Filmmaker: Malik Obama's radical ties 'misinterpreted'

Malik Obama and Barack Obama at the president's wedding

Editor's note: This is the second of two articles on an interview with President Obama's half-brother Abongo "Roy" Malik Obama conducted via Skype with film director Joel Gilbert. The first article focused on Malik Obama's charge that Barack Obama exploited the family in Kenya for political purposes and now has abandoned them. The second article examines the family foundation Malik helped established in Barack Obama's name and numerous allegations against Malik, including the charge that he managed funds for the Muslim Brotherhood.

NEW YORK –Malik Obama has charged that his half-brother Barack Obama exploited his impoverished African family for political gain then abandoned them since reaching the White House, but the Kenyan native himself has been the subject of serious accusations, including a charge by the Egyptian government that he raised funds for the Muslim Brotherhood.

As WND reported Thursday, Malik Obama, who was the best man in the president’s wedding, said in interview via Skype with filmmaker Joel Gilbert that his half-brother, who "says one thing and he does another," has "turned and become a different person with the family is the same way that I see him behaving politically."

Among other accusations, along with Muslim Brotherhood fundraising, Malik has been accused of collaboration with Sudan's radical Islamic regime, using money raised in his father's and brother's name for personal profit, and partnering with a cult leader.

Gilbert, who says he has gotten to know Malik over the past few months, insists Malik's relationships "with questionable characters have been greatly misinterpreted."

"All these relationships only have to do with Malik trying to find ways to help his extended family and his impoverished village financially," he said.

"I can assure you that Malik is no terrorist-mastermind finance guy," said Gilbert. "Malik has a 16-year-old son who is very ill. He doesn’t have money to keep his sick son in the hospital, and he can barely keep his car running.”

Gilbert is producer of the documentary “Dreams From My Real Father,” which presents a theory that Obama’s mentor Frank Marshall Davis, who was a member of the Communist Party, was the president’s biological father. At the end of the Skype interview, Malik agreed with Gilbert's suggestion that a DNA test would be warranted to resolve the paternity issue.

Gilbert further argued that as "the oldest brother in the family, it fell upon Malik to try to find ways to help the family only because Barack did not deliver on all his promises."

“Of course, Malik would like himself and his village to benefit from the success of a relative," he said. "That is natural and normal in an impoverished society. If someone makes it, they help the others who supported him.

"He sought to capitalize, but it never worked,” Gilbert said.

'Chief architect'

The charge that Malik was “one of the chief architects” managing money for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt prior to the downfall of the Muslim Brotherhood-dominated government of former Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi came from Egyptian judicial authorities, as WND reported in 2013

Malik Obama wearing Hamas scarf at 2010 conference in Yemen

In addition, WND reported a complaint was filed with the Egyptian High Court requesting Malik be placed on the terrorist watch list both for involvement with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and for his role as the executive secretary of the Islamic Dawa Organization, a group created by the radical Islamic government of Sudan, which is considered by the U.S. State Department to be a terrorist state.

In 2011, WND reported Malik and President Obama’s African step-grandmother, Sara, established the Barack H. Obama Foundation as a non-profit in the U.S. While the applications of conservative organizations for tax-exempt status were languishing, Malik's group, in an unusual procedure, was retroactively given approval in a letter signed by Lois Lerner, the former director of the IRS tax-exempt division.

WND also reported in 2011 the Obama family's partnership with the Saudi royal family to expand Islamic education in majority-Christian Kenya.

Malik Obama embracing Yisrayl Hawkins

The London Daily Mail reported in 2013 evidence the Barack H. Obama Foundation was supporting Malik Obama’s polygamous life style in his home village. WND reported that the time that there was no evidence that Malik built any houses in Kogelo for widows and orphans as claimed. Nor was there any evidence Sarah Obama has built any medical facilities for HIV/AIDS victims.

In 2014, WND reported Malik developed a partnership with a David Koresh-style cult in Texas headed by self-professed prophet and polygamist Yisrayl Hawkins in a project to build rebuild the temple in Jerusalem.

See excerpts of the interview with Malik Obama:

'Obama broke his word'

Gilbert described Malik as "a little bit naive, but well meaning," asserting he "doesn’t have a bad bone in his body."

"He's a good guy with no ulterior motives," Gilbert said. "The bottom line, from Malik’s point of view, is Barack promised to help him and the family village in Africa, but President Obama broke his word.”

Gilbert said Malik became a religious Muslim because it helped him stop drinking alcohol. Alcoholism ultimately contributed to the death of his father, the Kenyan Barack H. Obama, who was found to have been inebriated when he died in a car accident in Nairobi in 1982, as President Obama described in his autobiography.

Malik Obama, best man at the wedding of Barack H. Obama, Oct. 3, 1992

In the interview, Gilbert asked Malik whether President Obama had ever contributed to the Barack H. Obama Foundation.

“No, nothing,” Malik answered.

Malik said President Obama has not consulted him or the family in Kenya regarding a planned presidential visit to the East African nation in September. It will mark Barack Obama's first return to Kenya since entering the White House.

Gilbert asked Malik if he expected to see the president when he visits Kenya.

“I don’t expect that,” Malik answered.

"I’ve not been informed, I don’t know what the program is about," he said.

"It’s a betrayal, big humiliation, an embarrassment and demeaning.

Read a transcript of the full interview