The DNC Congratulated the Man Who Defended the Blind Sheikh. Nobody in the Party Said a Word.

• 27.4% Hamawy's Democratic primary vote share in NJ-12 (June 2, 2026) — enough to win a crowded field and earn DNC congratulations — NJ Election Results, June 2, 2026
• 1993 year of the World Trade Center bombing carried out by followers of Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman — 6 killed, ~1,000 wounded — United States v. Rahman, 2d Cir. 1999
• 0 minutes broadcast network airtime (ABC, CBS, NBC) devoted to Hamawy's 1995 defense-witness testimony at the Blind Sheikh's trial, despite covering his Republican opponent Gregg Mele — Newsbusters, June 2026
• 2002 year the US Treasury designated Benevolence International Foundation (BIF) an al-Qaeda front — 8 years after Hamawy volunteered for BIF in Bosnia — US Treasury OFAC, 2002

On June 2, 2026, Adam Hamawy (D) won the Democratic primary in New Jersey’s 12th congressional district with approximately 27.4% of the vote. Within hours, DNC Chair Ken Martin issued a formal congratulatory statement. Not a guarded acknowledgment. Not a statement that weighed his record. A congratulation — full stop.

The statement contained zero reference to the fact that in 1995, Hamawy had walked into a federal courtroom in the Southern District of New York and testified as a defense character witnessfor Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman — the “Blind Sheikh,” convicted that same year of seditious conspiracy for directing the cell that bombed the World Trade Center on February 26, 1993. Six people died. Nearly 1,000 were wounded.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY)followed the DNC lead. He welcomed Hamawy to the “House Democratic Doctor’s Caucus.” No asterisk. No acknowledgment. Just a warm welcome. The Democratic Party made a choice in the 48 hours after June 2nd: this history does not disqualify. It barely inconveniences.

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Ken Martin’s statement after Hamawy’s NJ-12 primary win was the kind of boilerplate DNC chairs issue after any primary — welcoming the nominee to the team, gesturing at the general election ahead, and implicitly signaling that the party has no reservations. That implicit signal is the story. Martin had to know about the 1995 testimony. The story had been in circulation for weeks before the primary. His office chose to issue the congratulations as written.

Hakeem Jeffries went further. By welcoming Hamawy to the House Democratic Doctor’s Caucus, Jeffries extended an institutional embrace — not just a courteous acknowledgment of a primary result, but an affirmative inclusion into Democratic leadership infrastructure. The caucus angle is deliberate: Hamawy is a physician, and the framing positions him as a valued healthcare voice in the caucus. His other record is simply not mentioned.

NJ-12 is one of the safer Democratic seats in New Jersey — a district anchored by Princeton, Trenton, and college-town suburbs with a robust Democratic base. Hamawy is now the heavy favorite against Republican opponent Gregg Mele (R)in November. The Democratic Party’s institutional arms are now aligned behind him, and there is no indication that will change before election day.

The record being set aside is specific. In 1995, at the federal trial United States v. Rahman (S.D.N.Y., affirmed 2d Cir. 1999), Adam Hamawy testified on behalf of Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman — as a defense character witness. The Blind Sheikh was not a peripheral figure. He was the spiritual authority whose followers had carried out the February 26, 1993 World Trade Center bombing — a truck bomb detonated in the underground parking garage that killed 6 people and wounded nearly 1,000.

Abdel Rahman was convicted of seditious conspiracy — the charge that he directed a “war of urban terrorism” against the United States, including the 1993 WTC bombing and a follow-on plot to bomb New York City landmarks including the Holland Tunnel and the United Nations. He died in federal prison in 2017 while serving a life sentence. Hamawy testified about his character. This is not disputed.

The BIF connection is a second layer. In 1994, Hamawy volunteered with the Benevolence International Foundation (BIF) in Bosnia. At the time, BIF was a US-based Islamic charity operating in conflict zones. In 2002, the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control designated BIF a specially designated global terrorist entity — a front organization for al-Qaeda. Treasury found that BIF had funneled money and fighters to al-Qaeda and that Osama bin Laden had co-founded the organization.

