Ted Cruz's latest addition to his national security advisory team is an extreme anti-Muslim activist

Ted Cruz adds Frank Gaffney to National Security team.

(Image credit: Win McNamee/Getty Images)

published 17 March 2016

Frank Gaffney, a former Reagan administration Pentagon official and an outspoken anti-Muslim activist, is set to be one of the newest members of the Cruz campaign's national security advisory team, Bloomberg reports. Gaffney, who first met Sen. Ted Cruz back in 2012 when he says he advised the Texas senator about introducing "legislation to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization," has been labeled "one of the nation's leading Islamophobes" by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Gaffney has claimed that members of the Muslim Brotherhood have infiltrated the Obama administration, specifically citing Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin, and he was banned from the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in 2010 after he accused CPAC officials of "infiltrating the organization on behalf of the Muslim Brotherhood," Talking Points Memo reports. He reappeared at CPAC this year to lead a panel called "Countering the Global Jihad."