dinesh D’Souza into the picture and appears to threaten us with further slander at the hands of D’Souza if we don’t decide to team up with Tawhidi and out Alan Bender as having fooled both Tawhidi and us. We call D’Souza shortly after receiving the email, and he refuses to confirm or deny if he is making a documentary about all of this. Two days later, on the 6th, we get a second email which threatens us with legal action and false exposure once more, while bringing D’Souza into the picture again.

Our Inconclusive Conclusions

We’ve reached out to nearly all those mentioned in Bender and Tawhidi’s texts and recordings, as well as a handful of other individuals who had contact with Bender and/or Tawhidi. The one common denominator among most of them was that they were either afraid to go on record, or, for some reason, wanted to protect those involved, even if it meant not defending themselves with documented material. We were alarmed at how many individuals who were implicated by Bender and Tawhidi refused to provide on-the-record statements, despite the highly damaging claims made by them.

Bender made a lot of claims regarding Tawhidi, most which are very hard to believe. However, when given the chance to defend himself, Tawhidi refused and instead continued to propagate lies about us and our families, intimidate others who were involved, and show a complete neglect towards reality. With that said, we are not drawing any conclusions here, and in our opinion Qatar could just as easily be behind this scheme as the UAE or Saudi Arabia. In fact, Bender’s claims are so hard to believe, especially given that he eventually became a key figure in the attack on Omar, that we would be more surprised if this was an attack orchestrated by the Saudis and UAE on Omar instead of some sort of disinformation and distraction campaign on the part of Qatar. Middle eastern politics are very elaborate, so anything is possible here.

It’s worth noting that Alan Bender is very knowledgeable of Middle Eastern affairs, and it’s very possible that this was a ploy orchestrated by Bender on behalf of the Qataris in order to distract from the underlying Pittard case. As a witness, he discredited himself, and in doing so helped discredit Pittard’s claims against the Emir’s brother. Could he have contacted us with his claims simply as a means to get us to help publicize the fact that his deposition shouldn’t be trusted, thus helping Qatar discredit the entire case against Sheikh Khalid bin Hamad al Thani? It’s very possible, but certainly not proven. This could also be why Bender tried to convince the media that Tawhidi was working with the Saudis and UAE, right before appearing to team-up with Tawhidi via the Pittard case. The one question this theory would leave is why Castaneda would actively be working with individuals who would be seeking to undermine her client’s case, allowing them to dictate who she shares key documents with to further push along their narrative.

The main takeaway from all of this is that Bender, Tawhidi and Castaneda appear to have knowingly worked together in a way which appears to undermine the US court system in an effort to attack Ilhan Omar and/or spread disinformation. The exact extent of what Castaneda knew regarding the legitimacy of Bender’s deposition is unknown, but there is a clear line showing that Bender, Tawhidi and Castaneda were acting in ways that, in our opinions, goes counter to what every lawyer in America should see as a set of standards and guidelines in their work. Bender was a key witness, yet he was telling people that Tawhidi was forging documents related Omar. In the meantime Tawhidi was feeding questions to Castaneda to ask Bender, claiming to be using Castaneda as his personal attorney and dictating to Castaneda who she can share key confidential documents with. Upon finding out that we had access to texts messages and audio recordings, Tawhidi resorted to making defamatory claims against us which, even under threat of a lawsuit, he refused to retract.

If you have any information on those involved, please contact Brian Krassenstein at edbri871(@)gmaildotcom

The Evidence:

Tawhidi Recordings allegedly sent to Bender (IMPORTANT: Read the “Context from Bender” text messages under each):

Complete Timeline of Events, Including Actions by Bender, Tawhidi and Others Potentially or Allegedly Involved.

(Note that much of this information is already explained in the article above, but this goes into more detail, includes more dates, and shows further evidence of actions)

On May 27th — Alan Bender allegedly meets with Tawhidi (at least if you believe the image he sent us in mid July)

On June 14th, Bender gets ticket to Qatar. Email of the ticket purchase sent to Bender from the Editor and Chief of AlArab, Abdullah al-Athbah (https://twitter.com/KSA24/status/1156986391865303040)

On June 18–21 Bender allegedly meets with Al-Masnad, the Intel head or “Spy-Chief” of Qatar. Here Al-Masnad allegedly confirms Pittards claims about the Emir’s brother, and also divulges information about Ilhan Omar, Linda Sarsour and the Krassensteins (according to Bender).

On July 18th Alan Bender began messaging us in regards to a man named Mohamad Tawhidi @Imamofpeace. He claimed that Tawhidi flew to his hometown of Toronto and met with him to try and convince him to start working with “Kushner and MBZ” in order to take down Ilhan Omar and “help Trump win”. The goal was to push Omar as the “face of the Democratic party” before bringing her down with forged documents and conspiracy theories, thus bringing down the Democratic party just in time for November of 2020. Bender began sending us multiple text messages which appeared to be between himself and Tawhidi, as well as recordings of Tawhidi. He said that Kushner and Nazarian worked with Tawhidi at the behest of MBZ, and that Linda Sarsour’s phone was hacked by them.

On July 19th — Bender Claims: “He(Tawhidi) also told me that he works with Don. Jr.”

On July 19th — We emailed Linda Sarsour and then called her. We discussed her phone getting stolen, which she said she lost but doesn’t think it was stolen. She told me that she was scared for her family and of Tawhidi. We provided her with Bender’s phone number since Bender appeared at that time to be trying to help her. She didn’t want to call him. Over the course of the next several months we stayed in contact with Sarsour as Tawhidi continued his attacks on her.