Hamawy’s BIF work preceded the designation by eight years. No allegation has been made that he knew of BIF’s al-Qaeda ties at the time. But the combination — 1994 BIF volunteer service, 1995 character testimony for the WTC bombing mastermind — is the factual record the DNC and House Democratic leadership chose to paper over with a congratulatory statement and a caucus welcome.

“Ken Martin sent a full congratulations to Hamawy with zero mention of his testimony at the Blind Sheikh's trial. Hakeem Jeffries welcomed him to the Doctor's Caucus. The DNC is signaling this history doesn't matter to them.”

Audrey Fahlberg (@AudreyFahlberg), The Free Press — June 4, 2026

This story has a prior page on this site: Adam Hamawy’s primary win itself and the Wikipedia suppression of his terrorism-defense history. This page covers the Democratic Party’s response after the vote — the embrace that followed.

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Exactly one Democratic elected official said the quiet part out loud: Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ-5). Gottheimer, who represents northern New Jersey and sits on the House Intelligence Committee, declined to offer congratulations. Instead, he said publicly that Hamawy’s 1995 testimony was “deeply concerning” and that he could not in good conscience ignore it.

That is the entirety of the Democratic dissent. One congressman from New Jersey. The rest of the caucus — from the DNC chair down — stood silent, congratulated, or welcomed. Gottheimer’s statement is notable precisely because of how isolated it is. He is not a right-wing Democrat. He is a pro-Israel, national-security-focused centrist who has taken hits from his own party’s left flank for years. His willingness to say it while no one else would is a measure of how thoroughly the party’s institutional apparatus has decided to move past this record.

The question the Gottheimer moment poses is simple: if this testimony history were about a Republican candidate, would the Democratic response be a congratulatory statement and a caucus welcome — or a coordinated demand for a full accounting? The answer to that question is the story.

Newsbusters — the Media Research Center’s media-bias tracking operation — documented that ABC, CBS, and NBC gave zero minutes of broadcast network coverage to Hamawy’s primary win or to his 1995 testimony history. This is not a slow-news story that got buried. Hamawy won a congressional primary in a state with major media markets. His opponent, Gregg Mele (R), received broadcast coverage. The story about a doctor who testified as a character witness for a convicted terrorist winning a congressional primary: nothing.

The blackout is not incidental. The Hamawy story breaks a specific pattern that broadcast networks rely on: the moral clarity of a named villain. In a conventional terrorism-adjacent story, there is a bad actor, a clear timeline, and a victim count. The Hamawy story has all three — the 1993 WTC bombing is one of the most documented terrorist acts in American history, with a full trial record, a 2d Circuit affirmance, and a named convict. But the story also requires naming Democratic Party endorsers and party leadership as the people choosing to ignore it. That framing is where broadcast coverage tends to dissolve.

The Free Press, by Audrey Fahlberg, is the primary outlet that documented the DNC and Jeffries responses in full. Fox News and conservative media amplified. The major broadcast networks — the ones that reach the voters who need this information most — have not reported it.

The Democratic Party’s 2026 posture on Hamawy is a data point, not an isolated incident. The same coalition — AOC, Sanders, Omar — that endorsed Hamawy before the primary has spent the past three years opposing US military aid to Israel, voting against Iron Dome supplementals, and describing the conflict in terms that treat Hamas and Hezbollah as resistance movements. Their Hamawy endorsements fit a pattern.

What is new is the institutional response. Ken Martin is the DNC chair. Hakeem Jeffries is House Minority Leader — the man who would be Speaker of the House if Democrats retake the majority in November. These are not backbench firebrands. These are the party’s operating leadership, and they made the explicit institutional choice to congratulate and welcome, with full knowledge of Hamawy’s record.

NJ-12 is not a competitive seat. Hamawy is almost certainly going to Congress in January. When he arrives, he will have been elected on a platform that included DSA-aligned endorsers and the active silence of his party’s leadership about his most controversial biographical fact. What he does with that mandate — and what the party does with him — is the story that follows.

The voters of NJ-12 deserve to know what they are voting on. Six people died in the 1993 WTC bombing. Nearly 1,000 were wounded. The man convicted of directing the plot died in federal prison. One of the men who stood up in court to speak to that convict’s good character is now a Democratic nominee for Congress, and his party’s leadership sent flowers.

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