We have written here, here, here, here, and here about Project Veritas’s explosive video series on voter fraud in Minnesota’s Somali community, and the effort by liberal press outlets in the Twin Cities to suppress that report. Veritas’s primary contact inside the Somali community is Omar Jamal, who is a full-time employee of the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Department and a former member of the Somali mission to the United Nations.
A local television station, Fox 9, published a report on the Veritas videos that was essentially a smear. That report has blown up in the face of reporter Tom Lyden, who produced it. Lyden simply took the principal miscreant seen in one of the Veritas videos, a ballot harvester named Liban, and tried to turn him into a hero. On Fox 9, Liban said that he lied in his own Snapchat video when he said that he had illegally harvested 300 ballots on behalf of a DFL candidate, when in fact he had illegally harvested only 20. A great defense! Lyden also published Liban’s unsupported assertion that Omar Jamal had offered him $10,000 as though it were a fact, notwithstanding that it came from an admitted criminal and liar. Further, Lyden claimed that Jamal himself had recanted his story. This was apparently based on a misunderstanding of something that Jamal said in Somali. I have met with Omar Jamal, and I can assure you that he has recanted nothing.
A number of people are continuing to work on the story, and we will see how many additional witnesses will come forward to testify to the corruption that is going on in Minnesota elections. The FBI, too, is said to be investigating. Notwithstanding the efforts of news outlets like the Star Tribune and Fox 9, I doubt that a lid can be kept on this story. I understand, too, that Project Veritas is contemplating defamation lawsuits against the Star Tribune, Fox 9, and perhaps others.
If you want to know more about ballot security in Minnesota and around the nation, Center of the American Experiment is conducting a public forum on ballot security on October 22. It will be held at International Market Square in Minneapolis. Doors will open at 5 and the program will begin at 6. I will moderate a panel that includes Andy Cilek, President of the Minnesota Voters Alliance, Matthew Tyrmand of Project Veritas, and, if he accepts our invitation, Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon. You can register for the event here. We will also livestream the program; details on that will be released next week.
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