On July 19th — 21st — We contact Adelle Nazarian on Facebook on July 19, asking if she’s working with forged documents related to Ilhan Omar. We also ask about her ties to Kushner and MBZ. We never mentioned Tawhidi at all. She doesn’t respond. On July 21, however, Bender sends us a text from Tawhidi saying “Brian K has messaged Adelle [Nazarian], asking why she’s working with falsified docs against Ilhan. He’s not wise because now they can use it against him. The docs are not false.” This makes it apparent that Nazarian is potentially coordinating with Tawhidi and our message spooked her. Despite this, Nazarian would later tell me that she never saw my message. (Note that also on July 21 Bender told us that Tawhidi paid Adelle to forge documents about Omar).

On July 20th — Bender sends us a text message from Tawhidi claiming that when Ilhan Omar tries to go to Israel “for BDS” the Israeli embassy would step in. He then claims that he “knows the top guy”. 25 Days later it is revealed that Israel did just that, blocked Omar from entry.

On July 21st — Bender Claims: “He (Tawhidi) says he will meet secretly with Don Junior in September to coordinate” He also claims that Tawhidi and Kushner communicate via WhatsApp and DMs under fake accounts on Twitter. Bender also says Tawhidi communicates on multiple fake Twitter accounts with MBZ. He mentions the Twitter account @SecureAcc, which has since been suspended by Twitter.

On July 22 Bender provided more info, claiming that Tawhidi keeps referring to their strategy as an attempt to “re-elect Trump”

On July 22 — Matthew Pittard and Rebecca Castaneda file suit agains the Emir of Qatar’s brother.

On July 23 — TheBaghdadPost.com reports on the Castaneda case, filed the day before, and claims that the court document of the case was “leaked by Imam Tawhidi in retaliation to Qatari media targeting him.” Matthew Pittard later told us that the only people who saw the deposition were Bender and his “side” meaning that Bender, Pittard or Castaneda likely leaked it to Tawhidi.

On July 23rd — Bender provides additional texts allegedly from Tawhidi, where Tawhidi explains some of his plan and how he is attacking Ilhan Omar. Tawhidi warns Qatar that this is only the beginning of their plan. Bender claims that Tawhidi is telling him all this because Bender will keep quiet and save his ass from jail. Later in a phone conversation Bender likens Tawhidi’s issues to that of Epstein and George Nader. Bender also claims that Tawhidi and “big government names” that he’s linked to will soon link Qatar to Omar. Bender claims that Tawhidi is a part of a secret team that stretches from UAE to Robert Shillman, to Kushner and VP Pence, and that he “knows for a fact that MBZ pays him very well”. Bender also says that Tawhidi said that Omar and Sarsour would be defeated by Christmas.

On July 24th We have a phone call with Bender. Bender pushes us to try and get the information to Omar’s people, so they are aware of Tawhidi’s “conspiracy taking place.” Bender says that “they are going to doctor up” documents to make it look like Omar is paid by Qatar and then the right-wing media will cover it. He says that Trump’s guys are part of the team to bring down Omar and that they believe if they hit Ilhan Omar, they hit Qatar. Bender also claims that he was offered $20M by the Saudi’s to tell them Qatar’s secrets and join their mission, and that Tawhidi is paid by the Saudis. He claims Tawhidi met with the Saudi Princess Reema, who is also the Ambassador to the US in London, and was paid there.

On July 24th — Tawhidi notifies Bender that OmarTruth.com has now launched. It was reportedly a project by Reps Lee Zeldin and Drazkowski. Tawhidi sends Bender an email he got telling him that Zeldin and Drazkowshi were starting a “movement in the House” related to Omar we assumed.

On July 25th after getting word that we had information supposedly linking him to the UAE, Adelle Nazarian and others, Tawhidi posted this incredibly important thread: https://twitter.com/Imamofpeace/status/1154426961646649345. This post here claims that “they” are trying to separate himself and Nazarian and Don Jr. and the UAE. Note that this was 4 days after he found out that we texted Nazarian.

On July 25th — A text message from Al-Saleh says that he expects “them” to link Omar’s family to terrorists. By ‘them’ he means MBZ. Al-Saleh says that he’s been gathering information on Tawhidi and that he is an “MBZ man in the West” and that Tawhidi is “well funded” by MBZ and works with the GOP as well as AIPAC. He then states that Tawhidi is an MBZ “agent”.

On July 31st — the @CredibleLeaks account tweeted, “Qatar Intelligence are trying to overthrow the Qatari Foreign Minister.” This also seems to be nearly to the date that Bender began to shift his rhetoric. He started telling us that anything we said must not ever be shared with anyone. His view towards the information that Tawhidi has changes drastically. He is now worried about the information being legit. Around this same time Al-Saleh begins telling a similar story of the Spy chief seeking to overthrow the foreign minister. The @CredibleLeaks twitter account appears to be run by or directed by, or working with Tawhidi.

On Aug 6th — Bender calls, a bit agitated after seeing that we spoke to Al-Saleh. Bender warns us that Al-Saleh will likely share our texts with Tawhidi and Tawhidi will tweet them and make himself look like the victim. Apparently Al-Saleh told Bender and Tawhidi about our conversation.

