The author of the book Muslim Mafia, which was based on documents taken by the author’s son while he was posing as a Muslim intern at the Council on American Islamic Relations, has agreed to return all documents and recordings obtained during the time at CAIR, according to a draft consent order filed in court yesterday.
The draft order, agreed to by attorneys for CAIR as well as for Dave Gaubatz and his son Chris, was filed along with a joint motion asking the judge to enter the order.
“We’re glad that there’s been an agreement to return all of the property that has been stolen from us,” CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper told TPMmuckraker this morning. CAIR says many thousands of pages of internal documents were taken. Now, Hooper said, “we’ll move forward with our legal action,” declining to specify what will come next.
Daniel Horowitz, one of Gaubatz’s lawyers who earlier this month told us in an interview that he was relishing the chance to butt heads with CAIR, told TPMmuckraker this morning that he didn’t negotiate the agreement. His colleague, the trial lawyer Martin Garbus, did not immediately return a call seeking comment about what happened in the case, and what, if anything, will come next.
Garbus told Politico, which first reported the news, that the Gaubatzs will continue to fight CAIR “in the context of the litigation,” but not over the preliminary injunction.
Muslim Mafia, the foreword of which was written by Rep. Sue Myrick (R-NC), prompted Myrick and three House GOP colleagues to pursue a probe of possibly Muslim intern “spying” on Capitol Hill. Gaubatz has made many controversial statements, most recently making, and then retracting, a call for a backlash against Muslims after the Fort Hood shootings.
The order filed yesterday goes well beyond a judge’s ruling earlier this month that Gaubatz had to return a narrower set of documents, including those that contain confidential employee information.
The full order is here.