It was big news at the time. Liban Osman, the brother of then-Minneapolis city council candidate Jamal Osman, posted a video to social media in the summer of 2020 that raised questions about campaign law violations. The video was included in a sensational report by James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas.
Fox 9-TV reported in late September 2020,
The meat of the Project Veritas report, posted on YouTube Sunday night, was a Snapchat video from the brother of newly elected City Councilman Jamal Hassan. In the video, Liban Mohamed, is seen driving his car and bragging about money in politics with what appears to be dozens of mailed in ballots.
“Money is everything. Money is the king of this world. If you don’t have money you should not be here. Period,” said Liban Mohamed in the video. Attempts to reach Liban Mohamed through his social media accounts were not successful.
Liban’s real name is Liban Osman and his brother is Jamal Osman. His video can be seen in the Fox 9 report. Later, Liban admitted that he’s the man in the video, but denied any wrongdoing.
At the time Liban created the video{s}, he was working as a paid campaign staffer for his brother Jamal. His brother was running in an August 2020 special election to fill a vacant seat (Ward 6) on the Minneapolis city council. Jamal prevailed in a 12-way contest, earning just 36 percent of the total vote after ranked-choice votes were counted.
The O’Keefe video raised quite a stir. After the case was mentioned by President Trump, the NY Post published an article on Sept. 29, 2020, based on this Tweet from the previous day,
That same day, Fox 9 reported,
But the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office said it “… has received no information of cases involving so-called ballot harvesting in any elections.” The office suggested those who do have information go to Minneapolis Police.
A Minneapolis Police spokesperson said, “We are in the process of looking into the validity of those statements,” in the Project Veritas report.
At the time, the Hennepin County attorney was Democrat Mike Freeman. Within a week after that, the trail goes cold.
We have recently obtained a response to a public data request seeking information on the MPD investigation back in 2020. An internal City of Minneapolis email sent the evening of Sept. 29, 2020, includes the following passage,
The reference to Mike Freeman is highlighted in yellow, above. A mid-December 2020 city email suggests that Freeman eventually picked an agency other than MPD to investigate.
The underlying email chain suggests that the “conflict” arose for MPD over the involvement of now-city council member Jamal Osman. A late-December 2020 email from Hennepin County appears to deny the existence of any investigation into the 2020 election.
In 2021, Jamal went on to seek a full term on the city council in the November election. Again, brother Liban worked in support.
Yesterday, I reported on a tragic September 2021 incident where Liban was the victim of an unprovoked stabbing and then went on to shoot his assailant. I quoted a court filing that mentioned Liban’s gun was found in a Ford Fusion he had been driving.
The Ford sedan had been impounded following the stabbing/shooting incident in south Minneapolis. While investigating the shooting aspect, MPD obtained a search warrant for the car on September 24, 2021. From that search, here is a photo of the trunk of the Ford,
In the lower left, you can see a black-and-white flyer for a Jamal Osman campaign event. Here is a photo of the backseat in the Ford,
Flipping the photo and zooming in on the stack of paper,
You can clearly see the papers are copies of the “2021 Minnesota Absentee Ballot Application” (to be clear, not ballots themselves). You can see towards the right, that the application showing has already been filled in. Another filled-in application can be seen beneath the pad of lined paper on the right.
In the shooting incident, Democratic Ramsey County attorney John Choi declined to press charges against Liban Osman. Liban’s assailant pled guilty to felony assault in the incident.
Jamal went on to win re-election handily in 2021 in a two-way race. In 2023, Jamal was re-elected again in a much closer 4-way contest. Jamal received less than half the vote in 2023, even after counting ranked choice votes.
Jamal is expected to run again in November 2025.