On Aug 7th — The @CredibleLeaks Twitter account makes a tweet which includes a link to a tweet made by Tawhidi. CredibleLeaks states: “Rep. Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) is working with Brian Krassenstein behind the scenes to frame GOP Donors, Trump supporters, Ilhan’s loud critics, Tawhidi, Conservative media as paid agents working for MBZ (@MohamedBinZayed) and the UAE. He wants to ‘Expose’ based on ‘likely’ events.”

On Aug 8th — Tawhidi makes a tweet to Omar saying that Kushner will “corner Qatar” and “make a deal with them.” Says Ilhan will be that deal: “If Trump wins 2020 and Kushner corners Qatar again, they will make a deal with him. You will be that deal. Qatar will sell you out just to satisfy Kushner. This clown: @A_AlAthbah, will be the first to leak evidence to K.A (WaPo and NYT). You’re a liability to them now. Gd luck”

On Aug 8th — Tawhidi publishes a defamatory article about us on his website imamtawhidi.com. In the article he uses an edited image of one of the texts we had with Al-Saleh, just like Bender predicted.

On Aug 8th-9th — We send an informal cease and desist to office@Tawhidi.com. “Leni R, Assistant to the Imam” responds the next day claiming that they have a recording of us admitting that we work for Qatar (obviously a lie), before calling us ‘Qatari scum,’ and asking us to never contact them again. We followed up again on the 9th and 15th.

On Aug 9th — Ed’s wife, Whitney receives two threatening texts mentioning both MBZ and Saudi Arabia. Texts are seen here and here.

On Aug 15th — We tell Bender that we have decided to sue Tawhidi for defamation. Bender immediately tries to talk us out of it, claiming that we don’t have a case. Bender’s attitude towards Tawhidi appears to suddenly change around this time as well. He now claims that Tawhidi’s information is accurate which contradicted everything he said in the past.

On Aug 19th — According to a Facebook post made by Tawhidi on Aug 23rd, Castaneda sent a letter to the Qatari Ambassador on the 19th asking them to provide details about the trip that Alan Bender took to Doha on June 17, 2019.

On Aug 28 — Bender calls us, upset. Bender says, regarding us suing Tawhidi, “that’s my legal and personal advice,” meaning he gave us legal advice, telling us not to pursue a lawsuit against Tawhidi and that we don’t have a case against Tawhidi. He claimed that our lawyers will just take our money and said if we do move forward Tawhidi will expose everything and link everyone to everything including us.

On Aug 28 — The @CredibleLeaks twitter account makes a tweet which has since been deleted after we reported it to Twitter. The tweet read: “The ocean you’re swimming in is 15274 KM deep. The drive will require 625073814 days to complete. It depends if you go down the Intracoastal or the Anchorage. Either way, the Spouse, Edward, should wear a seat belt. And refrain from the past marijuana business, it’s not good.😘” (tweet archived here) Note: 15274 is a number related to both Ed and Brian’s personal banking accounts. Intracoastal and Anchorage are the streets we live on. The message is a threat directed at Ed’s wife. The number 625073814 is Ed’s wife’s phone number scrambled. This appears to be a threat against us not to sue Tawhidi.

On Aug 29 — According to a tweet made by Tawhidi, including a screenshot of an apparent letter, Attorney Rebecca Castaneda sent a formal request to the Qatari Embassy, to ask them to confirm a trip by Bender to Doha on June 17, 2019. This was apparently a followup to another letter sent by Castaneda on August 19.

On Aug 30 — Adelle Nazarian tweets about the Pittard case.

On Aug 30 — We sent our first letter to the FBI describing Bender’s claims about Tawhidi as well as threats we got after notifying Tawhidi of his lawsuit.

On Sept 2nd — Tawhidi Tweets that Omar, Sarsour and the Krassensteins are working for the Emir of Qatar.

On Sept 5 — Tawhidi tweets claims that Rebecca Castaneda is being ambushed by Mohammad al Masnand’s mafia. Castaneda also tweets(archived) about this.

On Sept 11th — Tawhidi begins tagging @alanbender1965 in dozens of posts which attack Omar and Qatar.

On Sept 14th — Tawhidi tweets that we work with Qatari terrorism-supporters who believe we are “Jewish pigs”.

On Sept 17th — Bender sends us copies of the subpoenas which were sent to him asking him to testify in the Castaneda-led case, as well as subpoenas sent to Qatari officials. When we ask if some Qatari officials are ok with the fact that this case is happening, he said “Yes, and the power struggle is going to bring down the temple on their heads.” Tawhidi also tweets about the issuance of subpoenas against Bender, Mohamad Masned and Meshal al-Thani.

On Sept 17th — Our attorneys send official Cease and Desist to Tawhidi.

On Sept 17th — Tawhidi tweets a thread explaining how he targeted the Castaneda-led case to reveal Qatar’s ties to Omar. He claims that he saw the case and then saw that Bender was a witness, so provided questions to Castaneda to ask Bender about Omar, Sarsour and Qatar.

On Sept 17 — Tawhidi makes a tweet to Omar referring to Bender. We asked Bender about this and here and here were his responses. He talks about power struggle and how he can’t answer until Qatar does. He and suggests that some within Qatar want the Pittard case against the Emir’s brother to move forward.

On Sept 20th — Matthew Pittard’s attorney, Rebecca Castaneda, teases Vicky Ward with a Twitter reply, suggesting that her ties to money will reveal who Ward is. Tawhidi also has consistently attacked Vicky Ward as an agent of Qatar.

