Just as the controversy over Michele Bachmann's allegations of Islamist government infiltration had begun to subside, the Minnesota Republican is distributing a speech by a prominent supporter that attempts to connect a top aide to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to the al Qaeda terrorist network. Bachmann's office sent out a speech Friday given by conservative scholar and former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy, who argues that Bachmann and four other Republicans in Congress "actually understated the case" against Clinton aide Huma Abedin. The accusation represents a significant escalation of Bachmann's original allegations tying Abedin to the Muslim Brotherhood. McCarthy's speech was followed by a "Bachmann Bulletin" redistributing a recent Star Tribune opinion piece she wrote describing her concerns about radical Islam. McCarthy's speech, however, represents the most detailed public account that has been provided by any of Bachmann's supporters so far to substantiate her accusation against Abedin.

A Bachmann press aide declined to say if the email distribution represented an endorsement of McCarthy's thesis, saying he was "simply passing along McCarthy's speech." The State Department did not immediately comment, though earlier a spokesman called Bachmann's allegations "vicious and disgusting lies." Abedin, according to the McCarthy speech distributed by Bachmann's office, "had a very lengthy affiliation with an institute founded by a top figure at the nexus between Saudi terror funding, Brotherhood ideology, and al Qaeda jihad against the United States." McCarthy gave the speech at the National Press Club Wednesday at the invitation of the Center for Security Policy, the organization cited by Bachmann in June when she requested that Abedin and other top government officials be investigated. Bachmann's request met with a firestorm of criticism from Democrats as well as top Republicans such as House Speaker John Boehner and Sen. John McCain, who went to the Senate floor to denounce Bachmann's attack as "specious and degrading." McCarthy's allegations dwarf those laid out by Bachmann, who described Abedin as an "example" of her concerns about Muslim Brotherhood "influence operations" in the federal government. McCarthy, who prosecuted Omar Abdel-Rahman, the "blind sheik," connects Abedin to al Qaeda through her work as an assistant editor of a journal published by the Institute for Muslim Minority Affairs in Saudi Arabia. The institute, McCarthy said, was founded by Abdullah Omar Naseef, who recruited Abedin's family from Michigan to edit the journal when Abedin was 2-years-old. She reportedly started helping her parents in 1996, when she was a 20-year-old intern working in the Clinton White House. Naseef, according to McCarthy, also was "a major Muslim Brotherhood figure involved in the financing of al Qaeda." He also allegedly helped fund the terrorist organization as a leader of the Muslim World League, which, according to McCarthy, "was launched by Muslim Brotherhood activists with the financial backing of the Saudi Royal family." Bachmann's congressional critics, notably Minnesota Democrat Keith Ellison, have termed the allegations against Abedin "guilt by association." Bachmann also has accused Ellison of Muslim Brotherhood associations, which he denies. News accounts of McCarthy's speech at the Press Club on Wednesday raised questions about how the Obama administration could be accused of promoting both Sharia or Islamic law and same-sex marriage in the United States. Asked for evidence of Abedin's influence over Clinton -- one of the concerns cited by Bachmann -- McCarthy replied that Abedin "managed to get Mrs. Clinton to appear at a college that her mother founded in Egypt." Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank, who questioned McCarthy after the speech, noted that George W. Bush adviser Karen Hughes also spoke there. "If Abedin is in fact a Muslim Brotherhood plant spreading sharia law in the United States," Milbank wrote, "she's using unorthodox methods: posing provocatively for a Vogue spread, then marrying and having the child of a Jewish congressman [former New York Rep. Anthony Weiner] who sent out a photo of his genitals on Twitter. As Clinton's personal aide, helping her boss with suits and handbags and logistics, she has not been in an ideal position to advance the alleged cause." In his speech, McCarthy acknowledged that Abedin is "not a policymaker."