DETROIT, Mich. (Diya TV) — A newly reported video shows Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed describing himself as a dual citizen of the United States and Egypt, a status his campaign says he never held.
The Washington Free Beacon published the footage Monday. According to the outlet, El-Sayed made the remarks at a GlobeMed conference in Detroit while serving as the city’s health director.
“I carry dual citizenship,” El-Sayed said before describing childhood summers in Egypt and his experiences under then-President Hosni Mubarak.
The outlet previously reported that an academic résumé from his time at Columbia University listed his citizenships as “USA, Egypt.”
Responding to that earlier report, campaign spokeswoman Roxie Richner said El-Sayed had misunderstood information relatives gave him as a child. She said he believed his grandfather had pursued Egyptian citizenship on his behalf.
When El-Sayed and his family later tried to verify that account, they could not find supporting documents, Richner told the outlet.
“Abdul is not a dual citizen by any verifiable metric and never has been,” she said.
The Free Beacon reported that the campaign did not respond to its questions about the newly published conference footage.
The video and résumé document El-Sayed’s past statements about citizenship. Neither establishes that Egyptian authorities legally recognized him as a citizen. The campaign has not publicly clarified when he determined that his earlier understanding was mistaken.
