A 2005 photo of Barack Obama and controversial Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan has surfaced after reportedly being hidden away out of fear it'd sink Obama's presidential bid.
Photographer Askia Muhammad told the Trice Edney News Wire that at the time he "gave the picture up" of then-Illinois Sen. Obama and Farrakhan at a meeting of the Black Congressional Caucus "and basically swore secrecy."
"But after the nomination was secured and all the way up until the inauguration; then for eight years after he was president, it was kept under cover," Muhammad told the news outlet.
On Thursday, Talking Points Memo posted the long-hidden picture.
Asked whether he thought the photo's release would've affected Obama's presidential campaign, Muhammad declared, "I insist. It absolutely would have made a difference."
Muhammad told TPM a "staff member" for the CBC contacted him "sort of in a panic" after he took the photo at a CBC caucus meeting in 2005.
"I sort of understood what was going on," Muhammad told TPM. "I promised and made arrangements to give the picture to Leonard Farrakhan," the minister's son-in-law and chief of staff.
He said he didn't release his copy of the photograph because he thought it would be perceived as a betrayal of that promise: "I was really, I guess, afraid of them."
But he said Farrakhan "had no objection" to his plan in 2017 to include the picture in a self-published book, TPM reported.
At a 2008 presidential debate in Cleveland, Obama said he had "been very clear" in his "denunciation" of Farrakhan's anti-Semitic and anti-Asian remarks.
"I did not solicit his support," Obama said, referring to Farrakhan's praise for his candidacy. "I can't say to somebody that he can't say that he thinks I'm a good guy."
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