Hamas-Linked CAIR’s Loudest Press Release

CAIR’s Headquarters Maneuver: A Plain-English Explanation

A new Middle East Forum report raises serious questions about what the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) did with its national headquarters in Washington, D.C.

According to MEF, CAIR’s headquarters building at 453 New Jersey Avenue SE was transferred out of Washington Trust Foundation, an entity formerly named Council on American-Islamic Relations, and into a new entity called Sage Foundation. The deed reportedly listed the price as “Ten Dollars and other good and valuable consideration.”

That phrase does not necessarily mean the building was sold for only $10. It means the public deed does not disclose the real consideration. MEF reports that D.C. still taxed the transfer at the property’s assessed value of about $3.7 million.

The troubling part is who Sage appears to be.

• MEF says Sage was created by CAIR-linked insiders: Eyas Abdeen, CAIR Foundation’s treasurer, incorporated Sage;
• CAIR general counsel Lena Masri was listed as registered agent;
• The headquarters property itself was used as Sage’s address.
• MEF also says Sage has no known tax determination, no public Form 990, no clear charitable activity, and no obvious independent operations.

Then Sage reportedly transferred a 45% interest in the headquarters to the North American Islamic Trust, or NAIT.

NAIT is not just another nonprofit. It is one of the most important Islamic property-holding institutions in America, and has long been criticized for its historical Muslim Brotherhood connections. NAIT’s own materials describe its waqf system as a way of placing Islamic community properties into a perpetual trust, so that they remain dedicated to Islamic purposes.

The key detail is control.

MEF says NAIT received veto power over whether Sage can sell, finance, encumber, or dispose of the headquarters property. In plain English: Even though Sage may still hold the majority interest, NAIT appears to have blocking power over major decisions involving the property.

That matters because of timing.

MEF reports that the deed from Washington Trust to Sage was signed on November 26, 2025, just eight days after Texas threatened to designate CAIR a foreign terrorist organization and transnational criminal organization under state law.

CAIR disputes that designation, and is fighting it in federal court. Around the same period, CAIR also faced growing calls for asset freezes and heightened government scrutiny.

Viewed in that context, the transaction looks less like routine nonprofit housekeeping and more like asset protection. CAIR’s headquarters was moved out of a CAIR-named entity, into an insider-linked entity, and then partly placed under NAIT’s waqf-style control.

The public does not have to be expert in real estate law to understand the issue. If an ordinary charity quietly moved its headquarters into a newly created insider-linked entity, for undisclosed consideration, shortly after being targeted by state terrorism-designation action, reporters would ask hard questions. If that property were then partly placed under a religious trust with veto power over sale or financing, the questions would become even more obvious.

This does not prove by itself that CAIR broke the law. But it does raise serious questions about transparency, donor intent, nonprofit governance, insider control, and whether CAIR was trying to shield one of its most important assets from future government action.

In ordinary language, MEF is saying this:

CAIR’s headquarters did not simply change hands. It moved through an opaque insider transaction, into a newly formed entity, and then into partial control by NAIT, with no public explanation from an organization that normally cannot stop talking.

CAIR has a press release for every insult, every schoolyard dispute, every police encounter, every vandalized mosque sign, every politician’s phrase, every alleged slight. But when public records show its national headquarters moving through an insider-created shell into a waqf structure involving NAIT, CAIR has nothing to say.

That is why this matters for media coverage.

Local television stations routinely present CAIR as a neutral civil-rights organization qualified to judge everyone else’s rhetoric, motives, and moral fitness. But CAIR itself is not transparent. Its own headquarters is now the subject of serious public-record questions involving insider entities, Islamic trust law, NAIT, and possible asset-protection planning.

No responsible newsroom should put CAIR on television as a moral authority without telling viewers that CAIR has unresolved credibility problems of its own.