Rep. Emma Greenman – who seemed to have found her happy place being the DFL state rep who was most aggressive about shirking her job early in the legislative session, before the District 40B special election – sounded off on the ethics issues with Keith Ellison:
“Political and not very useful” is actually a great capsule summary of Rep. Greenman.
In the six years Tim Walz has governed Minnesota, and especially in the two years the DFL, the state’s bespoke version of the Democratic Party, has had unfettered control of the state’s government, Minnesota has become something of a hotbed of corruption.
The marquee case, so far, is “Feeding Our Future”, named after a non-profit that allegedly took hundreds of millions of dollars of state and federal Covid relief aid, and “spent” it on feeding centers that served no meals and fed no hungry people.
Federal money is involved, so the Feds have been doing the heavy lifting on prosecutions this past couple of years. Cases are going to trial, and sentences are being handed down.
But in a bombshell Wednesday evening, Bill Glahn of the Center of the American Experiment (a conservative think tank run by Ed and my former radio colleague John Hinderaker) released an audio exhibit from the federal cases, appearing to show Minnesota’s controversial Attorney General, Keith Ellison, discussing a wide range of subjects of interest in the case with several people involve in the case at various levels:
American Experiment has exclusively obtained the complete 54-minute, 44-second audio file of a private December 2021 meeting between state Attorney General (AG) Keith Ellison and key figures in the Feeding Our Future scandal.
As I wrote last week, the audio file was named as Exhibit 710 on the evidence list presented to the court by Aimee Bock’s defense attorney, Kenneth Udoibok. The recording was not offered into evidence during the six-week trial that concluded last month, with Bock’s conviction on all seven counts she faced.
As a document, it exceeds expectations. Voices can be heard clearly and are clearly identifiable. The highlights, which are many, tend to be front-loaded. I’ve included below some clips from the meeting to highlight a few points.
Glahn presents the receipts, as the kids say. In this clip, Ellison discusses how his flex can get other state agencies to back off:
The “Jodi Harpstead” referred to is state’s former Human Services commissioner – no stranger to other problems, and who, according to the Minnesota Star Tribune, resigned last January as controversy swelled around the department.
Here, Ellison pledges to fight on behalf the non-profits:
Perhaps most revealing, according to Glahn, the tape changes the timeline presented by Ellison in the past.
At 30:38, Ellison interrupts, saying, “This is the first I’m really hearing about it.” At 37:08, Ellison says, “This has not come to my attention until now.” These private statements in December 2021 completely contradict his September 2022 public statement:
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison and his office have been deeply involved for two years in holding Feeding Our Future accountable.
Two years. Do the math.
The entire tape is included in the Center’s story.
Pop your popcorn.
I mean, it’s only Grenell.
But, if true…:
…I mean, it’s not like I need more reasons not to vote for Kamala Harris. Picking one of the only attorneys-general worse than Eric Holder would be one.
But since the idea of appointing Ellison to AG is so egregiously stupid, one needs to ask – why?
Thoughts?
This past week, Brazil’s “supreme court” ordered a shutdown of “X” (formerly Twitter) after Elon Musk declined to participate in a sham court proceeding.
The justice said the platform will stay suspended until it complies with his orders, and also set a daily fine of 50,000 reais ($8,900) for people or companies using VPNs to access it.
OK – so you say “banana repubics gonna banana republic”. They got themselves a socialist PM, so it’s to be expected.
Yes, indeed; banana republics gonna banana republic:
In a just world, this would be a disqualifier for further service as an “Attorney General”, as actual lawyer and state rep Harry Niska points out:
Now, Niska’s not new at this – he knows most Twin Cities media only supports their free speech. But rules are rules.
Speaking of which – Ellison is certainly trashing the spirit of Minnesota law, if not the actual letter::
Tack this onto Governor Klink’s clear ambivalence about free speech, and the Twin Cities news media’s trite juvenility about doing its putative duty to democracy…:
…and it’s hard to know which is the bigger banana republic, Brazil or Minnesota.
This came out on Tuesday:
So many responses:
Reason has been annihilated.
