Project Veritas uncovers ‘ballot harvesting fraud’ in Minnesota: Devine
By Miranda Devine - New York Post
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A ballot-harvesting racket in Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar’s Minneapolis district — where paid workers illegally gather absentee ballots from elderly Somali immigrants — appears to have 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 dashboard.
“Just today we got 300 for Jamal Osman,” says Mohamed, aka KingLiban1, 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 video, posted on July 1, was obtained by Project Veritas and included in a 17-minute video expose released 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, are vulnerable to fraud, especially when unsolicited ballots are mailed to all voters in certain states.
Project Veritas’ investigation in Minneapolis will pour gasoline on the fire, only 48 hours before Trump debates Joe Biden in the first presidential debate Tuesday, addressing topics including 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 alleged involvement of Ilhan Omar, a controversial member of the Squad, and frequent Trump target, is claimed 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 Veritas in an on-camera interview last Tuesday.
“It’s not only her. It’s all this DFL [Democratic-Farmers-Labor] 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 Minneapolis-based former political worker, who told Project Veritas that, before Minnesota’s primary elections, August 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.’ ”
She alleges Ilhan Omar’s long-serving staffer, campaign deputy district director Ali (Isse) 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] . . .
“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 emails. 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 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.
Jamal, who has worked with Minnesota’s Ramsey County Sherriff’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, Minnesota’s version of the Democratic party.
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 asks: “So they request for the elderly?”
Mohamed says: “Yes, they request for them.”
Omar: “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.”
Osman, a member of the DFL, won the Ward 6 race for Minneapolis City Council in August.
Another grab from Mohamed’s Snapchat with the time stamp 1:59 am, July 2, shows a man brandishing a wad of about 30 ballots with the words “OFFICIAL ABSENTEE BALLOT” on the front of envelopes. “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 voter fraud effort in a major election,” troubling examples have arisen in recent months.
In Paterson, New Jersey, two officials were charged with election fraud last month after hundreds of mail-in-ballots were discarded. In Pennsylvania, nine military ballots from the 2016 election, most for Trump, were found in a dumpster, it was revealed last week.
Minneapolis police investigating ballot harvesting claims amid allegations surrounding Omar
By Sam Dorman | Fox News
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The Minneapolis Police Department is investigating claims by right-wing activist group Project Veritas that individuals tied to Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., engaged in illegal ballot harvesting before the election.
"The Minneapolis Police Department is aware of the allegations of vote harvesting. We are in the process of looking into the validity of those statements," a department statement read on Monday. "No further information is available at this time on this."
Project Veritas' latest video lit up social media as it came just weeks before a presidential election that is expected to see a surge in absentee or mail-in voting. In Minnesota, the issue has come under judicial scrutiny as Republicans and Democrats battled over a measure that would limit the number of ballots a third party could hold for others.
According to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, the state's Supreme Court recently allowed voting to proceed without a three-person limit on the number of ballots any one individual can collect.
President Trump has already called on the Justice Department to investigate the claims, which include allegations of a cash-for-ballot scheme.
"This is totally illegal," Trump said Sunday, linking to an article on the issue. "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!"
Omar responded on Monday by mocking Trump over a New York Times report detaiing how, in 2016, he paid $750 in income taxes.
Project Veritas, a controversial group that has produced a number of misleading videos, claims that a local community leader, Omar Jarmal, blew the whistle on the Minnesota congresswoman's alleged corruption.
“It's an open secret,” he reportedly said. “she [Omar] will do anything that she can do to get elected and she has hundreds of people on the streets doing that.”
The investigation purports to show a ballot harvester claiming that he received money to obtain ballots. It also highlights an alleged harvester who boasts about the number of ballots he's collected for a local official.
PV also claims to have spoken with a former campaign worker who indicated that Omar's team paid voters for ballots.
According to Newsweek, Omar's senior communications director, Jeremy Slevin, blasted the investigation as an attempt to delegitimize the election.
"The amount of truth to this story is equal to the amount Donald Trump paid in taxes of ten out of the last fifteen years: zero. And amplifying a coordinated right-wing campaign to delegitimize a free and fair election this fall undermines our democracy," he said.
