Trumps Calls on U.S. Attorney to Investigate Reports of Illegal Ballot Harvesting by Ilhan Omar Supporters
President Trump is calling for an investigation into a report of alleged illegal ballot harvesting by Representative Ilhan Omar’s supporters in Minneapolis.
Trump called on the U.S. attorney in Minnesota to investigate claims made by Project Veritas, an investigative reporting project led by conservative activist James O’Keefe, which reported on Sunday that supporters of the Minnesota Democrat were illegally collecting blank ballots and posting boastful videos of their collections to social media.
“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 in a tweet early Monday.
The president and other Republicans have been outspoken against ballot harvesting, a practice in which a third party collects ballots from voters’ homes to drop off at polling stations. The third-party harvesters are sometimes paid for their work and can be volunteers or campaign staff.
In a majority of states that allow ballot harvesting, laws limit the number of ballots that can be collected by a single person — in Minnesota, it is illegal to harvest more than three ballots.
A video shared by Project Veritas late Sunday shows Liban Mohamed, the brother of Minneapolis City Council member Jamal Osman, surrounded by a number of ballots as he brags about his ballot harvesting work.
“Just today we got 300 for Jamal Osman,” Mohamed says in the video that was first posted on Snapchat on July 1, according to the report. “I have 300 ballots in my car right now. … Numbers don’t lie. You can see my car is full. All these here are absentee ballots. … Look, all these are for Jamal Osman.”
Minneapolis residents detailed large-scale ballot harvesting operations in apartment complexes across the city as part of a cash-for-ballots scheme to gather absentee ballots illegally from Somali immigrants, according to the report. Omar Jamal, an official with the local Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office, and other unidentified sources alleged that progressive Squad member Ilhan Omar’s supporters were 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.
“It’s an open secret,” he said. “She will do anything that she can do to get elected and she has hundreds of people on the streets doing that.”
Mohamed accused Project Veritas of editing the video to misrepresent his comments.
The group uses undercover reporters and its report relies on anonymous sources, making it difficult for outside groups to confirm the claims. Project Veritas has previously come under fire for the accuracy and ethics of its reporting, including during a botched attempt to show bias at the Washington Post.
While Minnesota is a battleground state, with several House seats and a Senate race that could flip, Omar’s district, one of the most liberal in the country, is unlikely to switch. Omar had a strong lead in her primary and is likely to win against her Republican opponent by a wide margin.
