L: Abdul El-Sayed (cropped, Bill Pugliano/Getty Images) R: Ali Khamenei (Majid Saeedi/Getty Images) Left-wing Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed told staffers he wanted to avoid taking a public position on the assassination of Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei because “there are a lot of people in Dearborn who are sad,” audio from a private campaign strategy meeting obtained by the Free Beacon shows. The comments from El-Sayed—a serious contender for the Democratic nomination in Michigan’s toss-up 2026 Senate race—came during a conference call with his campaign’s communications team on March 1, a day after an Israeli airstrike killed Khamenei. If reporters pressed him to take a position on the matter, El-Sayed said, he would change the subject to Donald Trump’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. “I’m just gonna go straight to pedophilia, frankly,” El-Sayed said. “I’ll just be like, ‘Pedophile president decides that he doesn’t like the front page news, so he decides to take us into another war.’” The campaign responded to a request for comment with a note from their attorneys at the Sandler Reiff law firm indicating the audio recording was obtained “without the campaign’s permission” and “without the knowledge of the people who were being recorded” and that the campaign is “considering its legal options” against the person who made the recording. The Free Beacon was asked to “take this into account in determining whether to proceed with any reporting on this matter.” We certainly did that. READ MORE: 'There Are a Lot of People in Dearborn Who Are Sad': Democratic Senate Hopeful Abdul El-Sayed Said He Needed To Stay Silent on Khamenei Killing Because Many of Michigan’s Muslim Voters ‘Are Sad’