ST. PAUL, Minn. — Already facing bipartisan criticism for explosive allegations, Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann has accused a fellow Minnesota congressman of having associations with the Muslim Brotherhood, a fundamentalist group with political strength in Egypt.

In an interview with conservative commentator Glenn Beck on Thursday, Bachmann defended her call for national security agencies to investigate alleged Muslim Brotherhood connections to U.S. government and said Democrat Keith Ellison has an ulterior motive for wanting to block a probe.

“Well, he has a long record of being associated with CAIR and with the Muslim Brotherhood,” she said of Ellison, referencing the Council on American-Islamic Relations. “CAIR is an unindicted co-conspirator, as stated in the large terrorist financing case that we’ve had in the United States of America and so he came out and essentially wanted to shut down the inspectors general from even looking into any of the questions that we were asking.”

The third-term Minnesota congresswoman has been scolded by leading Democratic and Republican lawmakers for insinuating that a top aide to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has family ties to the group. And Ellison, who represents a district adjacent to Bachmann’s, has condemned her remarks about alleged State Department infiltration as akin to McCarthyism.

Ellison called Bachmann’s accusation about him and his motives untrue.