On Sept 22 — We get an odd email about Tawhidi working for Israel. (We suspected it was actually from Tawhidi or Bender at the time)

On Sept 23rd — Tawhidi replies to our official Cease and Desist order, from the email Tawhididirect@protonmail.com. The email is addressed to us, our attorneys and Alan Bender, and he claims that he no longer runs the Tawhidi Foundation (or its website) and that they are the ones responsible for the defaming content against us, not himself. He claims he stepped down from the foundation on January 1 of 2019, although since January he has publicly claimed that the website is “my (hids) website.” He then threatens to report our attorneys for harassment.

On Sept 25 — The @CredibleLeaks twitter account makes veiled threats to us and our families, targeting our wives, and showing that they have personal details on us and our families in a series of tweets. The tweets show that they know our wives’ maiden/middle names, our previous vehicles which we owned, our real estate attorney and our places of residence (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10)

On Sept 26 — Tawhidi publishes a letter that was sent to Rebecca Castaneda which he claims was also CC’ed to himself. The letter asks Castaneda to direct certain questions to the witnesses in her case, including to Alan Bender, essentially as a way to get the witnesses to link Ilhan Omar to Qatar, and accuse Qatar of using and paying the US media to smear opponents of Omar and “bury incriminating news reports against Qatar and Ilhan Omar,” as well as link Linda Sarsour to Ilhan Omar and the Qatari government.

On Oct 6th — Tawhidi makes a tweet suggesting that we are tied to Qatar.

On Oct 8th — Tawhidi makes a tweet, calling us “Qatari mafia”

On Oct 10th — Tawhidi’s office sends an email to many prominent journalists as well as worldwide embassies, namely Saudi Arabia and Qatar. This email was also copied to Rebecca Castenda. The email points to an article and attacks Hugh Miles and Vicky Ward. He signs the letter “Brian Krassenstein, Senior Shoe Polisher for Tamim Bin Hamad”.

On Oct 10th-13th — Tawhidi is at Trump Doral Miami for AmpFest (Don Jr. was also scheduled to be there)

On Oct 14th — Tawhidi travels to L.A. This is where Adelle Nazarian as well as Adam Milstein live. In July Tawhidi told Bender that the team meets on Ventura blvd in Encino (L.A.), and that the next meeting would be in September. Here is his direct quote from the text Bender forwarded to us allegedly from Tawhidi in July: “The businessmen all meet with activists on many issues including BDS and Omar and Linda Sarsour, to plan further steps and assess how things are going. Ventura Blvd, Encino. That’s where they meet.” Did the meeting take place a couple weeks late? Perhaps.

On Oct 16th — Bender’s claims don’t seem to add up. Everything appears to go back to Bender’s conversation with Qatari leaders in Doha in the middle of June, but when we ask Bender on October 16th what changed since July when he told us that it’s in Omar’s best interest that Tawhidi is exposed, Bender claimed that since then he has seen Tawhidi’s evidence and it’s “powerful”. But Tawhidi’s evidence appears to be mainly Bender’s own claims and deposition. If Bender spoke to leaders in June then why is he finally only believing Tawhidi in October? Texts here

On Oct 18th — We tried to reach out to Castaneda via WhatsApp. No response. Over the course of a couple months we have tried to contact her in several ways, including calling her office several times and leaving voicemails. She would never respond. We even claimed to have information about the case, which we clearly did.

On Oct 18th — Tawhidi claims to have met with a US politician at a Shisha Lounge, while in New York

On Oct 18th — Tawhidi’s office emailed several prominent journalists, as well as embassies of Qatar and KSA with edited images of myself, Ilhan Omar, and the Emir of Qatar. He signs it, “Brian Krassenstein, Senior Ass-Licker of the Naked Tamim Bin Rotten Banana”.

On Oct 23rd — Rebeca Castaneda tweets that she just finished her deposition with Alan Bender in Toronto. (The deposition was originally scheduled for Oct 2nd). Tawhidi also tweets about the deposition and Pittard responds to his tweet.

On Oct 25th — Tawhidi posts a tweet which claims that the Qataris call me (Brian Krassenstein) “loyal donkey” and then calls me a fraudster.

On Oct 28th — Pittard’s attorney, Castaneda replies to a Tawhidi tweet, which claimed that a report was coming which shows that Omar is an agent of Qatar in Congress. Castaneda’s reply is “I’m excited too”.

On Oct 28th — Tawhidi admits on Jack Posobiec’s live stream broadcast that he needed a “legal coating” so “we made sure that when the ambassador and his associates were questioned, questions about Omar were also asked”.

On Oct 29th — Al-Saleh tweeted for the first time about the Pittard case, tagging Rebecca Castaneda in the tweet. He tweeted again later in the day, also tagging Castaneda.

On Oct 29th — Bender stopped all communication with us after we questioned his ties to Tawhidi and brought up the fact that he had a sudden shift from claiming that Tawhidi was an agent of the UAE/MBZ, trying to frame Omar with false information, to now claiming that Tawhidi’s information is legit and that he even has evidence that we are Qatari agents. He would later start talking to us again on Signal.

On Oct 31st — We emailed Aryeh Kaplan, the defense attorney for Al-Thani (the defendant in the Castaneda / Pittard case), telling him we had information. No response. We also followed up with two phone calls shortly after this (exact dates of the phone calls are unknown).

