Alan Dershowitz: Having Obama's Farrakhan Picture Before Election Would Have Changed Everything
Democrats and Republican alike have been voiced criticism of former President Barack Obama after a previously unreleased photo emerged showing him standing alongside controversial Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.
Harvard Law Professor and Alan Dershowitz appeared on “Fox and Friends” and said that he would not have campaigned for the former Senator if he had known about the picture of Obama and Farrakhan, Fox News reported.
“If I had known that the President had posed smilingly with him when he was a Senator, I would not have campaigned for Barack Obama,” Dershowitz said.
He went on to describe the leader of the Nation of Islam as a “virulent anti-Semite and anti-American.”
“He has called Judaism a gutter religion,” Dershowitz continued. “He is a horrible, horrible human being.”
Dershowitz also described to the Fox News hosts that he had threated to leave the Democratic Party if Rep. Keith Ellison, who also had connections with Farrakhan, was elected as chairman over Tom Perez.
“We should have nobody in public office associating with a bigot like Farrakhan.”
The photo was taken by Askia Muhammad at the 2005 Democratic National Convention, according to NorthStar News Today, but he kept the picture hidden so Obama could run for president.
The Congressional Black Caucus had reportedly contacted the photographer later and told Muhammad to give the picture to them.
“I gave the original disk to him and in a sense swore myself to secrecy because I had quietly made a copy for myself,” he said, according to Fox News.
“I gave the picture up at the time and basically swore to secrecy,” Muhammad said to the Trice Edney News Wire. “But after the nomination was secured and all the way up until the inauguration; then for eight years after he was President, it was kept under cover.”
Now that Obama is done with his political career, Muhammad published the photo in a book called “The Autobiography of Charles 67X,” which will be released at the end of this month, The Daily Caller reported.
Muhammad insisted that it would have made a difference in the 2008 election, and others agreed with him.
“I do believe that it would have had a very, very negative affect in that given moment as far as the candidacy of candidate Obama at that time,” Dr. Shayla Nunnally, president of the National Conference of Black Political Scientists, said.
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