Earlier this week, the Minnesota Senate subcommittee on ethics continued a two-count investigation into State Senator Omar Fateh, a Democrat from Minneapolis.
The first count of the investigation involves Sen. Fateh’s involvement with a nonprofit known as Somali TV. Back in 2020, Omar Fateh was running in the Democrat primary for a state senate seat in Minneapolis. During his campaign, Somali TV, a YouTube channel with over 170,000 subscribers, ran ads that encouraged citizens to vote for Fateh. However, Somali TV is a 501(c)(3) organization and is legally prohibited from engaging in political activity and endorsing candidates. Fateh ended up winning the Democrat primary in August of 2020, and he was elected to the Minnesota Senate in November of that year.
Once in the Senate, Sen. Fateh wrote legislation to give Somali TV a taxpayer funded grant of $500,000. Doesn’t this sound like outrageous corruption? Sen. Fateh may have been conducting a quid pro quo in which he solicits the support of Somali TV only to turn around and give them half-a-million dollars of taxpayer money. Additionally, Somali TV’s continued support of political candidates (they ran ads for Jamal Osman’s city council campaign in 2021) constitutes illegal campaign support from a nonprofit organization.
That was just the first count of the Minnesota Senate investigation into Sen. Fateh. The second count involves voter fraud. Back in May, Sen. Fateh’s brother-in-law, Muse Mohamud Mohamed, was convicted of lying to a federal grand jury regarding his involvement in delivering absentee ballots without voters’ consent.
Mohamed, who worked as a campaign volunteer for Sen. Fateh in 2020, was questioned in connection with a federal investigation into misuse of Minnesota’s absentee ballot “agent delivery” process. In Minnesota, an individual seeking to cast an absentee ballot can designate an “agent” to deliver their ballot for them. The agent must have a pre-existing relationship with the voter, be at least 18 years of age, and must not be a candidate.
During the 2020 Democrat primary, Mohamed obtained three absentee ballots and illegally delivered them without the consent of the three voters to whom the ballots belonged. As a matter of fact, the three voters did not know Mohamed and did not ask him to deliver their absentee ballots. Mohamed was convicted of lying about this scheme.
Due to the close association between Sen. Fateh and Mohamed, the Senate ethics committee will examine whether Sen. Fateh had any knowledge or involvement in Mohamed’s illegal conduct. Furthermore, the ethics committee will subpoena Sen. Fateh’s former legislative assistant and campaign manager, Dawson Kimyon, to ask about his knowledge of this matter.
This is further evidence of what I have been saying for a long time. We have major voter fraud problems in Minneapolis, and loose rules regarding absentee ballots only advance that fraud. In Minnesota’s largest city, there is a system by which absentee ballots are traded, purchased, and misused. The longer we tolerate this kind of fraud, the more corrupt our government gets. We need to pass Photo ID requirements for voting and major election security legislation immediately.
For those interested in following the Minnesota Senate investigation involving Sen. Fateh, the subcommittee on ethics is scheduled to meet again on July 7th. The meeting will be broadcast live from the Minnesota Senate’s webpage.
Steve Drazkowski