On Nov 2–5th — I contacted Adam Milstein on FB on Nov. 2, asking him what his connection was to the Pittard case. I did this after realizing that he was one of only around 19 people to follow Matthew Pittard at the time on Twitter, and he was also mentioned by Bender as being part of Tawhidi’s “team”. He read the message on Nov 4, but didn’t reply. By Nov 9th (probably closer to the 5th) Milstein was no longer following Pittard. Milstein lives in Encino, the section of LA that Tawhidi claimed (according to Bender) that the ‘team’ all meets up at.

On Nov 4th — Final letter from our attorneys is sent to Tawhidi.

On Nov 7th — Tawhidi travels to Toronto, Bender’s hometown. He is believed to have stayed in Toronto for 3 days, until the 10th, when he left for Europe.

On Nov 11th — Donald Trump Jr. retweeted Tawhidi. The tweet was attacking CNN’s Vicky Ward for being paid off by Qatar. The original tweet by Tawhidi CC’ed Don Jr.

On Nov 13th — Tawhidi responds to a final letter from our attorney, threatening to report our attorneys to the Australian authorities for taking money from a client who funneled it from Qatar. He then asks our attorneys a series of questions about us and then threatens to publish an article on November 19th about us. This letter was sent to both Bender and Castaneda. He also sent another letter to Bender, who he copied us, our attorneys and Castaneda in on. This letter asked Bender to provide a sworn testimony that we are paid by Qatar, among other things.

On Nov 13th — the Bender deposition leaks begin with an article by Oren Litwin of the Dailywire.

On Nov 14th — Dinesh D’Souza made the following tweet to this article, where Bender claims that Dana Shell Smith is paid by Qatar. In the tweet D’Souza tagged both Tawhidi and Bender. Tawhidi retweeted it. At this point, Dinesh D’Souza is followed by both Bender and Pittard, who each followed only around 100 people at the time.

On Nov 17 — Tawhidi tweets that there have been “serious developments” related to him exposing Ilhan Omar. This was 3–4 days after he replied to our attorneys letter which notified him of our pending court case moving forward. Dinesh D’Souza retweeted the long thread by Tawhidi and claimed that he saw some of the evidence against Omar (if it’s Bender’s yet-to-be-released deposition, then how?) and that it was just the tip of the iceberg, and would all be exposed. Tawhidi retweeted this tweet shortly later. We questioned D’Souza about his tweet, and he claimed that he didn’t know Bender and really wasn’t following the case all that well.

On Nov 18 — Matthew Pittard retweets several of Tawhidi’s posts which tease upcoming news about Omar.

On Nov 18–20 — Matthew Pittard follows several new accounts. At this point he follows 171 people. The four accounts are all Saudi Arabian, and includes: Reema Bandar Al-Saud, The KSA Minister of Foreign affairs, The Saudi Embassy and the Vice Minister of Defence, Khalid bin Salman. Perhaps coincidentally Bender told us in July that Reema Bandar Al-Saud is involved in arranging payments to Tawhidi. Pittard told me, however, that he was simply following leaders and entities in the Middle East in order to see chatter about his case.

On Nov 21 — Tawhidi emails myself, our lawyers, Alan Bender and Rebecca Castaneda. In the letter he claims that he will also have Abdullah Al-Saleh testify to corroborate Bender’s claims about us being paid by Qatar. In the letter he refers to Bender’s deposition in the Pittard case, and points to the exact pages of his deposition which mentions him. (Why has he seen this deposition which has yet to be made public?) He also claims that Bender’s deposition shows that Qatar has hired journalists to sue Tawhidi (apparently trying to create a defense for why we are suing him for defamation, once again blaming Qatar for our actions).

On Nov 21 — We contacted the FBI for the second time, providing them details of the linkage between Tawhidi/Bender and the Pittard case. We used the online form via the FBI.gov website but also emailed it to an agent we know at the bureau.

On Nov 21 — Matthew Pittard replies to a Tawhidi retweet of D’Souza, claiming he is well aware of the depths of Omar’s corruption.

On Nov 22 — We called Adelle Nazarian (transcription of call exists) and asked if she works with Tawhidi or was ever paid for work by him. She claimed that she is just friends with him and never worked for him. I asked if she was familiar with the Matthew Pittard case. She said she was not. (Note that nearly 3 months prior, on August 30 she tweeted about this very case.)

On Nov 22 — We text Matthew Pittard. We told him that one of the witnesses who provided a deposition and is from Canada has provided us with contradictory information related to Qatar in the past. We urged him to at least have his attorney look further into it. He replied that they already did and that they are good. We then asked if he knows Mohammad Tawhidi. He responded that he doesn’t know him but that he follows Tawhidi on Twitter. We asked if Tawhidi has had any involvement in his case, and he says “none to my knowledge”. The full texts between myself and Pittard going back to Nov 12 can be seen here, here, here and here. Pittard appears to at least know that Tawhidi has good knowledge of his case, because he replied to an Oct 23rd tweet by Tawhidi where Tawhidi promised that the case will expose Omar (now deleted). Pittard also liked a reply and another reply and another reply and another reply on Nov 18 to Tawhidi, where Tawhidi is teasing that he knows inside information about Pittard’s case.