Tonight in Fridley:
I’m not a betting man, but it looks like he’s getting ready for some more power-grabbing “consumer protection” litigation.
Attorney General Ellison compares Justice Thomas to a “house slave”:
Ellison – whose entire career is was financed by Alita Messinger and George Soros – accuses conservatives on the SCOTUS of being beholden to plutocrats.
And about 1:00 in, he says:
“Anyone who’s watched Django – Clarence Thomas is like Steven.
Ellison is being both a little more artful than Ryan Winkler’s ape-like response that Thomas is “Uncle Tom”. “Stephen” is a dog whistle reference from a Spike Lee movie – a coded reference to “someone all real black people should hold in contempt”.
Last year, with the aid of a 14:1 spending advantage, Ellison won by about a point.
He can be beaten.
…if Keith Ellison is really this dim…
…or if he’s just counting on his voters being that clueless.
My money’s on “B”.
SCENE: Mitch BERG has found a cache of hard-to-find chili paste at a Vietnamese grocery store, and is putting a half dozen in his basket. Distracted, he doesn’t see Avery LIBRELLE rounding the corner, wearing an N95 mask.
LIBRELLE: (Muffled behind mask) Mrrg.
BERG: Oh, ffffaaaaercrying out loud, how ya been…
LIBRELLE: (Muffled) Jw Shlll hm nmmr prfmkmmd m kem in crm.
BERG: Jim Shultz, the GOP candidate, has never prosecuted a case in court?
LIBRELLE: Ylm .
BERG: Huh. OK. Got a list of cases that Keith Ellison has prosecuted?
LIBRELLE: Hm pm Drmk Shmvm m prmm.
BERG: He put Derek Chauvin in prison? Sure – in exactly the same way that I fixed the plumbing in my bathroom. I hired a professional. The prosecuting attorney of record was a private practice lawyer that Ellison hired.
LIBRELLE: Hm rm thm cmmm!
BERG: He ran the case? Sure – the same way the MNDOT Commissioner runs a road construction project. MNDOT guy manages. He doesn’t do the surveying, engineering, or driving the steamrollers. Ellison managed the lawyers. But if he ever went into the courtroom, he was there as an interested spectator.
LIBRELLE: Thm Slmstm gmrm um fm Unumfm stem thmm “hm brm hm ekfpmfmm em m lorr tm br emrm deh”!
BERG: The Solicitor General of the United States said he”brought his experience as a lawyer to bear every day”? Perhaps. But that didn’t make him a prosecuting attorney. He has never sat at the prosecution table in a trial.
Long story short – do you list of cases where Ellison has been an actual lawyer of record for the prosecution in a criminal case?
LIBRELLE: Duh ym hem umm frm Schlmmm?
BERG: Do I have one for Schultz? No – but he’s never claimed to have one, and he’s not the one using his vaaaast courtroom experience to try to separate himself from Schultz.
So – you have that list of cases for which Ellison has been the prosecutor of record?
(Brief pause. Then LIBRELLE’s face goes red, and steam starts shooting from under the N95).
STORE CLERK: Did he…er…sh… (BERG shrugs shoulders) did this person try the chili paste?
BERG: You’d think.
And SCENE
Mike Freeman on why he doesn’t bother prosecuting straw buyers:
So let’s sum it up.
Minneapolis has an epidemic of shootings because:
The common factor is the DFL.
Shot: Representative Omar with a devastating riposte to Jim Schultz, GOP candidate for Attorney General, giving us all a civics lesson:
Chaser: Keith Ellison, himself giving, in turn, a, uh, civics lesson of his own:
Which is it?
Is prosecuting violent local crime a job the AGO does when asked? Or is Keith Ellison a caped crusader patrolling the streets and heading off crime…
…badly and half-heartedly, and not at all until a month before an election?
Keith Ellison, after three years and 9 months of glorifying, aiding and abetting crime and the collapse of the rule of law…
…is “tackling gun crime“.
