A Minnesota lawmaker has asked U.S. Attorney General William Barr to investigate the allegations of widespread voter fraud published in a Project Veritas video Sunday night.
The Project Veritas video exposes an alleged Minneapolis ballot-harvesting scheme apparently involving allies and associates of Rep. Ilhan Omar, Alpha News reported.
The group’s investigation centers on a deleted Snapchat video from Liban Mohamed, who said in the July 7 video that he was collecting ballots to help his brother, Jamal Osman, win the race for the vacant Ward Six Minneapolis City Council seat.
“Numbers don’t lie. Numbers don’t lie. You can see my car is full. All these here are absentees’ [sic] ballots. Can’t you see? Look at all these, my car is full. All these are for Jamal Osman … we got 300 today for Jamal Osman only,” said Mohamed.
Another source featured in the video said Ali Isse Gainey, deputy district director for Omar’s campaign, is a key figure in the alleged scheme, which apparently targets the senior citizen community at Horn Towers and residents of the Riverside Plaza apartments.
The source also accused the Omar campaign of running a cash-for-votes scheme.
“[Gainey], who’s working in Ilhan’s campaign, is the one who is managing the voting place. They bring them. They line them. They put the open ballots in there and then they take them in and say, ‘Here,’ and the people mark [the ballots],” she said.
“No, and the ones that didn’t vote on ballots, the young people, and the women and stuff, they were paying cash, cash, cash,” she continued. “They were carrying bags of money. And when you vote and they mark you off, then you get in the van, they give you the cash.”
State Rep. Steve Drazkowski, who brought Mohamed’s video to the attention of Project Veritas, said during a Monday press conference that he began to receive allegations of voter fraud against Omar in 2018 after he filed a complaint with the Minnesota Campaign Finance Board regarding Omar’s improper use of campaign funds.
He appeared on several national news broadcasts and began publishing his findings at OmarTruth.com. Drazkowski said several members of the Somali community then began reaching out to him to accuse several groups associated with Omar of paying for votes.
“When I first heard these allegations, I was skeptical,” Drazkowski said. “But the more that came out, the more troublingly credible it became.”
He said he then decided to contact law enforcement as well as Project Veritas, and met with the FBI in the spring.
“Clearly we needed hard evidence of voter fraud that we could not get by guessing about the red flags of massive voter turnout or the anecdotal testimonies from voters, and now Project Veritas has the evidence,” he continued.
In a letter sent Monday, Drazkowski asked Attorney General Barr to “expeditiously open an investigation into these illegal practices.”
“It has been represented to me that in Minneapolis, several Democrat campaigns have been paying individuals to vote. This fraud is said to be occurring in many forms. I have been repeatedly told that much of this activity has been orchestrated by the congressional campaign of Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, and the evidence suggests the same,” he said in his letter.
“Specifically, it has been represented to me that campaigns have been stealing absentee ballots from individuals and paying individuals to obtain their absentee ballots,” he continued. “Furthermore, I have been told that campaigns also use an intricate system of paying people to vote in-person, both during early voting and on election day.”
The Republican lawmaker also called on Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon to suspend absentee balloting until further notice.
“Our election laws matter, and I believe we must determine the integrity of the absentee ballots in question. This is not about Democrats versus Republicans. Dozens of Democrat candidates were deprived of an honest electoral contest in last month’s primary election. They deserve a fair election,” Drazkowski said in a letter to Simon.
During his Monday morning press conference, Drazkowski claimed the Minnesota DFL Party is “very aware” of the alleged fraud.
“It’s fundamentally important to note that these ballots were opened,” he said of Mohamed’s video. In the video, Mohamed claims that all of the ballots in his possession were “for Jamal Osman,” something he could know only by opening the ballots, collecting them opened, or filling them out.
Drazkowski has a copy of the original video and said he’s willing to share it with any media outlet so long as they publish it. He also noted that Mohamed’s video was dated July 7, three weeks before a Ramsey County judge granted a temporary injunction against Minnesota’s ballot-harvesting laws. That ruling was overturned by the Minnesota Supreme Court earlier this month.
“Now new evidence clearly points to a culture of fraud which has resulted in mountains of fraudulent ballots being cast and counted, possibly changing the outcome of several races,” he said. “The other side of the political aisle is already saying that this is a partisan attack, but I can tell you that the majority of the people most directly harmed by this corruption are DFL voters and candidates, some of whom may have lost their races due to this brazen and sickening voter fraud.”
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Anthony Gockowski
Anthony Gockowski is Editor-in-Chief of Alpha News. He previously worked as an editor for The Minnesota Sun and Campus Reform, and wrote for the Daily Caller.