On Nov 25 — Alan Bender contacts us threatening to sue us over sharing his ID with someone who was familiar with his work. He also attacked us for “using our wife’s Twitter account,” to lie about him. This was right before the attack on Omar launched. Bender then blocks us on Signal.

On Nov 25 — Pittard’s attorney Rebecca Castaneda deleted all of her liked posts on Twitter.

On Nov 25 — THE ATTACK BEGINS — First Al Arabiya published the story with details of Bender’s deposition. Next The Gateway Pundit, Jerusalem Post and others began covering the story. Tawhidi claims that a lot more info will come from the deposition, and attacks journalists who are discrediting the report. He also says that journalists will be exposed next. Tawhidi also appears to take responsibility (and here) for this information coming about. He claims that Ilhan Omar told “qatari media” to attack him. Interestingly enough Adam Milstein was one of the first people to tweet about this.

On Nov 26 — Bender’s full deposition is released

On Nov 26 — Al-Saleh comes forward and confirms that what Bender said in his deposition regarding Omar is true.

On Nov 26 — Castaneda suddenly stops following Tawhidi, Omar and Sarsour on Twitter, almost as if she is trying to disassociate herself with them all. This came on the same day that we, with the help of my wife, began revealing that Tawhidi and Bender were possibly working together to frame Omar. We also contacted Pittard once more to bring his attention to Tawhidi’s connections with the witnesses.

On Nov 27 — We have an “off the record” conversation with Matthew Pittard, lasting approximately 12 minutes.

On Nov 28 — (approximately) Both Castaneda and Pittard deactivate their Twitter accounts.

On Nov 30 — Tawhidi makes an odd Tweet, which we assume is in an effort to get ahead of what material he assumes we have on him. In the Tweet he once again says we are working with Qatar, and then uploads an audio recording of him apparently talking to someone, bragging about how he fooled everyone into believing that he is an agent of the UAE. He makes two subsequent tweets (here and here) with two more audio recordings of him appearing to talk to others about spreading false information as well.

On Dec 1 — After reading Donna Rachel Edmunds’ story about Bender’s claims in the JPost, as well as her Tweet attacking the DailyCaller for calling the account into question, we contacted Edmunds saying that we are more than willing to provide our side of the story. In the following 2 days we provided her with a few texts between Tawhidi and Bender ad well as emails and other information.

On Dec 2nd — A ‘Mechelle Larkinson’ emails us and copies in numerous other journalists, as well as foreign embassies. The email claims that a lawsuit will be filed against us in New York for defamation against Adelle Nazarian and Mohammad Tawhidi. It also includes a fake text message from ourselves, which impersonates us trying to convince someone that Tawhidi is an agent of the UAE.

On Dec 3rd — Another journalist sends us a Twitter DM from Tawhidi, where he threatens to sue her. He claims to this journalist that he is represented by Rebecca Castaneda(the same attorney representing Matthew Pittard in the case that Bender gave his deposition in)

On Dec. 4th — JPost journalist and former Breitbart journalist Donna Rachel Edmunds called after we provided her with some of the texts between Tawhidi and Bender. (She is the journalist who wrote one of the first stories regarding Bender’s deposition about Omar). She said that she wanted to act as an intermediary between us and Tawhidi and that Tawhidi says that he was fooled by Bender. Her theory is that Bender played us both and that Bender convinced Tawhidi that we were Qatari agents and then tried to convince us that Tawhidi was a UAE agent, plotting with Tawhidi to try and convince us as such. She claims that Tawhidi knows that we are not Qatari agents now and he feels bad about it and wants to figure out how to make it better. Tawhidi wanted an assurance that none of the texts with Bender, that we obtained, would be released publicly. She also claimed that Tawhidi would be fronting a lawsuit on behalf of Bender in New York to sue us (for what? We don’t know). I (Brian) told her to tell him to contact our attorney who has already begun legal proceedings against him. She said that he doesn’t want to deal with lawyers and she suggested that we and Tawhidi set up fake ProtonMail accounts to communicate with each other. We refused to agree to anything. Tawhidi briefly removed the defamatory article about us from his website (the website he previously claimed no longer to be affiliated with), with Edmunds claiming that it was in “good faith”, but after telling Edmunds to request that he speak to our attorneys before we agree to anything, he placed the article back up. Edmunds also claimed that Tawhidi is scared of Bender, but also said that he wanted to work with us to expose Bender. If Tawhidi really believes that Bender “fooled” both him and us, and just wants to figure out how to make things better with us, then why would he be willing to front a case for Bender against us in New York? Much of the things Edmunds claimed Tawhidi claimed did not add up in our heads.

Dec 4th — We called Dinesh D’Souza again to ask if he was working on a documentary about the Alan Bender deposition, like Edmunds claimed. He got really confrontational and would not provide a comment one way or another. He claimed that he “knows our agenda.”.

On Dec 5th — We get an anonymous email, echoing what Donna Rachel Edmunds told us Tawhidi wanted. The email once again brings Dinesh D’Souza into the picture and appears to threaten us with further slander at the hands of D’Souza if we don’t decide to team up with Tawhidi and out Alan Bender as having fooled both Tawhidi and us.

