Ellison on the Brink

Pressure on Keith Ellison to drop out of the race for Attorney General of Minnesota is growing. National and state party leaders are hedging their bets, mostly either refusing to comment or releasing anodyne statements. But the National Organization of Women has called on Ellison to step down. The best sign of mounting pressure is this:

Ellison has declined interview requests from the Star Tribune since winning the primary Tuesday night. On Thursday, Ellison refused to talk to a Star Tribune reporter who knocked on the front door of his Minneapolis home.

CBS has the story on the most recent domestic abuse allegation against Ellison: “Woman accusing Rep. Keith Ellison of abuse speaks out.”

On Thursday, [Karen] Monahan, 44, spoke on camera for the first time about an incident she said happened nearly two years ago.

Monahan said she has video of what happened but that it’s too traumatic for her, so she has chosen not to share it with anyone.

I doubt that there is a video, but it’s possible.

Monahan said that in September of 2016, she and her then boyfriend, Ellison, got into a heated argument that scared her. She said it started when he came into a room where she was laying on a bed, listening to a podcast.

“Laying on a bed”? It’s like fingernails on a blackboard, but irrelevant to the present point, except to note that reporters are increasingly illiterate.

He asked her to take out the trash and when he asked if she heard him, she shook her head.

“He looked at me, goes ‘Hey you f***ing hear me … and then he looked at me, he goes ‘Bitch, get the f*** out of my house,’ and he started to try to drag me off the bed,” Monahan said. “That’s when I put my camera on to video him.”

That Ellison quote leads the Drudge Report tonight.

The other notable development is that the local press has finally started reporting on the first domestic abuse allegation against Ellison, which dates to 2005–by no means ancient history when it comes to “me too” issues. This is perhaps because I wrote about the 2005 incident, which generated a 911 call by Ellison’s then-girlfriend, here.

The Star Tribune says they haven’t been able to locate that complainant, Amy Alexander. They also refer to an odd-sounding legal proceeding where Ellison apparently prevailed. But the record of the 911 call is now in the public domain:

There is no ambiguity here: “CLR RPT’G SHE WAS ASLT’D BY ELLISON/KEITH/BM/41/WRG SUIT LS LEAVING APT…CLR WANTS TO SEE SQD.” How many “me too” allegations are supported by a record of a 911 call?

For years, the Minnesota press, led by the Minneapolis Star Tribune, has covered up for Keith Ellison. It has buried the stories of his long association with the Nation of Islam, his rank anti-semitism, his political radicalism, and, above all, his decades-long support for cop-killers.

It is a little ironic that Ellison’s brush with the “me too” movement may doom his candidacy, when there are far better reasons why he should never get anywhere near the office of Attorney General. Scott detailed Ellison’s long and enthusiastic advocacy for cop killers here. It is a sickening story; to call Keith Ellison depraved would be doing him too much justice. Yet it is a story that so far, Minnesota media have found too hot–or too troubling for the Democratic Party–to handle.

At this point, no one knows what will happen. My prediction, take it for what it is worth, is that Ellison will be forced to step down as the Democrats’ AG nominee. Not because he is a socialist or worse, not because he is a long-time supporter of the Nation of Islam and an anti-Semite, and most important, not because, as a life-long supporter of, and advocate for, those who murder police officers, he is utterly unfit to be the state’s chief law enforcement officer. Rather, because many Minnesota Democrats are bitter about the fact that Al Franken was driven out of office by his Democratic colleagues for far less.

Notice: All comments are subject to moderation. Our comments are intended to be a forum for civil discourse bearing on the subject under discussion. Commenters who stray beyond the bounds of civility or employ what we deem gratuitous vulgarity in a comment — including, but not limited to, “s***,” “f***,” “a*******,” or one of their many variants — will be banned without further notice in the sole discretion of the site moderator.

Responses