Ballot ‘scam’ in Ilhan Omar’s backyard
AN alleged ballot-harvesting racket in Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar’s Minneapolis district — in which paid workers illegally gather absentee ballots from elderly Somali immigrants — has been busted by undercover news organization Project Veritas.
One alleged ballot harvester, Liban Mohamed, the brother of Minneapolis City Council member Jamal Osman, is shown in a bombshell Snapchat video rifling through piles of ballots strewn across his car dashboard.
“Just today we got 300 for Jamal Osman,” says Mohamed in the video. “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,” he says, displaying the white envelopes.
“Money is the king in this world . . . and a campaign is driven by money.”
The footage, posted July 1, was obtained by Project Veritas and included in a 17-minute video that it released on Sunday night. Under Minnesota law, no individual can be the “designated agent” for more than three absentee voters.
The allegations come just five weeks before a presidential election plagued with predictions of voter fraud. Both President Trump and Attorney General Bill Barr have warned that the increased use of mail-in ballots due to COVID-19 concerns about in-person voting makes them vulnerable to fraud, especially when unsolicited ballots are mailed to all voters in certain states.
Project Veritas’ investigation poured gasoline on the fire just two days before Trump faces Joe Biden in the first presidential debate Tuesday, addressing topics that include election security.
“Our investigation into this ballot-harvesting ring demonstrates clearly how these unscrupulous operators exploit the elderly and immigrant communities” said James O’Keefe, founder and CEO of Project Veritas.
The involvement of Ilhan Omar, a member of The Squad and frequent Trump target, is alleged on camera by two people in Veritas’ investigation, including whistleblower Omar Jamal, a Minneapolis community leader and chair of the city’s Somali Watchdog Group,
He claims Mohamed is “one of” Ilhan Omar’s “many people.”
“It’s an open secret. She will do anything that she can do to get elected and she has hundreds of people on the streets doing that,” he told Project Veritas in an oncamera interview.
“It’s not only her. It’s all this DFL [Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party] machine [that’s] in . . . the state of Minnesota . . .
“The regulations, if you ignore that and you let corruption and fraud become a daily business and then tough luck, the country will not exist as they [Americans] know it.”
Also implicating Ilhan Omar’s campaign in the scheme is an anonymous female Minneapolis-based former political worker, who told Project Veritas that, before Minnesota’s primary elections, Aug. 8, ballot harvesters “took every single ballot” from elderly people in a Minneapolis public housing complex — the Charles Horn Towers.
“Knock on the door and say, ‘Your ballots come? Give it to me,’ ” the political worker says.
She alleges Ilhan Omar’s longserving staffer, campaign Deputy District Director Ali Gainey, was “coordinating everything.”
Gainey, “who is 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],” the political worker says.
“They have perfected this system,” she said. “They will tell you we are applying for your ballot. They take a picture of your Social Security and your driver’s license. They have a database. When the ballot comes, they track it. Sometimes, they make fake e-mails. They track the ballot. Then they come and pick up the ballot, unopened . . .
“They don’t give a s--t about any Somali . . . The DFL wants to win this state at all costs . . . and the victims is the Somali people,” she says.
She also alleged that young people and women were paid for their ballots before last month’s Minnesota primary: “Cash, cash, cash. They were carrying bags of money . . . When you vote and they mark you off, then you get in the van, they give you the cash.”
Federal laws forbid paying someone to vote or register to vote, or intimidating voters.
Omar Jamal, who has worked with Minnesota’s Ramsey County Sheriff ’s Office on deradicalization education, helped Project Veritas investigators unveil what he calls “ongoing election fraud” which victimizes his community. He secretly recorded conversations with alleged ballot harvester Mohamed and a member of the DFL.
In one call, Mohamed allegedly explains ballot harvesting: “You request for the ballot. It will be sent to your house. You will fill it out and then send it.”
Omar Jamal asks: “So they request for the elderly?”
Mohamed says: “Yes, they request for them.”
Omar Jamal: “And it is taken away from them?”
Mohamed: “Yes, it is taken away from them.”
In another call, Mohamed says: “I’m working for Jamal Osman [who is] running for City Council in Minneapolis. That’s my young brother.”
DFLer Osman won the Ward 6 race in August.
And a video grab from Mohamed’s Snapchat with the time stamp 1:59 a.m., July 2, shows a man brandishing a wad of about 30 envelopes with “OFFICIAL ABSENTEE BALLOT” on the front of each. “Two in the morning, still hustling,” he says.
Project Veritas’ investigation raises serious concerns about the security of mail-in ballots, and intimidation of vulnerable voters.
While FBI Director Christopher Wray told the Senate last week, “We have not seen, historically, any kind of coordinated national voterfraud effort in a major election,” troubling examples have arisen in recent months.
In Paterson, NJ, two officials were charged with election fraud last month after hundreds of mailin-ballots were discarded. In Pennsylvania, nine military ballots from the 2016 election, most for Trump, were found in a trash bin, it was revealed last week.