The ex-girlfriend of Democratic National Committee Deputy Chairman Keith Ellison offered new details of abuse Thursday that she claimed to have experienced while dating him in 2016.
Karen Monahan, 44, claimed in her first TV appearance that the Democratic congressman from Minnesota got violent after a verbal altercation in September 2016, but did not release footage of the alleged incident.
Monahan said the two had gotten into an argument when she went into a room and had laid down on the bed and turned on a podcast episode.
She told CBS he claimed to have asked her to take out the trash and she did not respond. He then asked if she had heard him and she shook her head.
“He looked at me, goes, ‘Hey you fucking hear me.’ And then he looked at me, he goes, ‘Bitch, get the fuck 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.”
Monahan said she began video recording him dragging her off the bed and the ordeal lasted two minutes.
Last Saturday, her son, Austin, wrote a message on Facebook stating that he found the video on her computer in mid-2017.
Ellison is running for Minnesota attorney general this fall. He has denied the incident and said there is no footage to air because the altercation never happened.
“I’m mortified, absolutely stunned that she would say this,” Ellison told CBS Minnesota.
Although Monahan did not report the fight to the police, she said she chose to come forward now because of a “gut” feeling.
“I followed my gut,” she said. “The gut that I kept trying to push down.”
