Is Abdul El-Sayed Really “As Michigan As You Get?”

Candidate for U.S. Senate Abdul El-Sayed presents himself as a lifelong Michigander, the son of Egyptian immigrants who came to America seeking opportunity.

But a review of court records, newspaper archives and naturalization records raises questions about Abdul El-Sayed's early life in Missouri, Florida, and time spent in Egypt.

In January, the Washington Free Beacon first reported El-Sayed’s reported dual Egyptian citizenship which he listed in 2013. El-Sayed's campaign said he never had dual citizenship. He was born on Oct. 31, 1984, in Detroit. He had an opportunity to provide an explanation or documents, but didn’t.

That is not proof of anything unusual. But it does mean voters are being asked to accept a key biographical fact based largely on campaign materials, interviews, and media profiles rather than publicly available primary documents.

So we did our own investigation.

El-Sayed's father, Mohamed El-Sayed, was born in Egypt in 1951 and came to the U.S. in 1979 to pursue a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering at Wayne State University, according to his LinkedIn Profile.

Abdul’s mother, Fatten Fathy Mohamed, was born in Egypt in 1960 and, according to a biography published by the Islamic Society of Central Missouri, graduated from Alexandria University School of Medicine in 1983. That detail alone raises an interesting question.

If El-Sayed's mother was still attending medical school in Alexandria through 1983, while Mohamed worked in Detroit for General Motors, where exactly did his parents meet and where was he born?

While there is no public record of their marriage, or Fatten’s arrival in the U.S., court records show Mohamed and Fatten divorced in Missouri in 1988, while Mohamed was a professor at the University of Missouri.

Within months, both had remarried. Mohamed married Jacqueline Johnson in August 1988, who he is still married to today. Fatten married Tawfik Abdelhadi, father of activist Eman Abdelhadi, the following month.

Then it gets more bizarre.

In December 1991, Boone County, Missouri court records show a minor child named Abdulrahman Mohamed Mohamed’s legal name changed to Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed.

Mohamed El-Sayed served as the child's legal representative in the proceeding. If his parents had been married since his birth in 1984, why was a name change requested in 1990 to add his father’s last name, El-Sayed?

The earliest available record we could find of little Abdulrahman was his social security number issued in 1987 in Missouri. Where exactly did he and his mother spend the first three years of his life?

Social security numbers were not automatically issued until that year, so that may have something to do with it.

But why was his father’s last name added years later in 1991?

El Sayed’s biological parents remained Egyptian citizens until March 22, 1990, when they were naturalized on the same day. At that time, Fatten Mohamed’s name was legally changed to Fatten Elkony. She stayed in Missouri, where she appears to work as a nurse practitioner.

After Mohamed El Sayed married Jacqueline Johnson, Abdul lived in Florida with them. Public records place the family there until at least 1995. According to Abdul’s own accounts, he spent summers visiting relatives in Egypt.

So how much of a lifelong Michigander is Abdul El-Sayed? We may never know for sure. But he certainly didn’t spend the majority of his childhood in the state he hopes to represent in the U.S. Senate.

He certainly didn’t “grow up as Michigan as you get,” like his campaign would have you believe.