A White House aide has acknowledged "hundreds of examples" of face-to-face meetings between Obama administration staffers and officials with the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).

These happened despite CAIR's well-documented roots in a Muslim Brotherhood-created Hamas support network. The record is so deep that the FBI cut off its outreach to CAIR, and a federal judge ruled there was "ample evidence" cementing the connection.

George Selim, director of community partnerships for the White House, responded to a question from Daily Caller reporter Neil Munro during an event Thursday. He declined to discuss the issue further.

In Munro's article published today, Investigative Project on Terrorism Executive Director Steven Emerson slammed the White House for engaging "the group with the worst record of deception and the deepest ties to terrorists."

While CAIR officials deny it, records obtained by the FBI place the group and its founders squarely within a Hamas-support network operating in the United States called the Palestine Committee. That includes the presence of CAIR founders Omar Ahmad and Nihad Awad at a 1993 conference in Philadelphia called to discuss ways to "derail" a U.S.-led peace initiative between Israelis and Palestinians.

Participants in that conference often spoke of the deal's impact on Hamas and how they have to hide their agenda when discussing the issue to Americans.

Nothing in CAIR's history indicates it ever withdrew from that network, which leaves the FBI wondering "whether there continues to be a connection between CAIR or its executives and HAMAS."

But embracing CAIR may be part of a broader political strategy, especially in battleground states with large Muslim populations like Michigan and Illinois, Munro wrote.

He also referred to anti-Semitic views espoused by CAIR Michigan Director Dawud Walid, which were exposed earlier this week by the IPT. Walid preached about a slaughter of Jews by Muhammad's army. "It was a correct" decision, Walid said.