The allegations against Keith Ellison are explosive, though at this point unproven. The Minnesota congressman’s ex-girlfriend Karen Monahan alleges that he verbally and physically abused her in 2016. “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,” she told CBS News. “That’s when I put my camera on to video him.”
Monahan has expressed reluctance to release the tape allegedly depicting the abuse. She has also said that she misplaced the flash drive that contains it. Three of Monahan’s friends told CNN that she had told them about the incident after it happened. Her son, who first described the alleged abuse in a Facebook post, said he found the video on his mom’s computer in 2017.
Ellison responded to the allegations the day after the post. “Karen and I were in a long-term relationship which ended in 2016, and I still care deeply for her well-being,” he said Sunday. “This video does not exist because I never behaved in this way, and any characterization otherwise is false.”
The following Tuesday, Ellison won the Democratic-Farmer-Labor (DFL) primary for Minnesota attorney general. (The DFL is an affiliate of the Democratic party.) So far Ellison’s fellow Democrats are playing it cool on the allegations. The Democratic National Committee, of which Ellison is deputy chairman, tells NPR that it’s reviewing the allegations. DFL officials say he’s still the party’s nominee and that they still back him.
We have no idea whether Monahan’s claims are true. But it should be noted that they’re not the only ones brought against Ellison. In 2006, according to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, a woman “petitioned the court for a restraining order against Ellison, writing in an affidavit that they had been in a romantic relationship and that he pushed, shoved and verbally abused her, and had a lawyer intimidate and threaten her.” If such allegations were made against a man of proven good character, it’d be easier to afford him the benefit of the doubt. But Keith Ellison is not such a man.
As Scott Johnson documented in our pages in 2010 and again more recently, Ellison has a long history of close relations with the Nation of Islam and its bigoted leader Louis Farrakhan—and an equally long history of trying to obscure and downplay those relations. In his 2014 book, Ellison pretended he was a critic of the radical group and its leader. He was not. Perhaps more problematic, given the office he seeks, is the fact that Ellison has aggressively championed the causes of cop-murderers Sharif Willis, Mumia Abu-Jamal, and Assata Shakur. He’s a radical among radicals. Over the past 25 years, Ellison has repeatedly and consistently chosen to speak out on behalf of known cop-killers. Ellison called for the outright release of Kathleen Soliah, the Symbionese Liberation Army terrorist who pleaded guilty to the attempted murder of police officers in California.
We will admit to being a bit surprised at the lack of media attention paid to the new allegations against Ellison, particularly in light of the recent focus on abusive men and because it’s not the first time he’s stood so accused. But maybe we shouldn’t be. Ellison managed to become the second-ranking Democrat in the country with very little scrutiny of his radicalism and the offensive arguments that have shaped his career—a revealing commentary on the national media and on the modern Democratic party.
Whatever the truth of these latest allegations, we hope the good people of Minnesota will see Ellison’s dangerous extremism as disqualifying.