On Dec 6th — We got an additional anonymous email from the same individual as on the 4th (likely Tawhidi or someone he directly knows, considering he knows things that only Tawhidi would know). This email says that Tawhidi is going to sue us if we release certain information and that him and Dinesh D’Souza have an email from Bender showing that CNN’s Vicky Ward arranged to meet with Jassim Bin Mansour al-Thani, the media attache for the Qatari Embassy, and proof that they did meet. (I assume, based on Tawhidi’s old tweets, that they will claim that Vicky Ward was paid at this meeting). It is important to note that back in November of last year, as we were investigating a story, Bender recommended to us that we contact Jassim Bin Mansour al-Thani. We did contact him and he asked us to meet in order to share information regarding a story we were working on. We never did meet, however. This email claims that “Both Tawhidi and Dinesh believe that Vicky Ward’s Emails are the key tactic to hit multiple birds with one stone: CNN, Vicky, Qatar, Krassensteins, as well as confirm the deposition and distract the public.”

Bender Phone Call Transcripts:

(Phone call from July 24, 2019 between Brian Krassenstein and Alan Bender, transcribed to the best of our ability. Note that we do have other phone calls, but will keep the transcripts private for now.)

Alan Bender — Hello. Hi Brian how are you.

B. Krassenstein — Good. How are you?

Alan Bender — Are you, you’re talking about him admitting it?

B. Krassenstein — Yeah, if there was any way…

Alan Bender — I already have that. I have that and I have his text messages between him and Princess Reema, the new Saudi ambassador in Washington. He met with her. They made arrangements or um, cause apparently, he used to also, uh, criticize MBS or she was authorized to discuss with him canceling that exchange for, uh, an arrangement, and Tawhidi sent me copies of those text messages, but why would you need that?

B. Krassenstein — Uh, I think that if I had information linking it to a foreign government, I think that it would kind of help me get through to the people I would need to.

Alan Bender — Uh, no, no, I don’t think I want to…

B. Krassenstein — It’s completely up to you. I just think that that they’re going to be more prone to listen to me if I can link it to a foreign government, which would make this illegal rather than something that’s just being done by American citizens who are out to get her, if you know what I’m saying.

Alan Bender — Yeah, I understand your point. But I also have to wait because there are people in Qatar who are not uh, um, encouraged to expose all this at this moment. I already discussed with them what I have. They saw it and they’d have their own reasons to not share it with the American media or anybody who might expose it. The, I don’t know why but that’s the message I was [inaudible] even though they know that this could actually, at least give Ilhan Omar some uh, ability to defend herself but

B. Krassenstein — Right. Yeah. Like, like that’s my biggest, my biggest drive here is to provide information as directly to Omar as I can. Uh, right now my intention isn’t to do a story because like, like you said, I don’t really have anything that I can share that I would feel comfortable sharing based on what you told me I can share.

Alan Bender — Yeah. Not yet because I thought they, they are waiting for the big guy in Qatar to get back to Doha, which is going to be in the next four days, they said. Apparently the entire government, like their heads are still on vacations as they left Washington. They are scattered in London, Switzerland, Germany and it’s why the prime minister of South Korea arrived in Qatar a couple of days ago, three days ago I believe. There was no government minister to meet him or meet him at the airport and also the prime minister of Pakistan on his way to meet with Trump a few day ago — he landed in Doha — there wasn’t any government minister to greet him. They sent the head of Qatar airways to meet them at the airport, which is shocking. So all the heads are not in Qatar as we speak, but I’m communicating with them and so far they don’t want this to go the next level. They know about all this, they know that it is genuine and they check all their sources, but I don’t know, for some reason they don’t want this to go to the next level even though it’s in their best interest and also in Ilhan Omar’s best interest.

B. Krassenstein — What, what the, you said that they’re going to try linking Omar to, uh, to Qatar financially. Is that, uh, is that going to be legitimate or is that going to be kinda trumped up?

Alan Bender — They’re going to doctor up. They have a team of very powerful people. They’re rich people, very enthusiastic people and they’re gonna make it look legit. Like they say, American public is only interested in headlines. They won’t read details so they’re not going to look too much into it. They’re just going to see documents with stamps and um, transactions to so and so who delivered it to, uh, Ilhan and it’s doctored up.

B. Krassenstein — Right. And in two hours it would be all over social media and half the country would believe it.

Alan Bender — Oh yeah, yeah. He already explained it in his voice messages and this is how they play it. They send it out to mr so-and-so, mr so and so. Then Fox News will adopt that from that. And then the daily… I don’t know, the Daily Caller or something like that. He gave us all the details.

B. Krassenstein — Yeah. Daily Caller or Daily Mail. That… Gateway Pundit.

Alan Bender — Yeah they said every right-wing media outlet and then celebrities are going to start talking about, he said, even Britney Spears is gonna [laughter] talk about it. So it’s a very well put together team that they have, uh, billionaire backing, [inaudible], uh, wealth backing them up so they’re gonna do a good job in their opinion and destroying her credibility. And like they said, by the time she’s out, who cares if they find out a year from now that it was not true? She’s out. What’s she gonna do.

B. Krassenstein — What is, uh, the UAE and MBZ? What’s their, uh, why are they doing this? Like what, what’s behind it?

Alan Bender — Oh, they think, Ilhan Omar has an assignment of exposing MBS and MBZ of human rights violations. So they don’t like that. They did it with us here in Qatar. [inaudible] MBS violated women’s rights and he threw them in jail. Our foreign minister made a tweet to MBS, tried to bribe them. He offered our government $10 billion if they take down that tweet and just look the other way. They said no. Um, he pulled out the Saudi ambassador, took out thousands of Saudi students. And cut off all ties.

