Charges of Physical and Emotional Abuse

In August 2018 – just a few days before the Democratic primary for the office of Minnesota attorney general (which Ellison was trying to win) – Ellison’s former long-term girlfriend, Karen Monahan, accused him of having subjected her to a high level of physical and emotional abuse. The matter first became public when Monahan’s son posted a lengthy Facebook status on August 11, where he said, in part:

“My brother and I watched our mom come out of pure hell after getting out of her relationship with Keith Ellison. … In the middle of 2017, I was using my moms computer trying to download something and I clicked on a file, I found over 100 text and twitters messages and video almost 2 min long that showed Keith Ellison dragging my mama off the bed by her feet, screaming and calling her a ‘fucking bitch’ and telling her to get the fuck out of his house. The messages I found, were mixed with him consistently telling my mom he wanted her back, he missed her, he knew he fucked up and we wished he could do things different, he would victim shaming, bully her, and threaten her if she went public.”

The son also claimed to be in possession of a video of the foregoing encounter.

Ms. Monahan, who was employed by the Sierra Club, issued a lengthy statement of her own in which she elaborated on her son’s account: “He [Ellison] tried to drag me off the bed by my legs and feet, screaming ‘bitch you answer when I am talking to you. I said take out the trash, your a bad guest’ (even though we were living in the same place). He kept trying to drag me off the bed, telling me to get the fu** out of his house, over and over.” Further, Ms. Monahan stated that as a result of Ellison’s “narcissist abuse” and multiple infidelities, she now suffered from “complex PTSD.”

Ellison, for his part, denied the allegations. In a two-sentence statement, the congressman said: “Karen and I were in a long-term relationship which ended in 2016, and I still care deeply for her well-being. This video [cited by Ms. Monahan’s son] does not exist because I never behaved in this way, and any characterization otherwise is false.”

This was not the first time that a girlfriend of Ellison had accused him of violence and abuse. In 2006, another former girlfriend of Ellison’s, Amy Alexander, wrote about a 2005 incident in which an angry Ellison had come into her home uninvited and menaced her: “His anger kicked in. He berated me. He grabbed me and pushed me out of the way. I was terrified. I called the police. As he fled he broke my screen door. I have never been so scared.” At that time, Ellison was married to another woman.

Ellison Serves As a Panelist at a Coalition of Black Trade Unionists Event

In May 2008 in St. Louis, Ellison was a panelist at a town hall meeting held at the 37th International Convention of the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, which was founded by the Communist Party USA.

Ellison Was Scheduled to Speak at a Highly Radical Islamist Event in 2016

Ellison was scheduled to be the keynote speaker for the annual Muslim American Society (MAS)/ Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) national convention in late December 2016. But in the days just prior to that event, websites like the Middle East Forum and the Investigative Project on Terrorism publicized a great deal of crucial information revealing the fact that many of the speakers who were slated to share the podium with Ellison had ties to highly radicalized Islamic elements. For example, the convention’s program director, Ahmed Taha, (a) was an open supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood; (b) had previously posted online videos claiming to expose the “Rothschild Zionism Secret Regime in America”; and (c) had circulated articles characterizing Egypt as “Israeli-occupied territory” because of its relatively friendly relations with the Jewish state.

Among the speakers scheduled to speak at the same MAS/ICNA event were the following:

