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Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison is facing new scrutiny over a 2021 audio recording of him meeting with members of the Somali community who would soon be convicted of defrauding millions of dollars in taxpayer money.
In the recording, now obtained by Fox News, the would-be fraudsters can be heard asking Ellison to help them secure more funding, before the conversation then turns to campaign donations.
“The only way that we can protect what we have is by inserting ourselves into the political arena. Putting our votes where it needs to be. But most importantly, putting our dollars in the right place. And supporting candidates that will fight to protect our interests,” one of the Somalian community members says in the recording.
“That’s right,” Ellison responds.
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Ellison has denied any wrongdoing regarding the recording, saying he was completely unaware of the fraudsters’ crimes at the time of the meeting.
“I took a meeting in good faith with people I didn’t know and some turned out to have done bad things. I did nothing for them and took nothing from them,” Ellison wrote in an April op-ed for the Minnesota Star Tribune.
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Ellison did receive campaign donations from some of the convicted fraudsters, according to the Center for the American Experiment, but he later returned those donations after they were convicted.
The recording was first unearthed by Minnesota attorney Kenneth Udoibok, who represents Aimee Bock, one of many convicted in the $250 million “Feeding Our Future” scam last year. Udoibok is arguing that state leaders like Ellison and Gov. Tim Walz need to be held accountable as well.
“I would like to see someone, someone in the state, I don’t care what if it is the governor, I don’t care what the attorney general, someone take responsibility,” he told Fox News in an interview.
“Mr. Ellison, your department that your agency represents have some culpability,” Udoibok continued. “As much as I like Mr. Walz, he didn’t take responsibility on behalf of his agency. The buck stops with him, and in the worst-case scenario, he ought to have fired the commissioner. He ought to fire the director of the food program, somebody.”
Rep. Tom Emmer, R-Minn., plans to ask witnesses about the 2021 recording at a House Oversight hearing on Wednesday, according to a source familiar with his plans.
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