Today on Center for Security Policy president Frank Gaffney’s radio show, Mitt Romney foreign policy adviser John Bolton defended Rep. Michele Bachmann’s (R-MN) call for the U.S. government to investigate suggestions that government employees — including a top aide to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton — are affiliated with a Muslim Brotherhood plot to infiltrate the U.S. government.

Bolton has direct ties to the Romney campaign, serving as an unpaid adviser that regularly appears at campaign events stumping for the presumptive GOP presidential nominee. “John Bolton insists on good results for America and is someone I respect,” Romney said in December. “I think he’s a fine man with great capacity.”

On Gaffney’s radio show today (Gaffney is the brains behind Bachmann’s campaign), Bolton said Bachmann and some of her fellow Republicans are just asking questions, adding that he’s “mystified” by the criticism Bachmann has received:

BOLTON: What I think these members of Congress have done is simply raise the question, to a variety of inspectors general in key agencies, are your departments following their own security clearance guidelines, are they adhering to the standards that presumably everybody who seeks a security clearance should have to go through, are they making special exemptions? What is wrong with raising the question? Why is even asking whether we are living up to our standards a legitimate area of congressional oversight, why has that generated this criticism? I’m just mystified by it.

Listen to the clip, courtesy of Right Wing Watch:

Bolton joins right-wing luminaries Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh in defending Bachmann’s anti-Muslim witch hunt but many top Republicans — Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI) — have criticized the Minnesota Congresswoman’s crusade.

Tea Party Congressman Louie Gohmert (R-TX) lashed out at Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) for criticizing him and his fellow conservative members for suggesting that a senior aide to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood. Gohmert is part of a small group of five Republican members, led by Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), who are demanding an investigation into whether Clinton deputy chief of staff Huma Abedin is connected to the group.

“Normally you don’t go blast somebody on the floor who is a colleague on the same side of the aisle unless you touch base with them,” Gohmert complained during an appearance on the Dennis Miller Show on Tuesday, referring to McCain’s denunciation of the group’s allegations as “nothing less than an unwarranted and unfounded attack.” The fiery Texan then launched into a personal attack against McCain, calling him “numb nuts” and suggesting the Muslim Brotherhood is now influencing him too:

GOHMERT: Well, it’s obvious that John McCain didn’t even read the letter because of what he said in accusing Michele and us of making these horrible accusations. There were five letters and there were many things that are stated that are facts in each letter. And I wish some of these numb nuts would go out and read the letter before they make these horrible allegations about the horrible accusations we’re making. But we also know that John McCain himself had said back in the early stages of stuff going on in Egypt that he was, in his words, “unalterably opposed to helping the Muslim Brotherhood.” Well, obviously the unalterable person has been altered, so he is okay with it now.

Listen:

Gohmert has long believed that Muslim extremist organizations have infiltrated the American government. At a recent Congressional hearing, he furiously questioned Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano about whether Mohamed Elibiary, a member of DHS’s Combatting Violent Extremism Working Group (CVE) and a Muslim is part of a terrorist organization.

While Bachmann and her small group of supporters are doubling down on their attacks, a growing number of Republicans are distancing themselves from the charges.

Newt Gingrich came to Michele Bachmann’s defense during an event at Politico Tuesday morning, insisting that she and the four Congresspeople who have been criticized by other Republicans for implying that a senior aide to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, are raising legitimate concerns about the groups’ efforts to infiltrate the American government.

“There weren’t allegations, there was a question,” Gingrich insisted. “The question ought to be asked across the board, what’s the role of the Muslim Brotherhood, what are its various networks and to what degree does it now influence the United States?” Gingrich claimed that senior members of his own party — including Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI), House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-MI) — have bought into an “elite” culture of “political correctness” that prevents any discussion about radical Islam:

JIM VANDEHEI (POLITICO): So you think the Muslim Brotherhood has infiltrated the American government?

GINGRICH: I think it’s worth knowing and I think it tells you something about the level of hysteria attacking these five members of Congress….I would ask the question, what is it they’re afraid of learning?

Watch it:

The former House Speaker lamented that most Republicans, including the party’s presidential nominee Mitt Romney, have resisted investigating the influence of radical Islam on the government and singled out former primary opponent Rick Santorum as a leader on the issue.