• Ali Qaradaghi, secretary general of the International Union of Muslim Scholars, a pro-Hamas group that counts former Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh as a member;
• Osama Abu-Irshaid, the American Muslims for Palestine national director who had recentlyreferred to Hamas as “an army for liberation”;
• Siraj Wahhaj, whom the U.S. Attorney for New York had identified as an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing;
• Mohammad Qatanini, a Muslim Brotherhood member who was facing deportation from the U.S. on charges connected to his undisclosed former membership in Hamas; who had prayed in 2007 for the defeat of “occupation and oppression” in Iraq, the Palestinian Territories, and Chechnya; who has preached that Jews and Christians “will be swiftly punished by Allah”; and who is a strong supporter of Muslim Brotherhood spiritual leader Yousef Qaradawi;
• Yusuf Islahi, a Central Advisory Council member of the Indian branch of Jamaat-e-Islami, who claims that Jews secretly conspired to carry out the 9/11 attacks as a means of defaming Islam;
• Abdelfattah Mourou, who co-founded the Ennahda Movement, a Tunisia-based Islamic political party deeply influenced by the late Ayatollah Khomeini and the Muslim Brotherhood; Mourou once introduced a modern, abridged edition of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the infamous anti-Semitic forgery;
• Abdul Nasir Jangda, a Texas-based Islamic cleric whose seminary was raided in 2015 by Pakistani law-enforcement due to its terrorist ties; who was described in a 2009 BBC report as being guilty of “brainwashing” children into supporting terrorism; who has allegedly defended the use of female sex slaves within Islam; and who has advocated the killing of apostates and adulterers;
• Jamal Badawi, an MAS founding member who was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the 2008 Holy Land Foundation trial; who has described suicide bombers and Hamas terrorists as “freedom fighters” and “martyrs”; and who supports the right of men to beat their wives;
• Sheikh Kifah Mustapha, a pro-Hamas, pro-jihad imam based in Chicago;
• Hamed Ghazali, an MAS Council on Islamic Schools chairman whose work was mentioned explicitly in the Muslim Brotherhood’s 1991 “Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for the Group in North America,” which outlined a “Civilization-Jihadist Process” aimed at “eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within”;
• Hamza Andreas Tzortzis, who served as a leading official with a Salafist organization called the Islamic Education and Research Academy; who was formerly associated with Hizb-ut-Tahrir; who once stated that apostates from Islam should be beheaded; and who believes that “we as Muslims reject the idea of freedom of speech, and even the idea of freedom”;
• Omar Suleiman, an Islamic scholar who has described homosexuality as a “disease” and a “repugnant shameless sin” deserving of the death penalty;
• Suhaib Webb, a former Islamic Society of Boston imam who has claimed that animosity toward Jews is understandable; who contends that eye contact between men and women is a sin; who describes homosexuals as cursed; and who in 2001 spoke alongside the late Al Qaeda leader Anwar Al Awlaki to raise money for the legal defense of cop-killer Jamil Abdullah Al Amin;
• Zaid Shakir, an Islamic cleric who believes that Muslims should reject “the legal and political system of America” because it is “sinful and constitutes open rebellion against Allah”; who says that the goal of American Muslims should be “the establishment of Islam and shari’ah in America”; and who says that “Zionists” and the FBI were responsible for the February 1993 World Trade Center bombing;
• Wesley Lebron, an open anti-Semite who warnsMuslims “not to become like the Jews,” and who believes that the “Jews did 9/11”;
• Nouman Ali Khan, an Islamic religious educator whose extremism caused him to be banned from entering the United Kingdom and Canada;
• Muhammad Ratib al-Nabulsi, a Syrian cleric who has written that “the wicked Jews are a collection of defects and imperfections, and a hotbed of vices and evils”; and who claims that “God has made it a duty to fight them [Jews] and wage Jihad against them in the means of suicide bombings and other forms of terrorism;
• Yasmin Mogahed, an instructor at the Al Maghrib Institute;
• Ali Ardekani, who created the rap group “Soldiers of Allah,” which was directly linked to Hizb ut-Tahrir;
• Suleiman Hani, an Islamic cleric who promotes 9/11 conspiracy theories; who says that “this smokescreen of a ‘war on terror’ has continuously been exposed as a war on Islam multiple times”; and who says that the kuffar [unbelievers] will suffer the “abode of hellfire” due to “their evil”;
• Abdul Malik Mujahid, an imam and a vocal supporter of the late Hamas operative Muhammad Salah;
• Linda Sarsour, executive director of the Arab American Association of New York; and
• Eddie Redzovic, a YouTube/satellite interview-program host who has sympathetically interviewed Enver Masud (a 9/11 conspiracy theorist and the author of the books 9/11 Unveiled and The War on Islam).