Ellison answers tape recording questions
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison faced the Republican-dominated House fraud committee on Monday, answering questions about the $250 million pandemic era Feeding Our Future fraud.
The Brief
- Attorney General Keith Ellison faced the GOP-led House fraud committee Monday, answering questions for most of two hours about Feeding Our Future and a meeting he had with some of the fraudsters a month before the first FBI raid.
- Republicans called the recording "disturbing" and questioned Ellison's timeline and his professed confusion about who the people were.
- Ellison said the bottom line is he listened to the people as he would listen to a lot of constituents, but he never helped them in any way and supported the investigation into their fraud.
ST. PAUL, Minn. (FOX 9) - Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison faced the Republican-dominated House fraud committee Monday to answer questions about Feeding Our Future.
Feeding Our Fraud
AG on tape:
The GOP has called a recently released recording "disturbing" – saying Ellison offered support for criminal defendants in the country’s largest pandemic scam.
A month before the FBI raided the Feeding Our Future headquarters, at least a few of its fraudsters had a meeting with Ellison.
"We need you in this fight with us," the group implored Ellison in December 2021.
The group identified as the Minnesota Minority Business Association complained to Ellison that East African businesses faced racism from state agencies.
"April 30th, I got shut down," said Abdulkadir Nur Salah, the now-convicted former owner of Safari restaurant.
Feeding Our Past
Dissecting the call:
Ellison acknowledged knowing the restaurant in the recording, but he says at the time all he knew about what would become the Feeding Our Future scandal was that a judge had ruled against the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) stopping payments to some vendors. He didn't arrange the meeting and said he didn’t know exactly who he was talking to.
Republicans were skeptical of Ellison’s professed confusion.
"Why do you say now that you didn't know who he was when he clearly told you who he was, and why are you offering help to these people to work against your client (MDE)?" asked Rep. Patti Anderson, (R-Dellwood).
"What's the help that these people got?" Ellison said. "No help. I mentioned DHS, and yet they were talking about MDE, so it's not clear. It wasn't clear. It's apparent that in that conversation, it wasn't clear to me what agency they were even discussing."
"It should be no surprise that they're talking about MDE because it's almost on every page of my transcript: MDE, MDE, MDE," said Rep. Marion Rarick, (R-Maple Lake).
Ellison said the tape proves a couple of things: He listened to constituents with complaints that would be important to him, but then he told them to put it all in writing.
Bottom line
You can hear it:
And in the end, he didn’t help them, even when they offered campaign contributions.
"Of course, I'm here to help," he told them in the recording. "But let me be clear. I'm not here because I think it's going to help my re-election."
"When offered help in my campaign, I rejected it on the tape," Ellison told the fraud committee. "You can hear it. I didn't know I was being recorded. That happened."
Ellison acknowledged the fraudsters tried to use racism as a shield to not be investigated, but said ultimately, it didn’t work.
