How a man once ordered to pay libel damages helped launch an investigation into Islamic private schools

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Nearly a decade ago, a British court ordered a man named Sam Westrop to pay the equivalent of more than $173,000 in libel damages after he published an article on his website calling the founder of a London-based Islamic TV channel a “convicted terrorist.”

Westrop eventually admitted the underlying evidence for the claim was not reliable, according to court filings, and corrected the story on his website.

“There simply was no evidence to support the allegation of terrorism,” the judge in the case wrote.

Years after that ruling, Westrop made similar claims about a group of Islamic private schools in Texas that had applied to the state’s new voucher program. He alleged the school leaders had connections to Islamic extremist or terrorist groups, such as Hamas. Westrop shared his research as early as last fall with the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts, which oversees the voucher program that awards eligible families taxpayer dollars for private education or homeschooling.

In December, acting Comptroller Kelly Hancock asked the state’s top lawyer if the agency could exclude from the voucher program an unnamed number of schools with supposed ties to the Chinese Communist government or that had hosted events for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim civil-rights group. A month later, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton ruled that it could.

Westrop’s allegations, along with claims made by several others, were among the primary reasons the comptroller’s office investigated the schools and delayed their admittance in the voucher program, according to new legal filings.

The scope of the investigations was also far broader than what was previously known, the filings show. The state used taxpayer money to contract with two investigators to dig into the histories of nearly 50 private schools across the state with alleged ties to radical Islamic organizations and the Chinese government — a number that far exceeds what has been reported.

The extent of the state’s probe and Westrop’s involvement are detailed as part of a new trove of legal filings in a lawsuit four Islamic private school campuses filed against the state comptroller in March after the agency initially kept them out of the program. It draws heavily on an eight-hour deposition of Murl Miller, the comptroller’s chief counsel for general litigation, taken in May as part of the lawsuit.

While the comptroller has since accepted all of the investigated schools into the voucher program, the schools that pursued the legal action are still asking the judge to certify a class-action lawsuit to ensure the comptroller can’t discriminate against certain private schools in the future.

“Religious liberty is not a temporary pass issued after a lawsuit,” said Eric Hudson, an attorney representing the Islamic schools. “We’re pressing on so equal treatment is the rule — not an exception granted under pressure.”

The comptroller’s office has objected to certifying the lawsuit as a class action, saying it shouldn’t be allowed to continue since the four Islamic campuses were ultimately allowed into the voucher program. The state’s lawyers also maintain that a class-action claim is outside the jurisdiction of the current court and case.

“Plaintiffs received not only the initial approval they sought, but also the continuing ability to participate in the Program on the same footing as all other approved providers and families,” the state’s June 26 filing said.

The debate over whether to allow the schools into the voucher program has come amid a wave of anti-Muslim rhetoric among some elected officials and prominent political candidates in Texas and across the country. At the state Republican Party convention last month, members tried to remove Muslims as delegates. Dr. Rick Scarborough, a former Southern Baptist pastor, told a Muslim attendee he wanted him to leave the event. (Scarborough later clarified to The Texas Tribune he wanted him to leave the country and admitted he had some regrets about the interaction.) In November, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott designated CAIR a foreign terrorist organization. Florida’s governor soon followed with his own accusations. CAIR is part of a lawsuit against Abbott and Paxton challenging the enforcement of the governor’s designation, saying he issued it “without due process and in violation of federal law.” The case is ongoing.

In the months since the Islamic schools’ lawsuit was filed, the comptroller’s office has maintained that its leaders did not purposefully single out certain schools. Instead, agency officials said that the Islamic schools were swept up in a wider review of some 700 private schools that were accredited by Cognia, a nonprofit that vets tens of thousands of schools worldwide. The agency has said it did not know which schools had Islamic connections but instead set aside the entire group after discovering not all had up-to-date accreditations, which are mandated to qualify for the Texas voucher program. Cognia could not be immediately reached for comment.

