MPR News hosted a broadcast debate between current Attorney General Keith Ellison (D, running for a third term) and his Republican opponent Ron Schutz. The program aired at noon today (Friday)
The full 59-minute debate can be seen here (the program begins at the 0:35-second mark). The subject of fraud takes up about 1/10th of the entire program and runs more than 9 minutes, from 4:20 to 13:41.
The first point of disagreement on the topic centered on this report from KSTP-5, aired in July,
In Minnesota, convicted fraudsters often end up with no felonies on their records
During today’s debate, Ellison repeated what he told KSTP back in July,
He repeatedly said sentencing is at the discretion of the court and also pointed to the Minnesota Sentencing Guidelines, a system first introduced in the 1980s to bring consistency and proportionality to felony sentences.
Schutz pointed out the obvious, that the vast majority of these cases involved plea deals worked out between Ellison’s office and the fraud defendants. Judges can only work with what’s put in front of them by prosecutors. If a defendant gets no jail time, or no felony conviction, that is 100 percent on the prosecution.
The other big fraud-related controversy centered on the infamous meeting between Ellison and Feeding Our Future fraudsters in December 2021. Your correspondent exclusively published an authenticated audio recording of the meeting. But it was an audio, not a video recording. We cannot see who was or wasn’t in the room.
There was an earlier meeting between Ellison, his city-councilman son Jeremiah, and a group of individuals linked to the Feeding fraud on election day, November 2021. Visual evidence of that meeting was captured in a Keith Ellison selfie and posted on social media.
Regarding the “meeting,” the Minneapolis Star Tribune captures Ellison’s response at today’s debate, with this summary,
In Friday’s debate, Ellison said he received no campaign contributions from those at the meeting and returned donations from others connected to the case. He also said his office helped federal authorities prosecute the fraud.
Ellison’s response can be heard beginning at 9:30 of the MPR broadcast. From the context of today’s discussion, Ellison is referring only to the December 2021 meeting recorded on audio.
That he had previously met with two fraud-linked donors in November 2021 is confirmed by Ellison’s photo above. Here is a table to keep it all straight,
Ellison’s claim that he took no money from the people “in the meeting” depends entirely on the absence of Khalid Omar and Mahad Hassan from the room in December, a fact that can be neither proven, nor disproven, based on audio evidence alone.
In Ellison’s statement at 10:00, that he took no donations from “these people,” it is clear from the context here that he is referring to those individuals later prosecuted and convicted in the fraud. Here Ellison is flat-out lying. His own campaign finance records show donations from defendant Nos. 36 and 69 in the case, both later convicted. It also ignores that Defendant No. 69, Gandi Mohamed, is the brother and co-defendant of Defendant No. 63, Ikram Mohamed, who was in the meeting, and, in fact, made the audio recording. And it leaves out the campaign donations received by his son at the very same fundraiser held later in Decemer 2021.
Ellison also points out that he “returned the money.” Left out in his narrative is the time gap. He took the money on December 20, 2021, less than 10 days after taking the meeting. It was not returned until New Year’s Eve, December 31, 2025, more than four years later. That’s 1,472 days and a massive, nationwide controversy later.
Facts are facts.