Major Media Figures Caught Meeting With Lobbyists From Islamist Country

Federal records show that Turkey’s ruling party held meetings with high-profile American media voices, including far-Left political commentator Mehdi Hasan and Neil Patel, co-founder of The Daily Caller and CEO of the Tucker Carlson Network.

The Turkey AK Party’s Representation to the United States also met with former CIA officer John Kiriakou, the intelligence official who blew the whistle on the agency’s use of waterboarding and other forms of torture against detainees during the War on Terror.

On March 11, 2026, Turkey’s AK Party Representation to the United States LLC met face-to-face with Kiriakou, and the next day, it held a virtual meeting with Patel. Months earlier, the same office met with Hasan and attended a banquet hosted by the New York chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). CAIR has faced scrutiny from Republicans over its historical connections to individuals and organizations associated with the Muslim Brotherhood. Those relationships have been examined in congressional hearings, including a Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing earlier this month.

The AK Party Representation to the United States is registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), and its filings are signed by Halil Mutlu, who has been publicly identified as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s cousin.

In the 12 months covered by its two most recent supplemental statements, the office reported receiving nearly $2.1 million in wire transfers from AK Party headquarters in Turkey. Its reported expenditures included construction, architecture, plumbing, electrical work, staff, and the costs of keeping a permanent political operation running in Washington.

The office’s activity logs repeatedly describe its meetings using broad phrases such as “Discussion regarding U.S.-Turkey Relations” and “Public Event,” often providing little to no additional information about what was discussed. The entries include the CAIR-NY banquet and an earlier meeting with Kiriakou on April 23, 2025.

The meetings garnered attention because Kiriakou later appeared on Tucker Carlson’s show. In a July 2026 episode, the two discussed CIA culture, deception tactics, and how the agency treats whistleblowers. The Tucker Carlson Network has also sold Kiriakou’s book, “The Ultimate Guide to CIA Skills, Tactics, and Techniques.”

The FARA filings provide a paper trail of meetings between the Turkish party’s Washington operation and a number of politically influential American personalities. It is unclear what was discussed during any of those meetings. The filings record the names, the dates, and the money, but almost nothing about the substance of the conversations.

Patel has rejected suggestions of an improper relationship with Turkey. On Monday, he wrote on X, “These boring and disingenuous smears don’t work anymore. I meet with all sorts of people every week to try to figure out what’s really going on in an increasingly complicated and dangerous world. Unlike so many others, we’ve never taken a dime from foreign interests.”