Michigan Dem who praised grandfather’s Nazi military service hosting fundraiser for Abdul El-Sayed

Elizabeth Warren, who is speaking at a rally for El-Sayed later that day, was originally billed as a speaker for the event but has since been removed from event publicity

Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed is slated to appear at a campaign fundraiser this weekend that is co-hosted by Kelly Neumann, a controversial Democratic fundraiser in Michigan who faced scrutiny earlier this year for a 2024 Facebook post on Veterans Day that praised her grandfather, who fought for the Nazis in World War II.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), who endorsed El-Sayed on Monday, was initially listed as a speaker at the Saturday event hosted by Neumann, though Neumann and the campaign removed Warren from their promotional materials after Jewish Insider inquired about the senator’s role. A spokesperson for El-Sayed said Warren’s “inclusion on the flier was a clerical error by our campaign.”

Neumann defended her grandfather even as she apologized for the original post. “To be clear, my grandfather was a german soldier, not a nazi,” Neumann wrote in March. In a phone call with JI on Monday, Neumann stood by this assertion and claimed that a representative from Germany’s Ministry of Defense told her the same thing.

The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum calls the idea that German soldiers were not part of the Nazi regime a “myth.”

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