Hasan Minhaj Fabricated Details About FBI Informants, Anthrax Scare in His Stand-Up
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Hasan Minhaj admitted to — and defended — making up stories in his stand-up sets in a new interview with The New Yorker.
The story outlines several fabrications peppered throughout Minhaj’s work, often in service of describing experiences of discrimination and threats of violence for speaking truth to power. It is not unheard of for comedians (or even memoirists) to tweak, exaggerate, or make-up certain details to ensure a joke lands, and Minhaj defended his choices, saying the stories he told were based on “emotional truth.”
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He added: “The punch line is worth the fictionalized premise.”
Two prominent stories featured in Minhaj’s 2022 stand-up special The King’s Jester were falsified. The first centers around a white man named “Brother Eric,” who, Minhaj said, converted to Islam and started showing up at the Sacramento-area mosque he attended as a kid in 2002. In the bit, Minhaj said he was sure Brother Eric was an informant, and even tried to goad him by talking about getting his pilot’s license (Minhaj claimed that led to a confrontation with the police).
The bit ends with Minhaj claiming, years later, he recognized “Brother Eric” as a man named Craig Monteilh, who did work as an FBI informant in Muslim communities (this was revealed through a surveillance case that reached the Supreme Court). In reality, however, Monteilh was in prison in 2002 and didn’t start working for the FBI until 2006. Additionally, he never worked in Sacramento, only in Southern California. (Despite the fabrication, Minhaj remained defiant, suggesting he owed Monteilh nothing because of his actual work as an informant.)
In another fabricated tale from The King’s Jester, Minhaj claimed that he received an envelope filled with white powder that accidentally spilled onto his daughter. This was, Minhaj said, at a time when he was receiving threats for segments on his old Netflix show Patriot Act about the killing of Jamal Khashoggi (likely ordered by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman) and Hindu nationalism in India. Believing he might’ve been sent anthrax, Minhaj said he rushed his daughter to the hospital. Though his daughter ended up being fine, he punctuated the story by stating his wife then upbraided him for putting their daughter at risk with his work.
This story could not be corroborated with police, area hospitals, or even people who worked at Minhaj’s old apartment and Patriot Act. And Minhaj himself copped to making up the parts about his daughter being exposed to a white powder and her subsequent hospitalization.
On top of those two instances, Minhaj has falsely claimed he had a meeting at the Saudi Embassy in Washington D.C. about arranging an interview with Mohammed bin Salman in 2018, the same day Khashoggi was murdered inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul (Minhaj’s meeting happened at least a month prior). He made up a bit about Jared Kushner taking a seat at a Time 100 Gala that had been ceremoniously left empty for an imprisoned Saudi activist (no such seat had been designated). And, a major part of his 2017 stand-up special, Homecoming King, about being dumped by his prospective prom date at the last minute because of his skin color, was disputed by the woman herself.
When asked about the prom story, Minhaj again defended the “emotional truth” of it, and said, “There are so many other kids who have had a similar sort of doorstep experience.” Speaking more broadly about the fabrications in his work, he said, “You have got to take the shots you are given in life, even if they’re built on a lie… The emotional truth is first. The factual truth is secondary.”
Minhaj further addressed the issue in a statement shared with Rolling Stone, defending core portions of his stories, even if certain details were embellished. “Yes, I was rejected from going to prom because of my race. Yes, a letter with powder was sent to my apartment that almost harmed my daughter. Yes, I had an interaction with law enforcement during the war on terror. Yes, I had varicocele repair surgery so we could get pregnant. Yes, I roasted Jared Kushner to his face. I use the tools of standup comedy—hyperbole, changing names and locations, and compressing timelines to tell entertaining stories. That’s inherent to the art form. You wouldn’t go to a Haunted House and say ‘Why are these people lying to me?’ — The point is the ride. Standup is the same.”
This story was updated at 3:39 p.m. ET with a statement from Minhaj.
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