DNC Underboss Keith Ellison Continues to Dodge Questions on Farrakhan

Minnesota Congressman Keith Ellison has risen to the top of the Democratic party’s progressive wing thanks to his cunning use of identity politics and embrace of the communism-lite ideology of mentor Bernie Sanders.

He has also been haunted by his affiliations with hatemongering black separatist and Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. The virulently anti-Semitic Farrakhan has his claws into a number of members of the Congressional Black Caucus as two bombshell reports published by the Wall Street Journal have made clear.

The latest is that Rep. Ellison and two of his fellow CBC members had a meeting with Farrakhan and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani in 2013 while the Obama regime was working on a deal over Iran’s nuclear capabilities. It was a damning story for Ellison who has been dogged by questions on his relationship with one of the most controversial figures in America.

Some Democrats like mega-donor Hollywood mogul Haim Saban didn’t mince words when he came out and accused Ellison of being an anti-Semite during his run to head up the DNC. The Minnesota Muslim was beaten back by the establishment Tom Perez but as a sop to Sanders and his activist admirers, he was offered the job of deputy chair which he graciously accepted.

But some sleeping dogs won’t be allowed to simply lie and a defensive Ellison responded to the WSJ column “Keith Ellison, Louis Farrakhan and Iran” with more denials about the nature of his relationship with Farrakhan.

U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison again faces questions about Louis Farrakhan relationship. https://t.co/C1V2ZqKKYm pic.twitter.com/78PZ2u1IHz

— Star Tribune (@StarTribune) February 16, 2018

Via the Minneapolis Star-Tribune “Ellison again faces questions about Louis Farrakhan relationship”:

He says Nation of Islam leader’s presence at 2013 dinner was incidental.

 

“As part of the 2013 U.N. General Assembly, and as negotiations were underway for what would become the Iran deal, I attended a meeting with President Rouhani and nearly 50 American Muslim leaders. This was not a private dinner, I didn’t know in advance who else would be there, and my decision to attend was not an endorsement of the political views of other attendees,” Ellison said in a statement this week.

“I attended the meeting to advocate for a peaceful resolution to the Iranian nuclear issue and to press President Rouhani face-to-face for the release of former U.S. Marine Amir Hekmati, who was illegally detained and tortured by the Iranian regime. As always, I disavow anti-Semitism and bigotry in all of its forms,” he said.

As a law student at the University of Minnesota in the 1980s, Ellison defended Farrakhan on the Op-Ed page of the Minnesota Daily. He helped organize buses from the Twin Cities for Farrakhan’s “Million Man March” in 1995.

Farrakhan has frequently embraced the criticism that he is an anti-Semite. He once said “the satanic Jews that control everything and mostly everybody — if they are your enemy — then you must be somebody.”

During Ellison’s failed race to be chairman of the Democratic National Committee, he repudiated Farrakhan, as he has since his 2006 race for Congress.

But Farrakhan said in a December 2016 Facebook post that Ellison and U.S. Rep. André Carson of Indiana visited his hotel suite during a trip to Washington.

Asked about Farrakhan’s claim, Ellison spokesman Karthik Ganapathy released a statement criticizing the media without addressing the meeting Farrakhan says happened in his hotel suite.

“Rep. Ellison has advocated a pluralistic, peaceful and broadly prosperous vision for our nation’s future his entire career, and the idea that matters less than whether or not he was once upon a time standing near somebody is an insane symptom of how our country’s political media coverage is so broken,” he said. “Rep. Ellison knows Minnesotans understand that standing in a room doesn’t mean you endorse every view of everyone else in that room, and wishes the space being used to print this story was instead spent calling more attention to the scourge of white nationalist gun violence, or the deportation threat facing hundreds of thousands of young immigrants across our country.”

Despite the lack of scrutiny by a friendly newspaper in one of America’s most left-wing cities outside of California, the questions about Ellison and Farrakhan remain and the explanation about an “incidental” meeting that just happened to include the president of Iran doesn’t pass the smell test.

Despite Ellison’s spinmeisters, Americans deserve to have their questions answered as to why one of the leading voices of the Democratic party continues to duck questions as to his friendship/apprenticeship to one of the biggest hate mongers in the nation.