In some ways, Graham Platner's exit may have turned into Abdul El-Sayed's nightmare. Thanks to his splashy exit, the Michigan DSA-oriented Senate hopeful became the biggest target for independent media – and as it turns out, he's a wealth of information. Literally.
The Washington Free Beacon has spent the last few weeks performing a deep dive into El-Sayed's finances and background. We know that the socialist's father-in-law, Tayeb Jukaku, has been dumping millions into El-Sayed's campaign from a super-PAC. Jukaku also has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas through two entities named in the Holy Land Foundation prosecution, ISNA and CAIR.
But what about El-Sayed himself? He exercises an unusual form of socialism ... or perhaps not all that unusual, at least in practice. El-Sayed has demanded more "government transparency," but has delayed his own required financial disclosures and the release of his tax returns – a step which had been a cause celebre with Democrats for a hot minute when Trump ran in 2004:
The release came as El-Sayed faced criticism from his Democratic opponent, congresswoman Haley Stevens, for his failure to release his tax returns and for his delay in filing an updated personal financial disclosure with the Senate until after Michigan's August primary election. El-Sayed, who has stressed the importance of "government transparency," initially said he delayed the disclosures because "taxes get complicated, my wife and her family own property abroad, and so getting all those tax forms is a thing." He later vowed to release his return imminently, saying it would be "pretty mundane."
"I'm a public servant, my wife is a clinician, at the end of the day we have a pretty standard tax return," El-Sayed said. "You're gonna be like, 'Wow, this is pretty mundane, I don't know what they were talking about.'"
El-Sayed finally released the toplines of his 2025 return, and they are anything but mundane, Alana Goodman points out:
Left-wing Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed released two pages of his 2025 tax return showing $686,069 in total income, including $292,000 in "additional income" and $262,000 in capital gains, placing him in the top 1 percent of Michigan earners.
But the return does not reveal the sources of that income because El-Sayed released only the first two pages, omitting the remainder that would provide further detail.
El-Sayed told an NBC affiliate in West Michigan that the $292,881 he reported in "additional income" stems from his little-known podcast, America Dissected, as well as from his wife's psychiatry practice, Mind Work Psychiatry. His corresponding "Schedule 1" form could confirm his claims, detailing the "additional income" in itemized categories like "business income" and "rental real estate," but El-Sayed did not release that form.
Gee, a socialist One Percenter! How ... ordinary. Not only is El-Sayed not down with the struggle, but he's also not exercising the transparency he demands. Given his father-in-law's connections and money transfers, transparency might be even more necessary, especially in relation to his wife's psychiatry practice. It's almost guaranteed that the podcast doesn't account for most of that income, after all.
And that psychiatry practice is already a curious aspect of El-Sayed's campaign. Earlier this week, the Free Beacon revealed that while El-Sayed demands socialized health care in a "Medicare for All" program, Sarah Jukaku won't accept Medicare from her patients – or any insurance plan at all. That has the Left "buzzing" about the optics of this hypocrisy, the Free Beacon's Collin Anderson writes in a follow-up:
"Over in Michigan, meanwhile, the left is buzzing over a conservative Washington Free Beacon scoop: The wife of progressive candidate Abdul El-Sayed, a psychiatrist, doesn't accept Medicare or insurance — despite being married to a candidate demanding Medicare for All," political reporter Rachael Bade wrote in her newsletter, the Inner Circle. She cited her colleague, former Democratic adviser and the Huddle cohost Dan Turrentine, who said "stories like this are 'devastating' for progressives."
"I'll equate it to Gavin Newsom having dinner at the French Laundry during COVID, or Nancy Pelosi getting her haircut during COVID, which is, it's this do as I say not as I do," Turrentine, a former Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton aide, said on the show's Tuesday episode.
"If your wife is a doctor who makes a good living and does not take Medicare … to then say we're going to advocate that everybody has to have this system, and we're going to try to use the government to force rates down on doctors, it just paints the picture of an elite that doesn't really play by the rules they're asking me to play by," he continued. "In a state with working class people like Michigan … do I think this will spread and it is a huge problem of authenticity and kind of the phoniness? I do."
This raises a couple of questions. If Sarah Jukaku makes $260K a year from a practice that doesn't accept Medicare or insurance, who are her patients? Answer: Fellow One Percenters. Only the wealthy would be able to afford ongoing psychiatric therapy while paying out of pocket.
That may not be the only answer to that question. It seems difficult to believe that a boutique clinic would survive and thrive without offering some access to people other than those paying cash. Jukaku's father is blowing millions of dollars into PACs to support El-Sayed's campaign without having to disclose the origins of that cash. Is he doing the same to support his daughter? And if so, where does that money come from?
Michiganders need a lot more transparency on these questions than El-Sayed and the Jukakus are providing. Thanks to the implosion of Der Oysterführer in Maine, reporters can focus on providing it – at least those reporters who actually report rather than perform narrative maintenance for the Left.
Editor’s Note: The 2026 Midterms will determine the fate of President Trump’s America First agenda. Republicans must maintain control of both chambers of Congress.
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