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‘GOP frontrunner Donald Trump revealed Monday that his foreign policy team will include Walid Phares, a neoconservative pundit and professor with ties to Lebanon’s right-wing, brutal Christian Maronite militias that carried out horrific massacres during the country’s civil war.
In a private meeting with the editorial board of the Washington Post, Trump named five of his advisers for the first time. “Walid Phares, who you probably know. Ph.D., adviser to the House of Representatives,” said the multi-billionaire. “He’s a counter-terrorism expert.”
A former Middle East adviser to Mitt Romney’s failed presidential campaign, Phares has sought to minimize his ties to Christian militias. But a Mother Jones investigation by Adam Serwer in 2011 revealed he was a key figure in the Lebanese Forces, an umbrella group of Christian militias that aimed to create a Christian-only enclave modeled after Israel.’