(Newser)
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The foundation that sponsors the National Prayer Breakfast received thousands of dollars from the Islamic American Relief Agency, a Missouri-based organization with terrorist ties, the Washington Post reports. The Senate Finance Committee considers the agency a terrorist financier, and a few months after the federal government shut it down in 2004, it allegedly paid the Fellowship Foundation $50,000 to lobby Congress to clear its name.
"Hopefully, we would not see a repeat of this kind of experience," the Fellowship Foundation’s president says, claiming the organization’s rules have since been shored up. The money was intended for former congressman and prominent conservative Mark D. Siljander—at the time an “associate” of the Fellowship foundation—who, in July, pleaded guilty to serving as the Islamic American Relief Agency’s unregistered lobbyist. The Justice Department says the money in question was stolen from an aid grant.