Miller’s deposition, however, contradicts the state’s claim.

In the deposition, Miller said the agency began receiving information as far back as last summer that identified almost 50 schools with alleged links to the Chinese Communist Party or extremist groups. He also confirmed that the third-party researchers hired by the comptroller only examined those particular campuses out of the more than 2,600 private schools now approved for the voucher program.

The filing also said the comptroller initially approved at least one of the Islamic schools represented in the lawsuit for the voucher program, Bayaan Academy, then later removed it two hours after Westrop shared some of his research in January via email.

Miller’s deposition cited a range of sources that prompted the comptroller’s investigations into the schools, including Westrop, a regional Homeland Security Task Force launched last summer to “combat emerging threats from transnational criminal organizations in Southeast Texas,” congressional hearings probing potential terrorist activities in Texas and the RAIR Foundation, an activist and investigative journalism organization combating “the threats from Islamic supremacists, radical leftists and their allies.”

Miller spoke with Westrop on the phone at one point this year. He told lawyers Westrop appeared credible.

“Did you Google Mr. Westrop?” Hudson asked during the May deposition.

“I did not Google, no,” said Miller, who added that the investigators the state hired confirmed his credentials.

“Did they make you aware of a defamation judgment against him for falsely accusing someone of being a terrorist?” Hudson asked.

“No, they did not,” Miller replied.

Westrop, who could not be reached for comment, was hired this year by the Texas Public Policy Foundation, an influential conservative think tank based in Austin. He has continued raising allegations on at least one podcast that extremist groups will take advantage of the school voucher program funding.

Westrop later published his research, which he had shared with the comptroller, on Middle East Forum, a website founded in 1994 that “promotes American interests in the Middle East and protects the West from Middle Eastern threats.”

Miller said in his deposition that the comptroller’s office is “not readily prepared to do investigations and to do deep research into foreign terrorist organizations or any other accusation.”

The comptroller, instead, handed over the list of accused schools provided by Westrop and others to two third-party counterterrorism researchers, Reuben Katz and Lara Burns, a retired FBI agent who now works with George Washington University’s Program on Extremism.

Katz and Burns, who could not immediately be reached for comment, provided the agency with dossiers on each school. Their research included cross-referencing accused school leaders against government terrorism and extremist group databases.

The comptroller ultimately allowed in all of the schools alleged to have Islamic terrorist or Chinese Communist Party ties.

The Islamic school plaintiffs have said their inclusion in the program is still not guaranteed long term and they hope a class-action suit could help change the comptroller’s processes that allowed the agency to delay their admission in the first place.

The filing pointed to a March 24 letter Hancock sent the state attorney general, in which he continued pushing claims linking the Houston Quran Academy’s principal to the Muslim Brotherhood. In the letter, he says the school had been “temporarily” approved for the voucher program but called for its removal. (The school could not be immediately reached for comment; the Houston Chronicle previously reported that Principal Hamed Ghazali said the school has no ties to CAIR and is “purely academic.”) Hancock asked Paxton, whom the comptroller had been feuding with over the attorney general’s legal strategy in the investigation, to highlight what he called the school’s “terror ties.” He urged the attorney general to strip the school, “and any other school with documented ties to terrorism,” of its corporate charter. (Hancock has since announced he will step down from his position as acting comptroller at the end of this month.)

Of Hancock’s comments, Miller said in his deposition, “There’s a lot of mistakes and misstatements in this particular letter, but again, I’m not the acting comptroller.”

“We,” Miller said, had determined the accusations of terrorist ties were not accurate. “This letter came completely out of the blue, and — and so this was a surprise to all of us.”

An attorney for the plaintiffs asked whether the comptroller has the authority to remove a school from the approved list, overriding the agency’s own internal research. Miller opposed the notion multiple times before conceding at one point.

“It’s possible, yes,” Miller said.

Misty Harris contributed research. Vianna Davila contributed reporting.

Disclosure: Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts and Texas Public Policy Foundation have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in The Texas Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.