Factsheet: Clare Lopez

IMPACT: A potential Trump administration appointee, Clare Lopez promotes falsified claims about Muslims in America, particularly the notion of a Muslim Brotherhood infiltration under President Obama.

Clare Lopez is the Vice President for Research and Analysis at the Center for Security Policy (CSP), which is considered by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) to be an anti-Muslim hate group. A former CIA operative, she was an advisor to the Ted Cruz campaign for national security, and is reportedly being considered for deputy national security advisor to President-elect Trump.

Along with Frank Gaffney, president of CSP, Lopez has published papers and given interviews and presentations in which she claims that the Muslim Brotherhood has infiltrated the United States government, and that Sharia law is taking hold in American courts.

Lopez believes President Obama and his administration have a “pattern” of “enabling” or directly supporting Muslim terrorist groups. She claims that Obama and Huma Abedin, an aide of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, both have ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, which Lopez and her colleagues consider a terrorist group.

In 2012, she said this about the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood in the Obama administration, “The infiltration is obviously very deep and very broad within the bureaucracy, not just the top level, but throughout the federal system, including the intelligence community, but I think also it has to do with the leadership at the top…the leadership of the worldview that is not pro-American. It is third world…”

Speaking of the need to investigate Muslim Brotherhood infiltration in the U.S., she expressed that Senator Joseph McCarthy was “spot on” in the approach he took in Congressional investigations in the 1950s.

Along with other potential Trump administration appointees, she has asserted there is an “unholy alliance” between “U.S. Muslim Brotherhood” and Black Lives Matter movement.

Lopez believes that the religion of Islam encourages violence. In a speech to an American Jewish group in 2013, she said, “When Muslims follow their doctrine they become jihadists.”

With the Center for Security Policy, she has also advanced the false notion that Muslims are undertaking “civilization jihad” in America. She also voiced the debunked claim that 80% of American mosques promote extremism.

Lopez also claimed there were Muslim “no-go zones” in Minnesota. This claim about “no-go zones” in Europe and America arose after the attacks in Paris and Brussels, has been debunked.

Since 2011, Lopez has expressed these views in articles penned for Breitbart, the website run by Steve Bannon, who was tapped to be President-elect Trump’s chief strategist.

Last Updated January 6, 2017