The lawsuit, filed in Hennepin County District Court, alleges Fleet Farm sold at least 37 firearms to two straw purchasers over the course of 16 months, despite red flags that some buyers were trafficking the guns to criminals and those otherwise prohibited from legally purchasing guns themselves.
But – is it really “tackling gun crime”.
Pay attention. It’s Keith Ellison. Of course it’s a cynical artifice.
The alleged straw buyers were already arrested, tried and sentenced…
…by the Feds. Not by Mike Freeman, John Choi or Keith Ellison, none of whom cares about straw buyers, since it’s not a “sexy” crime (until five weeks before the election, anyway); nobody ever got elected Senator for chasing down a gang-banger’s grandmother.
It’s their job – but none of them are doing it.
Rob Doar at the MN Gun Owners Caucus explains the stuff the media won’t re Ellison’s deeply cynical action. Read the whole thread:
This lawsuit is just for show – to deflect away from three years and nine months of sloth and indifference…
…no. That goes too easy on Ellison.
He’s trying to deflect way from almost four years of using crime as a campaign prop.
That’s a direct quote from Mayor Frey, from a presser yesterday.
I could shred that statement myself, using facts and stuff
Or I could let Keith Ellison do it, far more delightfully, starting around :12 seconds into this video:
When Keith Ellison‘s BS detector explodes, spewing shrapnel about the room, you know you’ve got a problem.
Keith Ellison – a year ago this week – op-edding to endorse the “Defund” Amendment in the MInneapolis city elections:
Keith Ellison today: “I’m so a law and order, I make Dirty Harry look like a soy-boi cuck; just ask Mike Freeman!.
No, really. Check out his latest TV ad:
It is is the most artlessly blatant campaign lie I’ve ever seen.
It opens with…
…Mike Freeman (?!?!?) talking about the Ellison’s crime-fighting chops – which is a little like getting your coaching skills recommended by Les Steckel. The ad name-drops Freeman – without (if I recall the ad correctly) mentioning he’s the Hennepin County attorney who’s been letting robbers, carjackers and shooters go free, over and over.
The ad claims Ellison has “…never lost a criminal prosecution” – which is true, in the sense that I didn’t f**k up my bathroom plumbing when I replaced it – because I’m not a plumber, and I hired someone who was to do the job. Keith Ellison contracted the job to outside counsel…
…because his next statement, “he added criminal prosecutors”, is technically true and still a lie. The criminal division at the AGO was tiny, and is now a little less tiny. Which was why he had to farm out the Chauvin prosecution!
Ellison‘s ad is further proof that DFLers think they can count on their voters – or swing voters – being too gullible and uncritical to look past the lies.
Experience shows it’s not a bad strategery. Frankly, if he’s wrong I think it’d shock the world.
So let’s shock the world.
As the DFL’s day continued, the DFL’s push to wrap themselves in law and order took a solid hit when a couple of dozen county sheriffs endorsed Jim Schultz for Attorney General:
This has got to terrify the DFL. There may be more bodies buried at the AGO than even in Steve Simon’s State Department. Expect a tsuanmi of Sorosbucks to try to right the DFL’s ship in this race.
And that could get even worse for Ellison, given the next story that dropped yesterday…
Rights come with responsibilities.
Exercising rights without responsibilities is libertinism.
By the opposite token, having responsibilities without rights is tyranny.
With that thought in mind: Attorney General Ellison, trying to look “tough on crime” after 3.85 years of actively coddling it, is going after public enemy number 1: the businesses where the crime takes place:
It’s more than a little tempting to respond “turning a blind eye to violence – you’re going to be perp-walking Mike Freeman, John Choi and the entire 2020-2022 MInneapolis City Council?”
But no. That’d actually get at the ever-popular “root cause”.
What precisely are the stores options?
Call the police? And have the response come far too late to do anything? Or, even if the perps are arrested, watch them back on the street before the paperwork is filled out?
Hire private security? Whose only value is potential deterrence, maybe. If not? They call the cops. See above.
Hire off duty cops? Forget the expense – $60-80/hour – for the moment. Can the business even find any, whatever the price?
