The letter was harshly critical of Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., for comments she recently made about pro-Israel activism, admonishing Omar no less than seven times for “anti-Semitism,” or bias against Jewish people. The signatories demanded that the newly elected member of Congress be removed from her position on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Late Monday night, President Donald Trump cited a letter from a coalition of pro-Israel pressure groups to Democratic Party leaders, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. “Jewish groups have just sent a petition to Speaker Pelosi asking her to remove Omar from Foreign Relations Committee,” Trump tweeted. “A dark day for Israel!”

The groups that signed the letter have themselves been repeatedly and credibly accused of harboring biases of their own — against American Muslims.

Yet some of the groups that signed the letter have themselves been repeatedly and credibly accused of harboring biases of their own — against American Muslims, in particular. What’s more, the metadata of the letter lists the author as a pro-Israel activist named Lauri Regan who has accused American Jews of being analogous to Cain from the biblical story of Cain and Abel, and suggested that Omar’s supporters want a “Sharia-compliant world dominated by Islam in which Israel disappears.”

The letter criticizes Omar for her recent comments on the U.S.-Israel relationship, but it also goes much further. The letter explosively claims that the Somali-American member of Congress has ties to extremists herself, running down a list of people associated with a charity she is scheduled to speak at. The letter strongly suggests that Omar is enmeshed in a network of Islamist extremist groups around the world. It concludes apocalyptically with a quote stating that “the veneer of civilization is paper thin,” then asks the Democratic leaders to remove Omar from her position on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

The letter to Pelosi and House Foreign Affairs Chair Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., was posted Monday night on the website of the Endowment for Middle East Truth, a D.C.-based think tank with a hawkish perspective on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Known as EMET, the group has had its own run-ins with allegations of anti-Muslim bias. The group’s founder and head, Sarah Stern, has sat on the board of the anti-Muslim group Clarion Fund, whose Islamophobic films EMET has helped distribute. EMET has also promoted the work of the repeatedly disgraced terrorism “expert” Steve Emerson.

In addition to EMET, the letter was signed by an array of right-wing groups, including ACT for America, a Southern Poverty Law Center-designated hate group, and the Center for Security Policy, a D.C. think tank whose founder has a well-documented history of spreading eyebrow-raising conspiracies about Muslims in the United States. Other signatories included the Emergency Committee for Israel, which, according to the New Yorker, published a video in 2012 insinuating that then-President Barack Obama “may, secretly, be Muslim himself.”

Who Wrote It?

The disconcerting views of those involved with the letter, however, go deeper. What is not apparent at first glance is who authored it. In the metadata information from the PDF posted on the EMET website, the author was listed as “Lauri Regan,” whom EMET’s website lists as the organization’s New York chapter president. The site indicates that Regan is a board member of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East and has also served in the past on the board of the National Women’s Committee of the Republican Jewish Coalition.

Regan’s biography on the EMET website also indicates that Regan is a writer. A scan of her published works shows a colorful mix of conspiracy theories and accusations against liberal American Jews and Muslims. (Regan did not respond to request for comment by publication time.)