Heckler at El-Sayed Town Hall Identified as Ex-Hawley Aide
The man who gave his name only as "Tommy" while pressing Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed to disavow the Muslim Brotherhood at a Saturday town hall in Caro, Michigan, has been identified as Thomas Teepell, a former aide to Senator Josh Hawley. The Guardian reported the identification, which was first made by the outlet The Handbasket.
Teepell joined Hawley's office as an intern in 2023 and rose to operations director before leaving in February, according to congressional staff records. After leaving the Senate office, he became political director for Philip Sarnecki's campaign for governor of Kansas. Sarnecki lost the Republican primary on 4 August.
Teepell is the son of Republican strategist Timmy Teepell. The elder Teepell is a longtime adviser to Hawley and former Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal. Writer Marisa Kabas reported in The Handbasket that "Tommy" is Thomas Teepell, according to a later account of her reporting. Mother Jones
The exchange in Caro began when Tommy asked El-Sayed whether he would disavow the Muslim Brotherhood. El-Sayed answered "Sure, yeah, absolutely."
El-Sayed then told the crowd he was running for the Senate and "happen[s] to be Muslim." He compared the suggestion of divided loyalty behind the question to doubts once raised about John F. Kennedy's Catholicism. When El-Sayed asked Tommy whether he would disavow any attempt to read religious doctrine into American law, Tommy said he would not.
The administration of President Donald Trump has moved to designate certain chapters of the Muslim Brotherhood as foreign terrorist organizations, a formal legal label that carries sanctions and criminal penalties. Trump said at a White House lunch that El-Sayed is "100%" Muslim Brotherhood.
El-Sayed told NBC's Meet the Press that neither he nor his family had ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. He was born in the 1980s and was not raised by his birth mother. His half-sister Eman Abdelhadi is a University of Chicago professor.
El-Sayed holds a narrow lead in the RealClearPolitics polling average, 48.1% to 45.5% for Rogers.