What precisely would the DFL ruling class like the knaves to do?
According to the Strib, there’s almost no difference between the two attorney general candidates!
I mean, an honest report would note that, for the incumbent Attorney General, this (if true, which you can never really assume with the incumbent attorney general) would be a 180° reversal of course…
… but no worries. It’s not like people are concerned about law and order, this cycle…
Keith Ellison’s Attorney General’s Office is soliciting “victim impact statements”…
Community impact statements are statements submitted by those who have been impacted by a crime. Those statements then may be read at the sentencing hearing.
On a form on Ellison’s website, people can submit their own community impact statement describing “how Mr. Chauvin’s offenses have had a social or economic impact” on their lives and community. When submitting, people must select whether they reside in Minneapolis, the state of Minnesota, the United States, or elsewhere.
“It is not common to facilitate the submission of community-impact statements in this way, but this is not a common case,” a spokesman for Ellison’s office told FOX 9.
Reading between the lines: the DFL has to keep the outrage stoked, since none of the other Democrat issues are polling well at all.
As crime plummets in the rest of Minnesota, violence creeps ahead in the Metro – most of it using mundane, stolen conventional handguns.
And suicides claim 80% of the gun deaths in Minnesota – mostly unfashionable older guys with depression and frequently terminal illnesses. And with suicide, magazine size is utterly irrelevant.
But Keith Ellison – former Congressman and current Attorney General with, one suspects, aspirations to the office of Governor of Minnesota, has filed an amicus brief in a state case seeking to limit magazine sizes.
Of course. limiting magazine sizes has no effect on violent crime – not even mass shootings. Especially not street crime or suicide.
But that’s how he’s wasting his time and your dollars.
You need to help fix that.
Go here and email his office; there’s an email form (please rewrite the boilerplate message to suit). You can also call – leave a polite but firm message.
We need to blow his inbox and switchboard to shreds with belt-fed reason and indignation.
Ken Martin’s “investigation” into the domestic violence allegations against Keith Ellison is almost done.
Is the suspense killing you, too?
Last week, the Pioneer Press did a comical dive into the shallow end of the journalism pool, digging up – Sorry, no. They “dug” nothing up about Doug Wardlow’s purported junior high days. A DFL operative spent weeks shopping the story to every local news outlet. Only the increasingly loathsome PiPress would take it.
But while the Twin Cities media digs back a couple of decades to find dirt to prop up the increasingly unviable Ellison campaign, the rich journalistic vein that is Keith Ellison’s past remains untapped.
Which is why we had these things called “blogs” 15 years ago.
Thanksfully, some have kept the faith. Over at Powerline, Scott Johnson just keeps shining the light down the memory hole – in this case, to 25 years ago, after the murder of Minneapolis police officer Jerry Haaf:
Ellison publicly supported the Haaf murder defendants. In February 1993, he spoke at a demonstration for one of them during his trial. Ellison led the crowd assembled at the courthouse in a chant that was ominous in the context of Haaf’s cold-blooded murder: “We don’t get no justice, you don’t get no peace.” Ellison’s working relationship with Sharif Willis finally came to an end in February 1995, when Willis was convicted in federal court on several counts of drug and gun-related crimes and sent back to prison for 20 years.
Now Keith Ellison seeks Minnesota’s top law enforcement job. In the video below, Doug Wardlow does the job that the Pioneer Press and the Star Tribune refuse to do. He tells the highly relevant truth about Keith Ellison.
Oh, there’s more.
–
Sounds fair and just…
Caron Monahan – the ex-girlfriend of anti-somatic DFL congressman Keith Ellison, who is running for state auditor this fall – reports that the big social media platforms appear to be engaging in shenanigans.
Since the big social media platform is our plan I’d like to make sure the actual record gets out:
Pass it along.
As I discussed on the show on Saturday, I believe in innocence until proven guilt, even in cases of domestic abuse. We don’t, as the hysterical left is wont to say, “Believe Accusers” because of some a priori conflation of assumed victimhood and virtue.