B. Krassenstein — And you’re talking Canada, right?

Alan Bender — In Canada. Yeah. So now Ilhan Omar is exposing all that and they think because she’s exposing it, then she’s favoring Qatar. So they think, in their opinion, that if they hit Omar, they hit Qatar. Trump will love them for it because his guys are part of the team and they are telling him, ‘get her out of the Congress’. Um, and uh, so that became their mission. This is not, uh, very strange because I was approached by Prince [inaudible] . MBS [voice skips, missing a word] sent me messages and called me. We spoke for a long time. He wanted me to accept $20 million to turn against Qatar and be with them and just help them with all the secrets that I know to accomplish their mission. It’s all documented.

B. Krassenstein — Yeah. No, I totally understand where you’re coming from and Qatar’s standpoint. It’s just, it would help things along, if you did have anything that you could share, but I understand where you’re coming from. Maybe, maybe…

Alan Bender — Law school men think twice before saying anything. [inaudible] check your evidence before you present it as evidence. I triple checked, everything is legit. I have copies of his text messages. I mean, the guy shared with me his text messages with Adelle Nazarian and they are like putting strategies together. I only shared with you one of them.

B. Krassenstein — Even if you can provide something with his name sliced off of it or something like that, just like I know the format, just, just if you know what I mean.

Alan Bender — The guy [inaudible] who met with Ilhan.

B. Krassenstein — right.

Alan Bender — [inaudible] asking that.

B. Krassenstein — I’m sorry, what was that? You broke up,

Alan Bender — says the person who was going to connect with Ilhan about this.

B. Krassenstein — They haven’t asked me that, but I can, I can envision what they’re gonna, what they’re going to probably ask for. They’re gonna, they’re gonna say, well, there’s nothing illegal going on there.

Alan Bender — I don’t think so honestly, like, I think the information you have so far [inaudible] text messages and all that should be sufficient enough for you to make the conclusion that there is a big conspiracy taking place, huh?

B. Krassenstein — Yeah. No, no, I…

Alan Bender — Even share them with them.

B. Krassenstein — I agree that they will likely take this information. I just think that if they see that, like in its current state, there isn’t something, there is nothing illegal taking place unless you believe that he’s gonna, he’s gonna forge documents or whatnot. But if there’s a foreign government involved, especially financially, then that could make things, make things more serious on their part. That’s all.

Alan Bender — Two foreign governments, Saudi Arabia and UAE. Two are involved.

B. Krassenstein — Right.

Alan Bender — I don’t know, I’ll wait for the Qataris. If they say it’s okay with them, then I will share them with you — a problem that we know in three days, because after that the campaign is going to be worse than a tsunami and I don’t think it’ll have a vehicle to fight or not. She won’t be able.

B. Krassenstein — Right. Well, what’s the Saudi involvement?

Alan Bender — Uh money. Money. They paid Tawhidi cash, money. Um, even his assets in Australia got better and bigger. He has now assets in London. They made arrangements for him to receive it there. He met with Princess Reema. The Saudi Ambassador, the new one. She’s Prince Bandar’s daughter. So she learned from her father how to manipulate the political system in America.

B. Krassenstein — What is the, what is the information you have on Tawhidi that’s making him cooperate? Is there anything you can share or is that off the record.

Alan Bender — Off the record and I can’t share that, but I can tell you this. What I have, um, can guarantee that Tawhidi will share the same jail cell with George Nader and Epstein.

B. Krassenstein — Makes sense. All right, well I appreciate it and just stay in touch.

Alan Bender — Yeah.See what the guy or the person [inaudible] with Ilhan has to say. If you show them the information that you have based on your credibility. That you don’t need to even show them what I forwarded to you, you can just, tell them ‘this what you have’.

B. Krassenstein — Yeah, that’s, that’s what I’m trying to do. I’m trying to not share as much.

Alan Bender — Well, they should trust your judgment than if they know a man of credibility. If you didn’t see [inaudible] he wouldn’t say [inaudible].

B. Krassenstein — Right.

Alan Bender — And then we will see. We’ll take it from there.

B. Krassenstein — Alright. Yup, sounds good.

Alan Bender — Yeah. Sounds good. All right.

Footnotes / Thoughts:

We’ve reached out to nearly all those mentioned in Bender and Tawhidi’s texts and recordings, as well as a handful of other individuals who had contact with Bender and/or Tawhidi. The one common denominator among most of them was that they were either afraid to go on record, or for some reason wanted to protect those involved, even if it meant not defending themselves with documented material. We were alarmed at how many individuals who were implicated by Bender and Tawhidi refused to provide on-the-record statements, despite the highly damaging claims made by them.

Bender made a lot of claims regarding Tawhidi, most which are very hard to believe. However, when given the chance to defend himself, Tawhidi refused and instead continued to propagate lies about us and our families, intimidate others who were involved, and show a complete neglect towards reality. With that said, we are not drawing any conclusions here, and in our opinion Qatar could just as easily be behind this scheme as the UAE or Saudi Arabia. In fact, Bender’s claims are so hard to believe, especially given that he eventually became a key figure in the attack on Omar, that we would be more surprised if this was an attack orchestrated by the Saudis and UAE on Omar instead of some sort of disinformation and distraction campaign on the part of Qatar. Middle eastern politics are very elaborate, so anything is possible here.

If you have any information on those involved, please contact Brian Krassenstein at edbri871(@)gmaildotcom