Smoke keeps gathering around Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, but some CBS News staffers appear more upset that editor-in-chief Bari Weiss wants journalists to investigate it. The latest newsroom rebellion fits the network’s year of melodrama under Weiss, as reported by The New York Post.

Semafor’s Max Tani aired the complaints Sunday, writing that Weiss “has personally advocated for CBS News journalists to pursue numerous story angles related to El-Sayed’s supposed sympathy towards the Muslim Brotherhood.”

Apparently, asking reporters to examine a Senate candidate’s record now qualifies as a newsroom scandal.

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Tani claimed control of the Senate “could come down to how much the news media chooses to focus . . . on a tweet sent years ago by the younger half-sister” of El-Sayed. That characterization sharply minimized the evidence described in the record.

One anonymous staffer complained that Weiss “seems more suited to editing at publications like City Journal, The Free Press or The [Washington] Free Beacon.” The intended insult instead exposed the newsroom’s apparent disdain for outlets that pursued stories CBS employees would rather dismiss.

The case does not rest on a single social media post from El-Sayed’s half-sister. In 2012, El-Sayed signed a letter urging Mohamed Morsi, then Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood-backed president, to use authorities Morsi had bestowed upon himself to punish political opponents.

Activists supporting democracy described Morsi’s power grab as “absolute presidential tyranny,” “a horrifying coup,” “a complete assassination of the democratic transition,” and “autocratic.”

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El-Sayed, however, joined leaders of the Egyptian community in backing Morsi’s actions.

“We, leaders of the Egyptian community, support the revolutionary decisions taken by the president, and we call on him to purge the media and the police as quickly as possible,” the letter said.

That is considerably more substantial than an old stray tweet from a relative.

The letter was not El-Sayed’s first defense of the group. He had previously presented the Muslim Brotherhood as a reform movement and insisted it would not give way to a strongman, only to support Morsi after the crackdown drew fierce condemnation.

Just days ago, El-Sayed denied during an interview with NBC’s Kristen Welker that he or anyone in his family was connected to the Brotherhood. He complained that the matter was “even a subject of debate.”

Welker’s colleague Tom Llamas later confronted El-Sayed with more than the isolated tweet suggested by Tani. El-Sayed’s half-sister had repeatedly posted about their mother’s “activism in the Muslim Brotherhood,” her “family that supports the #MB in #Egpt,” and the fact that her family has “long been MB.”

There is also the record involving El-Sayed’s wife’s father. He was a member of the founding committee of the Islamic Society of North America, which was named an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terror financing case and identified by federal prosecutors as a United States branch of the Muslim Brotherhood.

The reports concerning the 2012 letter and El-Sayed’s wife’s father came from the Free Beacon, one of the publications mocked by the anonymous CBS employee. Both stories plainly concern the record and associations of a candidate seeking a seat that could affect control of the Senate.

The dispute also reached CBS legal correspondent Jan Crawford. Staffers reportedly gnashed their teeth over her social media praise for a voter who asked El-Sayed during a recent town hall event whether he would disavow the Muslim Brotherhood.

The broader complaint against Weiss says more about her critics than it does about her leadership.  Mainstream media organizations habitually dig aggressively into Republicans while running interference for Democrats, and that the treatment of El-Sayed follows that familiar pattern.

These employees have become so comfortable acting like Democratic operatives that equal scrutiny now strikes them as improper journalism. Instead of answering the evidence, they complain to friendly media figures about the person asking them to examine it.

Margaret Thatcher admired Charles Mackay’s poem “No Enemies,” which defended people willing to take bold moral action despite the opposition it creates. “He who has mingled in the fray of duty, that the brave endure, must have made foes!” Mackay declared.

Weiss has certainly made foes while pushing CBS News toward tougher journalism. Given the quality of the complaints and the evidence her critics would prefer to minimize, she has every reason to wear their hostility as a badge of honor.

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