We take accusers seriously. And that means accusers of either gender. Women are thumpers, too. Take them seriously, and find out the truth.
So in the wake of the DFL Politburo Central Committee voting 82-18% to go ahead with endorsing Ellison, I won’t be joining the horde demanding he step down from the race over the domestic abuse allegations. There’s juuuuuust enough missing from Karen Monahan’s story to make me want to get the actual facts – preferably, to see (or have lawyers and prosecutors see) Monahan’s elusive video.
Maybe it’ll be enough to convince voters that he’s not a great fit to be the state’s top law-enforcement officer.
And I don’t care. Because for a rational person, there are plenty of other excellent reasons not to allow him within a mile of the Attorney General’s office.
Gonna Dust Some Cops Off
Ellison’s history of cuddling up to cop-killers – without a lot in the way of nuance or question – should give one pause:
In September 1992 Minneapolis police officer Jerry Haaf was murdered execution-style, shot in the back as he took a coffee break at a restaurant in south Minneapolis. Police later determined that Haaf’s murder was a gang hit performed by four members of the city’s Vice Lords gang.The leader of the Vice Lords was Sharif Willis, a convicted murderer who had been released from prison and who sought respectability as a responsible gang leader from gullible municipal authorities while operating a gang front called United for Peace.
The four Vice Lords members who murdered Haaf met and planned the murder at Willis’s house. Despite the fact that two witnesses implicated Willis in the planning he was never charged because law enforcement authorities said they lacked sufficient evidence to convict him.
At the time, Ellison was a Minneapolis attorney in private practice. And within a month of Haaf’s murder, Ellison appeared with Willis supporting the United for Peace gang front. In October 1992, Ellison helped organize a demonstration against Minneapolis police that included United for Peace. “The main point of our rally is to support United for Peace [in its fight against] the campaign of slander the police federation has been waging,” said Ellison.
Read the whole thing. Goodness knows the local media won’t be running anything of the sort.
Ellison The Ideologue
Even before he became the Deputy Chair of the DNC and one of the de facto leaders of the most “progressive” wing of the Democrat conference in DC, Ellison was a noted extremist.
No – I mean extremist:
While speaking to an atheist group in 2007, Ellison compared the Sept. 11 attacks to the Reichstag fire. He stopped just short of accusing then-President George W. Bush of having a hand in the attacks. “It’s almost like the Reichstag fire, kind of reminds me of that,” Ellison said of the terrorist attacks. “After the Reichstag was burned, they blamed the Communists for it, and it put the leader [Hitler] of that country in a position where he could basically have authority to do whatever he wanted.”
Ellison went on to say he wouldn’t suggest the U.S. had a hand in the attacks because “you know, that’s how they put you in the nut-ball box — dismiss you,” before later walking back the comments.
About Those Jews
It was probably ten years ago, appearing on a podcast run by a local center-left pundit, that I got my only chance to actually talk with Ellison.
I got one question out: “Do you renounce the Hamas charter?”
I was referring, of course, to the parts that call for the eradication of Israel, and the extinction of the Jewish people.
Ellison’s response: “Do you know any Arabs?”
Not sure if he was expecting me to respond “Some of my best friends are Arabs” or what – but the rest of his answer was peevish deflective baked wind, intending to turn a simple question into an ad hominem against me – for trying to get a straight answer about a record that could be charitably called corrosively antisemitic. And has been.
Domestic abuse is the least of the questions Ellison should be impelled to answer.
So will anyone in the Twin Cities media bother asking?
Democratic Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison on Monday didn’t rule out the possibility that a Democratic Congress could impeach a Republican-appointed Supreme Court justice.
Ellison said Democrats probably won’t try to impeach a justice that President Donald Trump nominated to the court but said it “could theoretically happen.” Ellison, the deputy chair of the Democratic National Committee, previously claimed in May 2017 that Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch isn’t a “legitimate” member of the court.
Ellison on Monday hosted a community forum on the Supreme Court, where he was asked if there was “any possibility that the legislative branch would remove a Supreme Court justice.”
Government is the things “we” do together to subjugate “they”.
