Keith Ellison Issues Statement After Scrutiny Over Past Ties to Farrakhan: ‘This Is a Smear’
With Louis Farrakhan back in the news over recent vile comments he made and some Democrats’ ties to him, Congressman Keith Ellison issued a lengthy statement today addressing the scrutiny surrounding him in particular.
A CNN report from late 2016 documented his past ties to Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam at the time, and a recent fact-check from The Washington Post said Ellison is “trying to have it both ways, publicly distancing himself while privately doing something else,” pointing to interactions between Ellison and Farrakhan in recent years.
Ellison has a post up on Medium this afternoon to defend his record against hate and intolerance, denouncing Farrakhan’s “disparaging” and divisive views before addressing those more recent interactions:
I do not have and have never had a relationship with Mr. Farrakhan, but I have been in the same room as him. About a decade ago, he and I had a brief, chance encounter in Washington, D.C. In 2013, I attended a meeting in New York City with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and nearly 50 others where I advocated for the release of an American political prisoner. I didn’t know Mr. Farrakhan would be there and did not speak to him at the event. Contrary to recent reports, I have not been in any meeting with him since then, and he and I have no communication of any kind.
The DNC vice chair adds, “[A]s the attacks on me and my fellow Black representatives in Congress intensify, I want to be clear: this is a smear by factions on the right who want to pit the Jewish community and the Black community against each other, and distract from the hatred and bigotry on display by the president and the white supremacists who stormed Charlottesville this summer with their anti-Semitic chants and Confederate flags.”
“The critics will not be satisfied,” he continues. “They won’t be satisfied any more than President Obama’s production of his birth documents satisfied his critics, or Hillary Clinton’s eleven-hour testimony before the House Select Committee on Benghazi sated her detractors… [T]hose who aim to make me guilty by false association have made themselves hard to ignore.”
You can read the full statement here.
[image via screengrab]
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