Minneapolis Police Confirm They Are Looking Into Fraud Allegations Linked To Ilhan Omar
Minneapolis Police just confirmed they are aware of the vote harvesting allegations lodged by President Trump who called for an investigation into Ilhan Omar after an undercover video accused her and others of participating in a ballot harvesting scheme.
And in some bad news for Omar, they confirmed they are looking into it. They released a statement just now:
“ALLEGATIONS OF VOTER FRAUD BEING EVALUATED. The MPD is aware of the allegations of vote harvesting. We are in the process of looking into the validity of those statements. No further information is available at this time on this.”
“This is totally illegal. Hope that the U.S. Attorney in Minnesota has this, and other of her many misdeeds, under serious review??? If not, why not??? We will win Minnesota because of her, and law enforcement. Saved Minneapolis & Iron O Range!” Trump said.
The video is from Project Veritas and one of the subjects claimed that Project Veritas doctored or selectively edited the video so this is not a slam dunk (they have a history of doing that) however bad it looks now.
The report focuses on ballot harvesting, a practice Trump and other Republicans have condemned for years. Ballot harvesting is when a third party, often volunteers or campaign staff, collects ballots directly from the homes of voters to deliver them to polling stations. The third-party harvesters can be paid hourly for their work.
Most states that allow voters to have a third party deliver their ballots have a limit on the number of ballots that can be collected by an individual. California is the exception, which allows unlimited ballot collection so long as the harvesters are paid hourly and not per ballot.
In the Project Veritas report, a man identified as Libon Mohamed was caught bragging about the large stack of ballots he had collected. Mohamed claimed he was being paid for the ballot collecting. He said he had “300 ballots for Jamal Osman,” a member of the Minneapolis City Council. It is illegal to harvest more than three ballots in Minnesota.
The report included interviews with other Minneapolis residents who described large-scale ballot harvesting operations in apartment complexes throughout the city. Omar Jamal, an official with the nearby Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office, and several other unidentified individuals claimed it was Omar’s supporters collecting the ballots.
“I think [Mohamed] was [working for] both Ilhan Omar and Jamal [Osman], but I think he was more with Ilhan Omar,” Jamal said.
Much of the report featured remarks from unnamed sources who had their identities blurred during interviews, a staple of Project Veritas’s reporting style that can make confirming their claims difficult. Project Veritas has had some reporting fall apart, including an attempt to show bias at the Washington Post.
Minnesota is a key swing state in 2020. There are several House seats that could flip and a Senate race that has narrowed in recent weeks. Trump and Joe Biden also have a tight race in the state, which has not voted for a Republican presidential candidate since Richard Nixon.
