Ilhan Omar Is The Latest Target In A GOP Conspiracy
The latest attack comes just a little over a month prior to elections which is part of a bigger story of the GOP trying to frame the presidential election as being rigged
While the New York Times released a bombshell expose on President Donald Trump’s taxes — the most comprehensive look into the real estate mogul’s finances we’ve seen to date — there was a conspiracy theory on the horizon beginning to trend across social media.
The latest conspiracy was created by Project Veritas. It’s not the first time Project Veritas has outright lied, distorted facts, heavily edited videos with out-of-context audio and clips. The group is mostly known for their debunked edited videos of Planned Parenthood.
Breaking down the video
The conspiracy attempts to connect Ilhan Omar to “ballot harvesting” e.g. a process where voters are paid to vote for a politician.
Project Veritas released a video with founder James O’Keefe claiming that a man by the name of Liban Mohamed was caught bragging on camera about obtaining hundreds of absentee votes for Ilhan Omar.
Another man, Omar Jamal, appears after and claims to be an insider wanting to expose the ballot harvesting ring in what he believes “victimizes his own community.”
Something unusual happens when an unnamed journalist off camera begins speaking with a man alleged to be Jamal Osman.
They briefly converse about the absentee ballots, but there’s a point where it looks as if the man alleged to be Jamal Osman is responding but he does not appear to be sync with the audio, much less utter any words, and the cards on the video isn’t indicating who else is speaking (it may possibly be Omar Jamal.)
Journalist 1: “He [Liban Mohamed] said, I have 300 (ballots). And he had him in his hand. Got it right here (in reference to a video of what appears to be the alleged absentee ballots strewn all over Mohamed’s car).”
At this portion of the video, the camera is still aimed at the man alleged to be Jamal Osman, however, the card indicates it’s Jamal who’s speaking. However, he is clearly not speaking, and another voice can be heard asking,
Journalist 2: “Like a cash… like cash. So question: did you ever ask yourself how did he [Liban Mohamed] get them?”
Journalist 1: “Yeah, how did he get them?”
Osman: “You just don’t go, and like, I was looking at them and they [ballots] were not filled. They were blank.
Journalist 2: “Right, they were… some were open.’
Omar: Yeah… in the envelope still!”
It appears they were attempting to get Omar to admit to ballot harvesting, but Omar suggests the ballots were not filled and though they were open they were still in the envelope.
None of those are crimes but it does raise questions about the handling of ballots.
There are some questions about the motivations of Mohamed which in currently unknown at this time. But Project Veritas is known for editing videos to create a false narrative. It’s entirely possible the audio in the video was about something else entirely or taken out of context.
Ali Isse Gainey is purported to have coordinated all of the efforts.
Trump knows there’s a possibility he might lose, so a rigged election could work in his favor
Long before this latest conspiracy arose, Trump had already been floating the idea that mail-in ballots would spell mayhem for the elections.
The crux of Trump’s argument is that it’s not okay for ballots to automatically be sent out to voters who are registered, but it is okay for the contested states Wisconsin, North Carolina, Michigan, Arizona, Florida and Pennsylvania which require mail-in ballots to be requested.
But mail-in ballots being tampered with would cost a foreign government thousands of dollars and would require US citizens to risk being caught for voter fraud (and possibly some sort of charge of treason). Project Veritas is pushing the idea Somali-Americans are being paid off to do this.
The fallout from this video has gotten thousands of shares on social media with the New York Post, Tulsi Gabbard, and many other Conservative outlets pushing the video. It’s gotten so bad that the Minneapolis Police Department had to get involved. They issued the following statement, “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,” MPD said in a statement Monday. “No further information is available at this time on this.”
Even though this pertains to votes for a US representative and not the Presidential election itself — even a most likely made-up scandal such as this adds fuel to the fire which Trump started when he first started parading around the idea Democrats were attempting to rig the elections. If he loses, he can drag things out for as long as possible and that might either be through a recount and other legal proceedings.
American’s shouldn’t get complacent on the issue. Trump has proven time-and-time again he can side-step any legal issue and there’s already reason to believe he’s running an authoritarian “deep state” which he ironically frames Democrats of doing.
