My post yesterday on the American Experiment’s exclusive of the Keith Ellison/Feeding Our Future audio recording–to paraphrase Blazing Saddles–rapidly became a big underground success.
Our friends at AlphaNews reprinted my piece on their site. My friend David Strom wrote a story for his HotAir site. Blois Olson included the controversy as an item on his Morning Take tipsheet.
Today, I received a few nibbles from national outlets.
State Republicans are suitably enraged. House GOP Majority Leader Harry Niska (R-Ramsey) put out a press release, then tried to raise the matter on the House floor this afternoon.
If nothing else, Rep. Niska’s parliamentary maneuver (it failed on a tie 67-67 vote) promoted a FOX 9-TV report this evening,
Tonight, FOX 9 broadcast a 4 minute, 22-second report under the Republicans pounce headline, “GOP lawmakers question AG Ellison meeting with some Feeding Our Future defendants.” The video above also twice mentions an unnamed “conservative think tank.”
What does AG Ellison have to say?
In a statement to FOX 9, Ellison’s office said that he was unaware who he was meeting with:
“AG Ellison was asked to sit down with a friend that day, Imam Mohamed Omar. When the AG arrived, he was surprised to find others present but agreed to meet with them. It is a shame that these fraudsters tried to exploit the Attorney General’s good-faith engagement, but they were not successful. Nothing happened as a result of the meeting.”
That “nothing happened” after Ellison’s pledges of support is the direct result of the FBI raids on Feeding Our Future just five weeks after the recording was made. It reminds one of another of those movie tropes, “Move along, nothing to see here, please disburse.”
Ellison’s friend Imam Omar appears to match a name that appears many times on the prosecutor’s exhibit list for the first Feeding Our Future trial held last year. Mohamed Omar himself has not been charged with any wrongdoing in the Feeding Our Future case. Along with several others in the room heard on the Dec. 2021 recording of Ellison, Mohamed Omar would go on to make a donation nine days later to the political campaign of Ellison’s son, Minneapolis city council member Jeremiah Ellison.
In this context, “AJ” refers to the Al Jazari Institute, a/k/a “DFC,” the Dar Al-Farooq Center, of Bloomington.
Developing…