Has Keith Ellison Really Distanced Himself From the Nation of Islam?
April 26, 2018 at 5:10 AM
It doesn’t look that way.
Ever since Keith Ellison first ran for Congress in 2006, he has characterized his relationship with Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam as a sincere but misguided youthful dalliance. Though Ellison said he was proud of his 18-month association with the Nation of Islam in preparation for 1995's Million Man March, he wrote to concerned Jewish leaders in May 2006, saying, "I have long since distanced myself from and rejected the Nation of Islam due to its propagation of bigoted and anti-Semitic statements and actions of the Nation of Islam, Louis Farrakhan, and [Farrakhan aide] Khalid Muhammed."
Despite that professed distance from Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam, Rep. Ellison attended a 2013 event given by Iran's president Rouhani that included Farrakhan, and Farrakhan himself has spoken of a 2015 visit by Reps. Ellison and Andre Carson to Farrakhan's Washington, D.C., hotel suite. Both of these connections were first made public in my February 2018 Wall Street Journal op-ed.
Now a series of photographs reveals a recent visit by Ellison to the Chicago headquarters of the Coalition for the Remembrance of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad (CROE), an organization formed in 1987 to honor and promote the teaching of Elijah Muhammad, former leader of the Nation of Islam and mentor to Louis Farrakhan. Although the exact date of the photographs is not clear, other factors suggest sometime between 2014 and 2016. The photographs are screenshots from a YouTube video posted by Saviours Helper, an "authorized distributor of the Final Call Newspaper [a Nation of Islam publication.]"
Munir Muhammad, CROE co-founder and Nation of Islam member, is a close ally of Farrakhan, attends many of Farrakhan's events, and has hosted Farrakhan a number of times in his Chicago CROE studio. Ellison toured the facility with Munir Muhammad and even sat in the same seat where Farrakhan first spoke of the 2015 hotel meeting with Reps. Ellison and Carson in the December 2016 interview with Munir Muhammad.
In the December 2016 Farrakhan CROE interview, Munir Muhammed alludes to Ellison's visit to CROE when the photographs were taken and says Ellison has been on CROE's radio show "several times." Muhammad speaks of his own extended relationship with Ellison, and even gives further details of Ellison's direct association with Farrakhan as well:
"I know Congressman Keith Ellison... as a Muslim and as a congressman, I've had him on my show several times... he came through here as far as the tour was concerned I was quite disappointed with him in his quest to become the Democratic chairman... as he shared with me, off-camera before what he thought about the conditions of the Democratic party."
Muhammad went on to detail Ellison's visit: "Even this summer in Rosemont [near Chicago], he sent you the greeting. I mean I got photographs, in fact, he thought, he anticipated you coming because that brother was promoting you out there as if you were going to entire Muslim congregation out there.
Farrakhan replied, "I think he came and Congressman Carson came, I believe, but both of them when I was in Washington, visited my suite, and we sit down and talked like you and I are talking." The Final Call, a Nation of Islam publication, reports that Farrakhan later specified that Ellison "visited me [Farrakhan] in my hotel in 2015 as the 20th anniversary of the Million Man March was commemorated with a call for 'Justice Or Else.'"
When Muhammad asked Farrakhan about Rep. Ellison's denouncement, Farrakhan pointed to "white" and "Jewish" control as the reason Ellison distanced himself from the Nation of Islam and Farrakhan:
"These are sad truths. What it does say, dear brother Munir, is white control, and specifically Jewish control of politics, economics, Hollywood, music, media. People who want to get ahead - you say things and you do things that the enemy already knows you're being deceitful because you can't out-deceive the master deceiver. So in order to get something that you want, you trash someone that they don't like. Well who cares? I don't bother with brother Keith, I wish him success, poor fellow. If he has to bash me in order to get a job, help yourself brother, say whatever you think will get you your DNC job."
When running for chairmanship of the DNC, Ellison was vehement in his disavowal of Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam, which explains Farrakhan's complaint of being "trashed" and "bashed" by Ellison. Ellison wrote that he rejected Farrakhan's message of "hatred and division, including, anti-Semitism, homophobia and a chauvinistic model of manhood." As recently as February 2018, in response to my report of Ellison's attendance at a 2013 event given by Iran's president Rouhani that included Mr. Farrakhan, Mr. Ellison said, "I disavow anti-Semitism and bigotry in all of its forms" and his spokesperson added that "standing in a room" with someone did not indicate endorsement.
His protestations notwithstanding, it is clear that Ellison's connections with the Nation of Islam have gone far beyond simply "standing in a room," as the photos of the lengthy visit at CROE suggest. Ellison sat directly across from Farrakhan at the meeting hosted by Rouhani as photographs show. Despite multiple opportunities (including by the Minneapolis Star Tribune and CNN's Wolf Blitzer) to deny the 2015 visit with Farrakhan, Ellison initially chose to ignore the questions and call the whole issue a "smear." Later, in March, however, Ellison wrote on Medium that, after the 2013 event with Rouhani, "[c]ontrary to recent reports, I have not been in any meeting with him since then, and he and I have no communication of any kind."
In March, however, Rep. Carson confirmed the 2015 hotel meeting with Farrakhan in an interview with Indy Star columnist Tim Swarens, though it seems Carson stopped short of explicitly confirming Ellison's presence:
Carson said that he agreed to meet with Farrakhan in 2015, in the minister's hotel suite, because they have a shared interest and passion for improving the quality of life in urban neighborhoods. The Washington Post Fact Checker on Friday tagged a third participant in that meeting, U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison, the vice chair of the Democratic National Committee, with the maximum four Pinocchios for claiming that his interactions with Farrakhan stopped in 2006. The Post gave Carson credit for at least acknowledging that the meeting occurred.
In addition to denying the 2015 meeting, Ellison's claim to have had "no communication of any kind" with Farrakhan also seems dubious in light of Munir Muhammad's comment that Ellison "sent you [Farrakhan] the greeting" in Rosemont.
Neither Munir Muhammad's office nor Rep. Ellison's office responded to requests for comment for this article, but given Ellison's insistence that he broke ties with the Nation of Islam decades ago, it is clear he must explain his visit to the Coalition for the Remembrance of Elijah Muhammad headquarters, his appearance on the same show where Farrakhan revered and has been welcomed to spread his anti-white and anti-Semitic messages, and if the statements Mr. Farrakhan and Munir Muhammad accurately reflect a behind-the-scenes continuing relationship with the black nationalist Nation of Islam.
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