The Congressional Black Caucus, comprised of Black Democratic Party Congressmen, ordered a photographer to hand over a photo he took in 2005 of then U.S. Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) and Louis Farrakhan at a CBC event. The photographer, Askia Muhammad, saved a copy of the photo before he handed over the digital disk of the original, only recently releasing the photo with the permission of Farrakhan.

Talking Points Memo broke the story nationally on Thursday after Muhammad had spoken to smaller outlets.

A journalist announced last week that he will publish a photograph of then-Illinois Sen. Barack Obama (D) and Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan that he took in 2005 at a Congressional Black Caucus meeting, but did not make public because he believed it would have “made a difference” to Obama’s political future. The photographer, Askia Muhammad, told the Trice Edney News Wire that he “gave the picture up at the time and basically swore secrecy.” TRENDING: Black Lives Matter Activist Wearing 'Justice for Breonna Taylor' Shirt Walked into a Louisville Bar and Murdered Three People “But after the nomination was secured and all the way up until the inauguration; then for eight years after he was President, it was kept under cover,” Muhammad said. Asked whether he thought the photo’s release would have affected Obama’s presidential campaign, Muhammad said, “I insist. It absolutely would have made a difference.” Reached by TPM on Thursday, Muhammad said a “staff member” for the CBC contacted him “sort of in a panic” after he took the photo at a caucus meeting in 2005. TPM has published the photo above with Muhammad’s permission. “I sort of understood what was going on,” Muhammad told TPM. “I promised and made arrangements to give the picture to Leonard Farrakhan,” the minister’s son-in-law and chief of staff. Muhammad said he gave away “the disk” from his camera but “copied the photograph from that day onto a file” on his computer. “Realizing that I had given it up, I mean, it was sort of like a promise to keep the photograph secret,” Muhammad said. Muhammad said he did not release his copy of the photograph because he thought it would be perceived as a betrayal of that promise: “I was really, I guess, afraid of them.”

End excerpt, complete TPM article with more details at this link.

The cover-up of the photo by Democrats shows once again how much Obama was protected to be made electable as president. And yet those who questioned Obama’s background and history were smeared as conspiracy theorists.

In this case a photographer was intimidated, made to feel “afraid of them” as he put it, into hiding a photograph that he knew could affect Obama’s political future.

TPM’s Josh Marshall explained to a concerned fellow liberal about publishing the photo: It doesn’t matter now but it would have in 2008, “I had no second thoughts at all. It never wld have mattered in reality. But it wld have been quite damaging in 2008, I think. But he’s a former Prez now. He walks among the elders. It doesn’t matter. Let Fox and Drudge and whoever else say whatever. It’s too late.”

I had no second thoughts at all. It never wld have mattered in reality. But it wld have been quite damaging in 2008, I think. But he's a former Prez now. He walks among the elders. It doesn't matter. Let Fox and Drudge and whoever else say whatever. It's too late. https://t.co/pYuxE6JDtB — Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) January 25, 2018

The Daily Caller reported in 2016 about Farrakhan revealing his ties to Obama–and about a secret photo.