Sen. John McCain took to the Senate floor to condemn a suggestion by Rep. Michele Bachmann that the federal government has been penetrated by Muslim Brotherhood agents.

A letter sent last week to inspectors general of several federal agencies by Bachmann (R-Minn.) and four other Republicans in the House of Representatives suggested that Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood has made “deep penetration” into the federal government and that those agencies should launch an investigation to uncover the influence of the group’s agents.

Among the suspected “agents” named in the letter was Huma Abedin, a deputy chief of staff for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and wife of Anthony Weiner, the disgraced former House member from New York who had to resign after tweeting lewd photos of himself to a 21-year-old woman and lying about it. The letter asserted that three of Abedin’s family members are connected to the Muslim Brotherhood and that Clinton’s office has “taken actions recently that have been enormously favorable to the Muslim Brotherhood and its interests.”

“It appears that there has been deep penetration in the halls of our United States government by the Muslim Brotherhood,” Bachmann told the St. Cloud Times, a Minnesota newspaper. “It appears that there are individuals who are associated with the Muslim Brotherhood who have positions, very sensitive positions, in our Department of Justice, our Department of Homeland Security, potentially even in the National Intelligence Agency.”

Cosigning the letters were Reps. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.), Louie Gohmert, (R-Texas), Thomas Rooney (R-Fla.) and Lynn Westmoreland (R-Ga.).

At the Senate on Wednesday, McCain (R-Ariz.) called Bachmann’s claims “specious and degrading,” according to reports.

The first Muslim-American elected to Congress, Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Fla.), said in a statement that if Bachmann “has sources for this type of information, she owes it to the country to reveal them to the proper authorities, but definitely not this way. If she doesn’t have this type of information, she should not be whipping up fear and hysteria about a very important matter.”

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