Terrorists have no place on the White House Religious Liberty Commission

 The decision by the Trump White House to appoint Ismail Royer to the Advisory Board of Lay Leaders to the Religious Liberty Commission is as disheartening as it is disappointing. 

Ismail Royer has spent most of his adult life as a Jihadi, working for Muslim Brotherhood-connected groups and training as a terrorist in a camp in southwest Asia. 

Unsurprisingly, Royer’s brief biography on the White House web site makes no mention of his treasonous past: 

Ismail Royer. Ismail Royer serves as Director of the Islam and Religious Freedom Action Team for the Religious Freedom Institute. Since converting to Islam in 1992, he has studied religious sciences with traditional Islamic scholars and spent over a decade working at non-profit Islamic organizations. Royer has worked with nonprofits to promote peace between faiths. His writing has appeared in multiple publications and he co-authored an article on Islam on Religious Violence Today: Faith and Conflict in the Modern World. 

There is so much more to know about Royer which should have disqualified him from serving any role in government and particularly in the Trump White House. It has long been rumored that “deep state” operatives are embedded in the Trump administration to undermine President Trump’s agenda. Whoever decided to place Royer on this advisory board would seem to be a prime suspect for such internal sabotage. 

Ismail Royer was born Randall Todd Royer. He converted to Islam in 1992, just as his bio says. 

Royer was employed by the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) as a “communications” and “civil rights” representative. CAIR was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the US v The Holy Land Foundation, the largest terrorism financing prosecution in US history. In wiretap evidence obtained by the Department of Justice it was determined that CAIR was actually an arm of the designated Foreign Terrorist Organization Hamas. More recently CAIR has been formally condemned by the state legislatures in Louisiana, Arkansas and Florida. 

But that’s just the beginning of Royer’s disturbing past. 

In 1994 he left college in the US to join the jihadist Abu Zubair group fighting in the war between Bosnia and Serbia.  

Not terribly long after that he traveled to Kashmir where he attended a terrorist training camp operated by the designated Foreign Terrorist Organization Lashkar-e-Taiba where, according to a subsequent indictment by the US Department of Justice, Royer received training in small arms, explosives and rocket propelled grenades. Lashkar-e-Taiba is notorious for carrying out the horrific November 2008 Mumbai terrorist attack in which 10 Jihadis killed 174 people and wounded another 300. While training with Lashkar-e-Taiba, Royer put the communications skills he has crafted while with CAIR to use in setting up an online newsletter for the terrorist organization. 

Eventually Royer returned to the US where he continued to publish the online newsletter for Lashkar-e-Taiba and recruited for the designated foreign terrorist organization. 

Royer went on to be arrested and pled guilty to aiding and abetting the use and discharge of a firearm during and in relation to a crime of violence and aiding and abetting the carrying of an explosive during the commission of a felony. In April 2004 he was sentenced to 20 years in prison, of which he served 14 years. 

Now, less than 8 years since his release from prison for aiding and abetting terrorists, Royer is sitting as an advisor to a White House commission on religious liberty. Keep in mind that during his terrorist career and during his time in prison, thousands of American heroes were fighting and dying overseas battling terrorists. This is a travesty of justice. 

This recent White House appointment of Ismail Royer is not only an insult to these American heroes and their families, but an act that should be thoroughly investigated, immediately reversed, and never repeated.